I didn't feel like finishing up the last campaign in Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders out of sheer laziness, so I decided to pop in another game for a little spin.

Dino Crisis 3

I picked it up for $8 a few weeks ago. Absolutely stupid game. It came be summed up in 3 words:
Dinosaurs in space.

Can it get anymore stupider than that?

It's actually not a bad game. Average at best. I'm having semi-fun with it. Gamespot and IGN both gave it around a 5/10. I guarantee if the game had a better camera, both sites would have given it a 7/10.

I'm not particularly a fan of the Dino Crisis series. I fiddled around with the first one on the Dreamcast for a little bit. It was the same thing as Resident Evil except with dinosaurs and at the time I didn't feel like playing through another game with bad camera, bad controls, ridiculous voice acting, and absolutely stupid puzzles.

The plot of Dino Crisis 3 is that some ship finds another ship that was missing for 300 years and sends in a rescue team to investigate. The other ship all the sudden arms itself for no reason and kills everyone halfway through the first cutscene. The only survivors of the rescue team are Patrick, Sonya, and some bald guy with glasses.

It seems that Capcom has forgotten how to make survival horror games. Dino Crisis 3 came out way before Resident Evil 4. RE4 was pretty much Rambo vs. zombies that is if Rambo couldn't run and shoot at the same time. You had more than enough ammo to kill everything twice. It was a good game but it wasn't difficult and it wasn't scary. The only moment where I was scared was when I was fighting those monsters who's limbs regenerate and that was because the sounds they make scared the shit out of me. But besides that, no one should be afraid of anything in RE4 unless of course you find zombie midget Napolean particularly frightening.

Dino Crisis 3 reminded me of Onimusha (which I loath). Onimusha was an action game with old school Resident Evil controls and camera. It means that your character controlled like a tank and you couldn't see anything half the time. With Devil May Cry, Capcom finally decided not to use Resident Evil controls but still use the stupid camera. Dino Crisis 3 is in a similar vein but the fixed camera is even worse.

You know something is wrong with a game when you can't see your enemies most of the time.

DC3 is a pure action game, not survival horror. There's nothing scary about it. And you have to be a complete moron if you don't know how to survive in this game. DC3 has a completely absurd system. You get rewarded "tactical points" for every enemy that you kill. You earn even more points for consecutive kills. When your "elimination meter" is full, you go to a save point and you get rewarded even more tactical points just for having your meter full. With these points you can buy ammo, medkits, extend your life bar, energy bar, and elimination meter, and even buy continues in case of a game over. You start out with 5 on the normal difficulty mode. Within the first 30 minutes I already died twice because of the camera. But that was ok. No problem at all really. I killed 25 enemies consecutively (even though I couldn't see any of them but your character automatically locks on to the closest enemy), went to a save point, and got enough tactical points to buy 10 continues. To make things even easier, there's red orbs full of tactical points lying around everywhere in this deserted decrepit 300 year old space ship.

Oh yea. And your default machine gun has infinite ammo.

This is how I progress from room to room. As I walk in I immediately start firing my machine gun. If I see my character lock onto something, then I start jetpacking around like a maniac to avoid dinosaur attacks (remember I can't fucking see anything because the camera is pure shit). Once the "intense music" dies down, I stop firing my gun and know that all the dinosaurs are now dead.

When you're not killing dinosaurs, you're jetpacking around large rooms doing silly platforming puzzles. These are all simple and easy but end up being mind numbingly frustrating because of the dogshit camera.

All in all it's an average game. It's not bad but it's not good either. I'm definitely going to keep playing through it for sheer masochism probably.

Holy shit! Beggar Prince came out last year. Pier Solar is about to be released any time now. And I just got an email from the folks who made Beggar Prince:

Hello, friend!

This is Brandon Cobb, president of Super Fighter Team, with a special
message for YOU, our valued customer! By now, I'm sure that you've
enjoyed many fun and exciting hours with Beggar Prince - and I'd like to
first take the time to thank you once again for purchasing the game.
Your interest and support are both very important to me.

Now I ask you, what could be better than a brand-new game for your Sega
Genesis / Megadrive? Simple: TWO brand-new games! That's right! Not
interested in resting on our laurels, we at Super Fighter Team decided
to go right back to work after our success with Beggar Prince - and,
after over a year's worth of highly focused, dedicated effort, we are
very proud to officially announce our newest game for the Genesis /
Megadrive...

LEGEND OF WUKONG: A 16 megabit role playing adventure game set in
ancient China and featuring a curious time traveling boy, a pig-man, and
a beautiful young girl - all three of whom you'll get to control as
their adventure through a demon-ravaged land unfolds! Guide them through
ancient perils, arming them with the best equipment money can buy, and
pick up some helpful herbs and spells along the way! Track the stolen
time machine! Overcome the devious and deadly bosses! Enjoy loads of
humor! Your Genesis / Megadrive has been waiting for a new game, and
this is it!

This game will be presented in the same authentic, high-quality style
that you've come to appreciate from us, including: game cartridge with
plastic shell, plastic clamshell case with full color insert, and a full
color 16 page instruction manual! Best of all, Legend of Wukong will
play perfectly on any and all PAL and NTSC Sega Genesis and Megadrive
systems, including the Nomad, 32X, X'Eye, Laseractive, etc., as well as
on all compatible systems!
For more information on Legend of Wukong, I invite you to visit the
game's official website - http://www.legendofwukong.com

Once there you will be able to read detailed information about the game,
its story and its characters, view a large selection of in-game
screenshots, and...
WE ARE NOW TAKING PRE-ORDERS FOR LEGEND OF WUKONG!
THE GAME WILL BEGIN TO SHIP TO PRE-ORDER CUSTOMERS IN TIME FOR
CHRISTMAS, 2008!
Please visit us at - http://www.legendofwukong.com

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly to
share them. I'm always more than happy to personally respond within a
timely manner, to ensure your satisfaction. Again, thank-you for your
interest in our videogame products. With the continued support of people
like you, we're destined to keep achieving our dream: To be a successful
producer of exciting new videogames for the classic systems we all love.
Never let dreams die!

--

- Brandon Cobb
President, Super Fighter Team - www.superfighter.com
"Never let dreams die!"

So I'm playing the 2nd out of the 4 campaigns in Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders for the original Xbox. This game is pretty damn good. It's an action RTS. It's a mixture of Dynasty Warriors and Kessen. The end result is a good one. It's nowhere near perfect. It's not as strategic and large as Kessen and you never rack up the body count as you do in Dynasty Warriors, but the mix works well, the plot is great, it's fun to play, and it's an Xbox exclusive (now that's saying a lot!)

After finishing Gerald's human campaign, I started playing as Lucretia's dark elves campaign. Now, the voice acting for Gerald's campaign was mediocre at best. Most of the time it sucked. The battle dialogue was acceptable but that's about it. Lucretia's campaign just has atrocious voice acting. It's terrible. They're not even trying. It was so bad that I skipped the first cutscene and exited the game to go back to the main menu. Why?

The Kingdom Under Fire series is developed by a small South Korean company. I almost shat myself when I found out that you can change the voice acting to the original Korean language!!! And that is what I did. Now I'm playing the game with English subs. I actually feel like replaying the first chapter because the playable character in that chapter sounds so much more badass when he yells angrily in Korean instead of talking in monotone in English.

After I finish playing through all 4 campaigns I'm definitely going to pick up the sequel Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes. I really hope they kept the Korean voice acting option in there.

Hell, I was even thinking about saving up some money, selling off some crap, and picking up an Xbox 360 for Halo 3 and the new Kingdom Under Fire game called Circle of Doom. But after skimming through a few reviews, I instantly changed my mind.

Turns out Circle of Doom is a dungeon crawling action RPG.

...

WHY?!?!

What kind of sick people are they? Why would you do such a thing? Now don't get me wrong, I do like action RPGs but the KUF series is a STRATEGY series!!! I played the action RPG genre to death. I don't need another Diablo, or another Champions, or another Record of Lodoss War, etc etc etc. You're not supposed to change genres!!! The genres of a series must remain constant!

You ever play the old school Shining Force games? Those games were great! They were difficult, challenging, and strategic RPGs. Do you know why the Shining series sucks ass nowadays? Because SEGA decided to turn the series into action RPGs with boring plots and GODAWFUL English voice acting. There's like 4 action RPG Shining Force games on the PS2. I tried playing through Neo and EXA. I'd sooner put my balls in a blender than pick those games up again. That's how bad they are.

Shining Force 3 on the Saturn is perfect
Shining Force Neo makes you want to commit hara-kiri.

The genre of a series must remain constant.

Apparently Kingdom Under Fire 2 is in development. Maybe this one will return to strategy. Then I won't have to pick up a 360 since it's slated for a PC release anyway.

Hell, I might check out the original very first KUF game. It mostly got mediocre reviews. It doesn't seem like it's much more than a Warcraft clone. Oh yea. It also lacks an in-game save feature. Now, I got pretty far into Dune 2000 which is as generic and mediocre as an RTS could get but the only reason I got that far was because I could always save my game, turn the game off, go do something that is actually fun, then resume playing it whenever I want to continue torturing myself. Maybe there was a patch for KUF. I'll have to look into it...

SEGA is the alpha and omega; it is the beginning and the end. It always was, and it always will. SEGA is allpowerful and allknowing.

SEGA cannot make mistakes.

SEGA is infallible.

SEGA is benevolent and every game and console they released was done for the Greater Good. Unfortunately, we are mere foolish mortals. Some of us mortals have low intelligence therefore they simply cannot understand the Greatness and the correctness of SEGA. These mortals have become Corrupted by the Evil Path and end up berating SEGA and challenging it's Greatness, but in truth they only do this because they're jealous of those who understand the Greatness of SEGA.

I love you, SEGA.

Below is a paper I wrote for an assignment I had due today for my American Presidency class. It was a short, 2-3 page, double spaced simple essay on your thoughts about the current election. The professor just wanted to get to know the students and their beliefs better. My paper ended up being 4 pages and I wanted to write more but I didn't want to annoy the professor. He's a socialist, he agrees with me on numerous points, so it'd just be a waste of our time.

1 thing that I did want to include was a radical thought that I have which I'll sum up right now. I believe McCain is the better option. Things are guaranteed to be worse with McCain is in office.

"Wait a sec... so if things are going to be terrible, how is this going to be good?"

Social change doesn't happen when things are peachy keen and everybody is happy. You think the Bolsheviks would've led a revolution if things were so good under Imperial Russia? You think Mao and the Chinese Communists would've fought constant civil wars, drove out Japanese imperialists, kicked out Western powers if things were so good under semi-colonial China? You think Che and Castro would've went on a leaky small boat to topple over an American puppet regime if things were so good under Batista?

Hell no.

McCain is 72 years old. He has skin cancer. If he dies, Sarah Palin becomes President and things will become EVEN WORSE which is wonderful! She is pro-life. She is against science. She doesn't believe in Global Warming and is in bed with oil companies. She'll drill for oil as much as she wants ruining the already destabilized environment. She also wants to teach creationism in schools.

Things are going to be absolutely abysmal, which is great because that is when the working class can be organized, educated, and led by the vanguard to topple over this cesspool of tyranny.

And now, onto my essay (I use asterisks here as sources, they are listed on the bottom):

The 2008 Presidential Campaign
It’s that time again. 4 years have passed. It’s time for America’s sheep to flock to the voting booths and take part in what George Bush loves most; democracy. The college campus is littered with posters and billboards exclaiming “VOTING IS FREEDOM!” and conservatives and liberals are at each other’s throats.

“VOTING IS FREEDOM!” is an interesting statement. This would mean that the North Korean people are truly free because they are allowed to vote, granted there’s only one candidate on the ballot but it’s still voting. Let’s buy the flawed and general statement of “VOTING IS FREEDOM!” and take it as fact. So who can we vote for this year? Since America has the right to go around bombing and invading other countries to spread democracy, this obviously means that America is the world’s leading authority on democracy. This makes the most amount of sense when it comes to analyzing America’s political structure. We quickly realize that America is a 2 party state. This means when it comes down to election time out of a country of a little over 300 million people, only 2 are qualified to represent the entire population. That’s right.

2.

It gets worse. All these campaigns and these candidates are funded largely by lobbyists. Obama can deny accepting money from lobbyists for as long as he wants to. Actions speak louder than words.

"He gets an asterisk that says he is trying to be different," Weissman said. "But overall, the same wealthy interests are funding his campaign as are funding other candidates, whether or not they are lobbyists."
“In the first quarter of 2007, he accepted a combined $170,000 from Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, two financial services giants that have numerous issues pending in Washington and spent a total of $4.6 million on lobbying in 2006…. Lobbyists from other states also gave Obama money. In California, Obama accepted $2,300 from a partner whose lobbying firm represents AT&T, United Airlines and the Recording Industry Assn. of America in Sacramento." *

The end result is that both candidates that are running to represent 300 million people are soaked with corporate money. One candidate may be richer than the other, but they’re still both rich men. Can a man who had a middle-class upbringing, a man who is incredibly proud of his African American roots (even though he is half white), votes inconsistently on the same issue, is an upper class man, can such a man represent 300 million people the majority who are working class? Yes this is an attack on Obama. McCain, I’m not worried about. The situation is practically guaranteed to get worse if McCain is elected. But the sad thing is the amount of support Obama is getting.

Do people even know who Obama is? I don’t think they do. I think they’re so sick and tired of the destruction and chaos the Bush administration has caused that they would eat anything up that is different. Obama says “change” and that’s pretty much all he says. It’s so vague and bland but the sheep do not care. To them “change” means something different from this administration and frankly, some people don’t think it could get any worse.

But what is this “change” that Obama speaks of? I view McCain and Obama as incredibly similar candidates. Both of them support the terror state Israel. Both of them support the Patriot Act, although in 2003 Obama voted for the repeal of the Patriot Act and then in 2006 he voted to reauthorize it (what?). Both of them support stem cell research. Both support network neutrality. Both of them obviously condemn Russia’s “invasion of Georgia”. I cannot see how this is possible. This position is so recent but is already almost universally discredited. Even the organ of the propagandists and imperialists, Faux News (FOX News), themselves became further of a laughing stock when interviewing a young Ossetian girl and her aunt. The family stated that they were being attacked and bombed by Georgians and thanked the Russian soldiers for saving them. Of course the propagandist attempted several times to cut them off and at the end of this interview stated that “there are gray areas in war.” **

The list goes on and on. The only difference is that Obama wants to create universal health care which will further drive the country into bankruptcy and he supports equal pay when it comes to genders. That’s pretty much it.

With McCain we’re guaranteed to remain in Iraq for as long as possible. Obama on the other hand wants to pull troops out of Iraq. This is the only “change” that I see in Obama. These troops aren’t going home. He wants to send them to Afghanistan. And don’t forget the bold statement towards the Pakistani government where he basically threatened the country that if they don’t get rid of the terrorists, he will invade them and do it for them.

“And he chastised Mr. McCain for trying to portray him as a celebrity, an attack aides say has been particularly damaging, offering a list of people who he said had inspired him, from his grandmother to an unemployed factory worker he met on the campaign trail.” ***

How touching. Does anyone actually buy this? Seeing the huge amount of supporters he has, unfortunately it appears that people do believe this to be truth.

McCain’s and Obama’s stances on so many issues are incredibly similar. This is not a democracy. If Obama is elected, I guarantee that change will be minor. He will have public support, but in reality he will be scheming for his own gains and purposes just like every president before. What kind of a society are we living in? The same society that has replaced feudalism; the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Politics, elections, etc are all fraud. “The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them.” **** That is reality and anybody who sees it otherwise is incredibly naïve. And society will remain in this stagnant course until a dictatorship of the proletariat is established.
“The dictatorship of the proletariat alone can emancipate humanity from the oppression of capital, from the lies, falsehood and hypocrisy of bourgeois democracy — democracy for the rich — and establish democracy for the poor, that is, make the blessings of democracy really accessible to the workers and poor peasants, whereas now (even in the most democratic — bourgeois — republic) the blessings of democracy are, in fact, inaccessible to the vast majority of working people.
Take, for example, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press. The Scheidemanns and Kautskys, the Austerlitzes and Renners assure the workers that the present elections to the Constituent Assembly in Germany and Austria are "democratic". That is a lie. In practice the capitalists, the exploiters, the landowners and the profiteers own 9/10 of the best meeting halls, and 9/10 of the stocks of newsprint, printing presses, etc.. The urban workers and the farm hands and day laborers are, in practice, debarred from democracy by the "sacred right of property" (guarded by the Kautskys and Renners, and now, to our regret, by Friedrich Adler as well) and by the bourgeois state apparatus, that is, bourgeois officials, bourgeois judges, and so on. The present "freedom of assembly and the press" in the "democratic" (bourgeois democratic) German republic is false and hypocritical, because in fact it is freedom for the rich to buy and bribe the press, freedom for the rich to befuddle the people with venomous lies of the bourgeois press, freedom for the rich to keep as their "property" the landowners' mansions, the best buildings, etc.. The dictatorship of the proletariat will take from the capitalists and hand over to the working people the landowners' mansions, the best buildings, printing presses and the stocks of newsprint.
But this means replacing "universal", "pure" democracy by the "dictatorship of one class", scream the Scheidemanns and Kautskys, the Austerlitzes and Renners (together with their followers in other countries — the Gomperses, Hendersons, Renaudels, Vandervelde and Co.).
Wrong, we reply. This means replacing what in fact is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (a dictatorship hypocritically cloaked in the forms of the democratic bourgeois republic) by the dictatorship of the proletariat. This means replacing democracy for the rich by democracy for the poor. This means replacing freedom of assembly and the press for the minority, for the exploiters, by freedom of assembly and the press for the majority of the population, for the working people. This means a gigantic, world historic extension of democracy, its transformation from falsehood into truth, the liberation of humanity from the shackles of capital, which distorts and truncates any, even the most "democratic" and republican, bourgeois democracy. This means replacing the bourgeois state with the proletarian state, a replacement that is the sole way the state can eventually wither away altogether. “ *

* Dan Morain, Obama's Refusal of Lobbyists' Money Has its Limits, LA TIMES, http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/22/681/
** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8XI2Chc6uQ
*** Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny, Campaigning Starts With Running Mates In Tow, New York Times
**** Vladimir Lenin, State And Revolution, 1917
* Vladimir Lenin, “Democracy” And Dictatorship, 1919

These guys are so fucking hilarious.

Ico (this one is my favorite):

Katamari Damacy:

Resident Evil 4:

Super Mario Bros 3:

.
Ghosts N Goblins:

Attack The Gas Station was the first South Korean film I saw. I first saw it a few years back and I rewatched it about a month ago. It's a wonderful nihilistic comedy about 4 teenagers. They rob a gas station, then go to eat some food, and then decide to rob the same gas station again. Why? Because they're bored.

I wrote about Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War before. It's a tearjerking movie about 2 brothers being drafted into the South Korean army during the Korean War.

I watched R-Point last night. An incredibly confusing and ambiguous military/horror film. A squad of South Korean soldiers are sent to a sacred area in Vietnam to search for a squad of South Korean soldiers that went missing there 6 months ago. Are ghosts possessing soldiers or are the soldiers cracking up because of intense stress? It doesn't matter because you wont find out anyway.

GP 506 was done by the same writer/director of R-Point. It's equally confusing and ambiguous and leaves so many questions unanswered. It's equally as great as R-Point. An unknown virus breaks out in a South Korean guard post that borders North Korea.

And finally I just finished watching The Chaser. It's about an ex-detective turned pimp that goes on a hunt for a psychopath that murders hookers.

All of these films are fantastic and I recommend them to everybody. Much to my dismay, R-Point and The Chaser are already scheduled to be remade by Hollywood. THE CHASER JUST CAME OUT THIS YEAR! ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME?

Fuck you Hollywood. Talentless sack of CGI bullshit. I was going ape shit when I heard the amazing Spanish horror film [REC] was going to be remade, but now I hear this crap. This shit pisses me off. America fucking forces it's cinema to be shown in practically every other country, but when another country makes a fantastic unique film Hollywood simply remakes it.

Gah.

Nothing I could do about it.

Oh well. I still have several South Korean movies that I haven't gotten around to watching yet:
Friend, Beautiful, Hit Team, Running Wild, Santamaria, and several more.

I just finished watching the 2004 South Korean film Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War and yes, I cried.

I was expecting South Korean propaganda bullshit, but the only propaganda that I saw were the superhuman South Korean soldiers in the first 2 or so battles.

You have to see this film.

Jin-tae Lee is the older brother. He has no education. He shines and sews shoes for a living. He is a hardened man and soon to be married. He loves his family with all his heart and uses all his money to help his mute mother and to save up for his younger brother's college education.

Jin-seok Lee is 18 years old and about to go to college. He has a heart condition. His family has sacrificed everything to have this bright young man go to college one day and make something of himself.

Then they are drafted.

Jin-tae Lee makes a deal with his commanding officer to go on dangerous suicidal missions. If he succeeds, he'll be given a medal and then the commander guarantees that he'll take his younger brother out of the war. As battles go by, Jin-tae gets promoted and becomes a big shot. He gets interviews on television, he goes to parties, etc. The 2 brothers become alienated and Jin-seok constantly argues with his brother. He refuses to leave the front. Jin-tae, under a lot of physical and emotional stress, soon loses it. After witnessing a village massacred by the North Koreans, he commands his troops to massacre the enemy back and take no prisoners. One of these men happen to be Jin-tae's shoe shining apprentice who gets tutored by Jin-seok. He was forced to join the North Korean army when the North Koreans captured Seoul. The South Koreans start pushing forward and are regaining territory.

I am so happy this movie wasn't blind South Korean propaganda. After retaking Seoul, they show the South Koreans massacring hundreds and hundreds of innocent civilians calling them "communists". These people had to join the Party to get food because the South Korean government wasn't giving them shit.

Saying anymore would spoil it. You have to see this movie. 2 hours and 20 minutes of sadness. The film won 9 awards and currently has an average rating of 8.1/10 on IMDB.

I have just seen one of the saddest and most beautiful movies ever made (it's best not to read the broken English synopsis on the back because it ruins the plot):

My Long March

It's a 2006 Chinese movie (mainland not Hong Kong). The Long March was a systematic retreat done by the Chinese Red Army. After numerous anti-Communist campaigns led by Chiang Kaishek and the Kuomintang, the Red Army eventually became surrounded in the southeast areas of China and was way too outnumbered and low on supplies to continue fighting. The Red Army then marched around 7,000 miles in 370 days. They marched through several rivers, several mountain ranges, and through hostile tribal territory where no Chinese army has ever gone before and they all had to do this while marching several dozens of miles a day and fighting the Kuomintang.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/47/Chinese_civil_way_map_03.jpg

More than 3/4ths of the soldiers died on the march. From material I read, more soldiers died from starvation, exhaustion, and disease than from battles with the Kuomintang.

Despite the enormous amount of casualties, the Long March was an amazing success. The Chinese Communist Party acquired the isolation it needed to rebuild it's forces tenfold. Also they gained a huge following among the Chinese people. The Red Army marched through so many cities and it's because of their Three Rules of Discipline and Eight Points for Attention that they gained favor from the peasants and the poor.

The Three Main Rules of Discipline are as follows:
(1) Obey orders in all your actions.
(2) Don't take a single needle or piece of thread from the
masses.
(3) Turn in everything captured.

The Eight Points for Attention are as follows:
(1) Speak politely.
(2) Pay fairly for what you buy.
(3) Return everything you borrow.
(4) Pay for anything you damage.
(5) Don't hit or swear at people.
(6) Don't damage crops.
(7) Don't take liberties with women.
(8) Don't ill-treat captives.

The Kuomintang, on the other hand, did whatever they want. They raped women, massacred peasants, confiscated property, etc etc etc. This is the reason why the CCP gained so much support.

The film tells the story through the eyes of 16 year old boy that took part in the Long March. His father, sister, and soon to be brother-in-law are all members of the Red Army with him. The young boy, Wang Rui, is saved early in the film by Chairman Mao. His father dies shortly afterwards. Many more hardships follow. It is through the support, guidance, and comfort given by Mao Zedong that give the boy the motivation and the spirit to continue marching and to continue fighting.

My only complaint is that the movie is too short. It's around an hour and 30 minutes long so only a few areas of the Long March are shown. The most exhilarating sequence is when the Red Army was crossing the Dadu River. Kuomintang forces were encamped on the other side. According to the book Red Star Over China, the KMT were ordered to destroy the bridge to prevent the Red Army from crossing it, however, the bridge was culturally significant so the KMT soldiers refused. Instead they removed all the wood from it which left the bridge to be mere chains. 8 soldiers volunteered to cross the bridge on chains to the other side. Turrets were mounted on the KMT side and the Red Army side. Heavy gunfire was going back and forth while 8 brave soldiers were crawling on chains to reach the KMT side. The movie did history justice.

Most Westerners will automatically assume this movie to be propaganda. That is not true. The movie is based on real events. The Long March was a real historic event that actually happened. The events that happened along the way cannot be disputed. It was real. Not only that but the KMT is not vilified. None of the hundreds of atrocities committed by the Kuomintang are shown.

Original article can be found here:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2008/0819/1218868113654.html

Popularity of 1933 Marxist novel a sign that Japan's young are hungry for radical change

JAPAN: Millions of Japan's workforce are learning how to live on shrinking wages and diminished expectations, writes David McNeill in Tokyo

"WE'RE GOING to hell!," shouts a Japanese fisherman as he boards a factory ship bound for freezing waters off Russia, a warning that proves all too true. The sailor and his comrades, a mix of sea-hardened veterans, university students and poor farm boys, are beaten and exploited by sadistic foremen and greedy bosses. When they form a union and strike, the army stomps aboard and brutally puts it down.

Such is the bare-bones plot of proletarian classic The Crab Ship , a novel that earned author Takiji Kobayashi the attentions of Japan's infamous special police, who tortured him to death four years after it was published. But that was 1933, and to the astonishment of many, except perhaps Japan's growing army of working poor, Kobayashi's book is back in fashion, outselling most other titles on the shelves.

After years ticking along on annual sales of about 5,000, mainly to college professors and socialists, The Crab Ship exploded in popularity from January. Shinchosha, publisher of a pocket version of the book, has run off nearly 490,000 copies this year, a 100-fold increase, and it says there is no end to the print run in sight.

"It's caught us by surprise," admits company spokesman Yuki Mine, who says over half the new readers are in their 20s and 30s. A comic version of the book, published in 2006, has also proved hugely popular with students.

The resurrection of a Marxist work many had long consigned to the dustbin of Japan's poverty-stricken past is seen as evidence of growing discontent in the world's second-largest economy, which has shed many employee protections in a decade of profound restructuring. Over one-third of Japan's workforce is part-time and millions more, especially the young, are learning how to live on shrinking wages and diminished expectations.

"Circumstances in the novel are different, but the structure of society is the same," says writer and critic Karin Amamiya, who helped spark the book's revival when she praised its prescience during a January interview in The Mainichi newspaper. "Readers nowadays see themselves in the book. Especially poor young people see their own lives described there."

Publishers are not the only ones to have benefited from the changing national mood. The tiny Japan Communist Party (JCP), which has for years languished near the bottom of the political league tables, is reportedly recruiting 1,000 new members a month, after party leader Kazuo Shii harangued prime minister Yasuo Fukuda in February.

"Day temp staff workers are being discarded like disposable articles," said Mr Shii in a TV clip endlessly circulated on the internet. The party sells 1.5 million copies of its daily Akahata (Red Flag) newspaper, though this is well down on its 3.5 million peak.

The growth of the JCP, however, is an anomaly. Union membership in Japan is at an all-time low and the country is still dominated by the pro-business Liberal Democrats, who have ruled almost continuously for half a century. Still, the Crab Ship phenomenon is a sign that many of Japan's young are hungry for radical change. "It was written 80 years ago, but it doesn't feel old at all," says Amamiya. "In that sense, this 2008 revival is very understandable and interesting."