Genres: Comedy, Romance, Supernatural

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Junpei Kousaka hates cats. He is allergic to them, they annoy him… even the fat cat his family owns, Nyamsus, constantly picks on him. It goes without saying that as a comedy, it’s all downhill from there. On his way home from school he innocently kicks a can into the trash. However, fate decides that he will miss this attempt and instead behead the statue of a neko-jizo, a cat guardian deity. This act brings upon his the curse of the neko-jizo; if he does not assist 100 cats with their tasks on earth, he will become a cat himself. This is when he begins to hear the voices of every cat around him.

Knowing that his allergies would probably kill him at that point, he goes about seeking alternate ways to break his fate. He first consults with the monk at the cat shrine, Keizou Kirishima, about the history of this deity. Midway through the long wandering stories dating back to the Edo Period, Junpei begins to argue with the monk’s cat, Tama. Tama explains the curse to Junpei further and he begins to hallucinate that he is becoming a cat (after badmouthing the cat deity). He wakes in his bed again, only hazily remembering what happened after the hallucination that day.

Junpei ’s first task is the stop a bully from picking on stray cats in his neighborhood. As it turns out, this bully is his friend (and secret crush from school), Kaede Mizuno. He tries to explain to her that, unlike the dogs her parents own, cats cannot be handled roughly. Nyamsus and Tama begin to harass Junpei and he ends up yelling at them to just “knock it off already.” Kaede assumes he is talking to her and runs off apologizing.

In attempts to complete his second contractual obligation to a cat, Junpei is reintroduced to Kanako Sumiyoshi, a friend from his distant past. There was a time when they were younger that she had feelings for him. She took a situation she walked in on out of context and began a long running feud with him. The cat, however, requires Junpei to pass on its feelings to Kanako for it, as she took care of the cat for some time. A few tears are shed, but things end up MOSTLY patched between the two. This moment also begins the roll of this series toward a more harem-ish spin.

This series has some good potential and as long as the harem aspects to not get trashy, we should be in for a good show. As anyone with cats will know, they find a way to get as close as possible to those who want nothing to do with them. This does add a bit of slapstick comedy to the situation, and we have yet to see the series take a fully serious note.

Overall Hook Rating: B

Check out a clip from episode 1 after the jump…

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The ATI 5870 series

In recent years, few graphic cards have managed to capture the imagination of the PC building community. The recent release of the ATI 5800 series has turned the market on its end and people are lining up to get their grubby little paws on the latest iteration, the 5870 series. Its the first card on the market with native DirectX 11 graphics technology, the card boasts 2.15 billion 40 nanometer transistors, pumping out 2.75 teraflops of power,  1600 stream processors, a memory bandwidth of 153.6GB/sec and a clockspeed of 850mhz. The graphics powerhouse supports up to 3 displays simultaneously with independent refresh rates and resolutions or they can be combined into one large display using the new ATI Eyefinity system. Dual-Link DVI and displayport with a resolution of 2560×1600 is included as is HDMI 1.3 with a native resolution of 1920×1200.

5870

The 5870 can support up to four cards in CrossfireX mode for an incredible boost in power. This beauty definitely has the hunger of a beast, requiring at least 500 watts (600 is recommended for crossfire) to run a complete system. It also requires two six pin PCI-E connections. This baby is fantastically powerful, vastly outperforming its brethren, but this greatness comes at a terrible cost. Finding one of these beauties for sale has proven difficult. Retailers like Microcenter and Newegg have had a hard time keeping the cards in stock and with good reason; ATI has had major supply issues trying to churn this thing out. With demand well outpacing production, we may not see another large shipment of the 5870 till very close to the holidays. While this powerhouse does exist (and exist very well it does!) it certainly doesn’t feel like it does. Overall ATI’s new top dog very much lives up to its own hype and is king of the pack when it comes to graphics processors. Nvidia, the ball is in your court.

I am assuming they were trying to copy Heidi Klum.

Sorry to BREAK it to you, girls. But you ain’t no Heidi Klum.

Besides the fact the girl almost cracks her skull open, what I find so ridiculous is how her friend tries to help her by making her lay on the towel. As if that thin piece of cotton would make the hard wood floor any softer or the pain radiating through her skull go away. What a friend….

Lesson learned, Kids: Leave it to the professionals.

Shea Dog - Perscription - Gunnars

For the people who are lucky enough to read and not hear this, congratulations on having working eyes. We all take our eyes for granted, especially us nerds and geeks. For the computer programming or hacking geeks, you don’t mind staring at a screen full of code and text for hours on end. For you hardcore video gamers, you don’t mind drying out your eyes because blinking is for noobs and that fraction of a second can mean a disastrous and maybe embarrassing headshot. And for the web and graphic designers, you tend to get so close to the screen because you’re either using a touchscreen Wacom or you need to zoom in virtually as well as physically.

Yes. We are eye abusers and we just let it happen cause most people think regular prescription glasses or contacts will help. Sure, they help, but have you noticed sometimes that your eyes still dry out, you get headaches at the end of a long day of gaming, designing, or coding? Or how about your eyes getting so tired that you sometimes see double taillights on the car in front of you on the drive home from work.

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I'm Awesome

Here we are again, a day late thanks to some technical issues, but here regardless, to discuss, bash, praise and poop all over some stuff happening in the MMO world.  Two come to the forefront this week.  As you’ll recall from the past week, we’ve been dealing with Blizzard and their lack of follow-through on their Warcraft Twitter contest.  There has been some updates and potential closure on that issue as well as some other things happening in Azeroth.  Warhammer has fallen on tough times, it seems.  I stated previously that I was going to hop into the game, and see what was what with the new patch and if it fixed the glaring issues destroying the core of the game.  Read on after the break! (more…)

A new in depth look into the world of Dragon Age Origin. I’m sure you heard us talking about the game on the last Pixelated Podcast. In short the game is solid. A kinda cross between KOTR and Oblivion. A full review will be live next week. Until then enjoy the video.

Twitter user, wilw, learned the hard way that cutting too close to the product, is sometimes way too close.  wilw, managed to cut the cord when giving birth to his new headset. I say, just cut your loses and buy another. Or how about splitting the cost of buying a brand new one and try to fix the wiring yourself. Or, you can… ok ok. I’ll stop. Sorry for your loss, buddy.

Ok WoW fanatics.  Get ready to get your panties wet… again. Warcraft Con, a.k.a Blizzcon, is rumored to be moving up to July 30th to the 31st next year. Also, I guess they have out grown the small Anaheim convention center and are moving to the Las Vegas Convention Center.  Why didn’t they opt for a closer yet a bit bigger venue like the San Diego Convention Center?

Oh well. In any case, start saving up that money because I expect ticket prices to go up again by another $25 and end up being $150 per person. Why? Because it’s the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s Blizzard. Both can do whatever the heck they want to do or charge.

[via LVCC]

Updated: The official Warcraft twitter account had this to say.

For you people who are already making travel plans, really?! Is it THAT big of a deal to you?

After doing a double take to the first auto-complete search result, I mouthed the words “W T F” to myself. Either someone’s Google keyword bombing worked or people on the internet are just plain weird. Seriously. WTF is wrong with you people?

Very funny song sung and animated to the tune of Dr. Mario. Watch the video above if you don’t mind getting a glimpse of Wario’s ass and Mario’s birthday suit.