An additional interest that got me even more excited than the already cool Star Wars bonus characters are the new all-female bonus characters created by famous manga-ka. Namco did a similar thing with Soul Calibur II when they added Spawn and Necrid designed by McFarlane. Though it appealed to the North American market, they weren't a very welcome addition in Japan, or for most Soul Calibur fans anyway.

So let's introduce the four new characters designed by Mine Yoshizaki, Oh! Great, Yutaka Izubuchi, and Hiroya Oku!

First up is Angol Fear, a staff wielding girl that has some resemblance to Chinese fabled Monkey King. Designed by Mine Yoshizaki, famous for Sgt. Frog. Angol Fear is based on his creation Angol Mois from Sgt. Frog.

From the character design, you can tell she's very much in style with the Sgt Frog series, so while not a perfect fit in the look and style of the Soul Calibur universe, it's nice to see some manga-ka designs in there.

Next up is probably one of my favorite looking designs, Ashlotte. Designed by Oh! Great famous for series like Tenjho Tenge, Air Gear and Burn Up W. He also helped in designing outfits for Tekken 5, so his designs for Soul Calibur seemed like a natural fit.

With the Goth-Style look, she's a much needed addition to the Soul Calibur world, in my opinion. I really liked Amy from Soul Calibur 3 as a character alternate to Raphael. Oh! Great brings a very interesting design to the table with this clockwork princess. Interestingly, she's probably one of Oh! Great's most reserved looking character designs in terms of fan-service.

Another character I have a keen interest in is Scheherazade, a Light Elf. Designed by Yutaka Izubuchi, who's a mech designer for RahXephon, Gundam, and Patlabor.

Now, I don't know what a mech designer is doing, creating a Light Elf in Soul Calibur, but I quite like. Though she is somewhat generic looking, I've always been a sucker for Light Elves, as you know. From her weapon, she looks to be a Raphael clone. I welcome that. I kind of like Raphael's techniques and overall cheapness, but was never fond of his character or his style. Amy was a good substitute, but she didn't have nearly as advanced a move-set as Raphael did. Hopefully, Scheherazade will fill that gap.

The last new character by a manga-ka is Shura, a dual-katana wielding female. Designed by Hiroya Oku of Gantz and Hen fame, Shura reminds me of Taki and Shiki (from Samurai Spirits).

I'm not sure how well she'll play with my expectations on what I love about Taki. The dark look of Shura is kind of cool. Perhaps she'll play more like Mitsurugi or Setsuka than Taki (there can only be one Taki). The character design on her seems a little generic too - like a toned-down Taki, which is rather unfortunate. Overall, she's the least interesting design out of all four of these new characters.

Back when Soul Calibur II came out, I managed to get a friend who normally hates fighting games, into playing a bit of SC. With a bit of training, he soon got hooked on it and became an even better player than me! I think that with SC4's addition of characters from famous manga-ka really adds appeal to it, and may interest those that have been hesitant so far.

The character creator makes another appearance, and I'm sure many gamers will be creating popular anime and video game characters with them. And with the added online fighting, I can't wait to show off my custom creations, and see what others have come up with!

Here's the Steel Lady Ashlotte. Her name sounds kinda like Charlotte but with the "Ch" and "ar" sounds reversed. Maybe that was the inspiration eh? lol She's got some kind of gothic victorian armor set going on there, which looks pretty interesting. I don't really get the metal rods circling around her metal skirt though. How can that be at all comfortable or mobile lol. And how would you crouch? Anyway, her weapons also reminds me a bit of Angol Fear's weapon, with some kind of ballast on one end, and a spearhead on the other, except Ashlotte's weapon looks to be deadly from both ends here. Though I guess Angol Fear's rounded side of her weapon could smash somebody's skull in, so I guess they're both equally deadly weapons. lol

Another thing about Ashlotte: Wow she's got some legs. They look like they've got some cracks and some lights underneath, which are also on her forearms (armor is part of her body?) and her head. Kinda makes her look like a cyborg or something lol.

This is "The chaos that passes through" Shura (or something along those lines I think. Literally "The passing through of the thousand demon night march," which maybe explains the large demon skull thing adorning her shoulder as a design element). Sounds fitting for a ninja girl who carries four swords around. Designed by Oku Hiroya, she'll probably follow in the footsteps of characters with large assets such as HEN's Chizuru and Gantz's Reika. Oku's design inspiration was brought about by designing a "character to rival Ivy." Don't know if that means story wise or what, but it looks like to me that he was goin for the body proportions lol. All good with me though, I'm a big fan of Gantz so this is pretty neat.

With a release date of just a little over 2 months away, I'm excited to see how many more of our famous artists will be called upon to design guest characters before the game is finished! Though since we're in the age of downloadable content now with the xbox360 and PS3, I hope new characters will be released every now and then. I just wonder how far they would go with that since I don't know if having a roster of say 100 characters (just sayin) would be desirable. I've seen those mugen games where people have squeezed in like 200 characters into one roster, and that just looked like a damn headache lol.

There is no way I am going to allow my year to start like this.

Remember in my last post on the Resolution Run, I had mentioned my increased heart rate and the issues I was having with keeping it under control during the run? Well, typically an elevated heart rate is a sign of overall stress and an indicator of a possible oncoming sickness.

In my case, what an indicator.

Turns out that my elevated heart rate was the first sign of infection with a particularly virulent strain of flu...not the flu that everyone got their shots for several weeks ago. No, apparently according to my doctor, they screwed up on that big time this year, and this particular strain wasn't covered with this season's flu serum. I managed to make it through one day of work on Wednesday, came home, went to bed at 4:30, slept straight through until 6am Thursday, went to work for a grand total of three hours, came right back home and stayed in bed for the remainder of Thursday and a good portion of Friday. Luckily I hauled my ass to my doctor's Friday afternoon, and he immediately put me on Tamiflu for the next five days.

I suppose I should look at the silver lining to this cloud - at least my blood pressure is down to 120/90. However, my heart rate is incredibly elevated - apparently this virus is really getting to be good friends with my heart. As my oh-so-blunt-GP commented to me when he examined me today... "you must feel like shit".

There's an understatement. Ever had your body hurt so bad all over that it felt like you'd been worked over by several large Italian men, all named Rocco?

Oh, and I'm also highly infectious. It's a good thing Cin's in Kelowna visiting her best friend right now. Our apartment is basically under quarantine and I've been told not to even think about going back to work until I stop coughing, since that's apparently the main way the virus is spread.

By the time I'm strong enough to train again, I'll have basically lost two weeks off of my schedule for the UBC tri in March.

Argh. One step forward. Two large strides back. I'm just trying to stay positive, but when all you've seen is the inside of your damn condo for the past 48 hours, food is entirely unappealing, and you're watching movie after movie just to give yourself a break from constantly sleeping, it's a little grating.

This is NOT the way my year is going to go, damn it!

About the Mangaka

Oh! Great(real name: Ōgure Ito) is well known for his ecchi works, as well ash his hentai manga, most notable are: Air Gear, Tengho Tenje and Silky Whip. However he I also the mangaka for Himiko-den, which breaks his usual mode of violent and ecchi types.

Almost all of his manga have high ecchi, some almost hentai elements and high violence, three of his series have been converted to anime: AirGear, Tengho Tenje and Himiko-Den. AirGear however received a lot of criticism saying it was nothing more than a promotion to boost flagging manga sales.

Overview

When you compare this series with Tengho Tenje you can easily see how good Oh! Great has become. While Tengho Tenje is a good manga, it fails in the art style quite frequently. However Air Gear doesn't seem to suffer this in the few volumes I've just finished reading.

The plot itself takes a large number of volumes to get into the true story. The first part of the story focuses on Ikki learning to use air-treck and forming his group. However despite the plot being slow to get going, the story flows extremely well and is easy to read and follow.

Unusually the main heroin isn't the usual babe. Ringo, who is in love with Ikki, is, at first glance, a normal girl who wears glasses. However there are times when we get to see just how sexy she can be. Oh! Great seems to be a master at making the normal appear sexy. The other love interest in the series is Simca, she initially appears as a total babe who's simply after Ikki because he's a 'virgin' on treck. However as the series progresses more about her personality and goals is revealed. However she seems to have her eye's set on Ikki for some ulterior motive.

Ikki grew up as kids with the Noyamano family, and was given into their care when his parents died. After a while it was only the Noyamano kids and Ikki. The family includes: Ringo, Mikan Rika and Ume (Shiraume). They've been taking care of Ikki ever since. Ringo is totally devoted to to Ikki, and loves him completely, getting a little agitated when the love rivals appear :)

Rika is the leader of the family, however she takes a special interest in Ikki, wanting to protect him from the world. When she finds out he's taken up Air Treck she flips out and beats up the sisters for letting him use them. She then has a fight with Ikki over it. As a result we get some interesting plot development, and a shed load of ecchi scenes :)

Luckily it was licensed by a decent company, Del Ray, who are famous for leaving honorifics and translation notes, rather than Americanizing the script. As a result I've found that the releases have been on par with the scanlations, and on a few occasions better, since they have a higher quality to them. Their British division is called Tanoshimi, they're the first American licensor to set up a sub company solely for distribution, marketing, and sales to the British market, hopefully others will follow suit.

Where to buy

• Manga - Sadly most of the volumes are out of stock at The Book Depository, Waterstones, Amazon. Seems the manga is hard to get for some reason. Only place that has them all in stock is the Tanoshimi website (the publishers, so no special deals there sorry)

Simca :3