Sparkster, Rocket Knight Adventures for Sega Genesis and Mega Drive.

http://panelmonkey.org/html/rocket-knight-adventures-sparkster-sega-genesis-mega-drive.html

Sparkster for Super Nintendo.

http://panelmonkey.org/html/sparkster-snes.html

This sprite sheet caused me some heart burn. You see the sprites sheets as originally seen on The People's Sprites were all Transparent GIFs or PNGs. I change that because there is no telling how a paint program will react.

Here's what the Sparkster sheet looks like when opened in MS Paint or Paint Shop Pro.

For some reason it comes up as 0,0,0, black. I have no way if that was intended, but it's not good. You never ever want to use 0 black as a background or in a sprite. Same as 255 white. It will screw you up in the long run. (You can use 255 white as a background, please not in the sprite.)

To fix this I open the sheet up in Paint Shop Pro and deleted the background. I then copied the sprites and open the sheet up MS Paint, Ctrl+A, delete, flood fill purple, and pasted the sprites in. Finally I used the maximum magnification to see if the background has shown through any of the sprites.

Normally I would take screen shots of the sprite sheet in Windows Photo Viewer; but the same background color used in it was used in Sparkster's sprite.

I did miss one detail. Turns out Ace_Spark used black font on the tag. So it was deleted when the black background was deleted. I discovered the mistake before writing up this post and fixed it. That was a pain in the butt. About a dozen screen shots of Windows Photo Viewer is what it took to find the proper font size.

Anime Mine: Kotone Noda.

Asterix for the Super Nintendo.

http://panelmonkey.org/html/asterix-snes.html

A French viking. It's work for 56 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix_the_Gaul

Pulseman for the Sega Mega Drive.

http://panelmonkey.org/html/pulseman-sega-mega-drive.html

Son Goharotto and me.

There isn't much between us at all. As a matter of fact I have benefited greatly from his hard work and he hasn't benefited at all from me using his work.

It was back in 2004 when I stumbled across the site that Son Goharotto had at the time. On it was a Mega Man 8 styled Rush Adapter. The thought popped in my head to repaint it black and viola Nega Man. That character only appeared for a year in the other project and was promptly forgotten until 2013. Jeseka is still a very integral part of the other project and will be for the foreseeable future. Especially since I have yet to really close out the stories I started in 2005.

What was I talking about? What's his face? OH! Son Goharotto. When I was getting done posting the sprites from Rosenkreuzstilette Freudenstachel (I have a file folder whose sole purpose is to copy/paste that name) I had to figure out the next group of sprites to post. I had the Dr. Light, Dr. Wily, Skull Man, and Mega Man but I remember there being more and I needed to double check my memory of them being public domain. Off to the Internet Archive.

Lucky for me (or so I thought) Son Goharotto had websites posted on his sprite sheets. I did find a couple of more sprites in the Internet Archive, but a few were not saved. On the plus side at least my suspicions about them being public domain were confirmed. (I think I should do a post about what I think the differences are between free use and public and why I don't use the phrase public domain.) Then I decided to try and ask him. That's hit or miss. I've had some luck getting in touch with people, and a lot of no luck. This time I was lucky and Son Goharotto sent me the entire collection. YIPPIE!

Now the real work begins. First thing I did was convert the GIFs into PNGs because GIF sucks.

It sucks because after twenty years Microsoft has yet to figure out how to program MS Paint to handle the GIF format. Second I changed the file names to the name of the sprite sheet and his name so I can find them easier in my folders and see the links in my stat reports. Plus it's better overall for SEO. I did alter a few of the sprites to fix mistakes and added double sized versions to beef up the look.

A little funny aside. In an email I told Son Goharotto that I maybe have gotten some of his sprites off of his sites. I thought that may not have been entirely true. I was sure I had seen his name prior to 2004 but I couldn't quite remember. On a trip through the Internet Archive I found him, he had made submissions to The People's Sprites back in 2003. By the way, I did check the Internet Archive for the site listed on the sprite sheets he gave me and the entire set was there. I told Son Goharotto I felt a little stupid for having to have bothered him.

Final thought: I did do a Google Search for Son Goharotto and found his Deviant Art and his contributor index for The Sprite Database, but not the sprites I was looking for. Now when you do a Google Search, the results are nice and polluted with my sites.

Dr. Wily by Son Goharotto.

http://panelmonkey.org/html/doctor-dr-albert-wily-by-son-goharotto.html

Dr. Wily by Son Goharotto. Surprising how there isn't as much
custom work done for Dr. Wily as Mega Man.

Mega Man 32bit by Son Goharotto.

http://panelmonkey.org/html/mega-man-32-bit-rush-adapter-by-son-goharotto.html

Yuri Anime Rant: Any Happy Endings for Lesbians?

For the first official blog post of the panelmonkey.org/The Sprite Cemetery what do I choose to talk about? My history with The People's Sprites? How I bought the URL? Why the Name change? Nope.

How the Yuri Genre of Anime Annoys me Personally: The Happy Ending.
WHY DON'T WE EVER GET ONE!?

I have been watching yuri themed anime for a couple of years now and I kept noticing something rather odd. I couldn't quite think what it was at first. Then I watched Aoi Hanna (Sweet Blue Flowers.) First Fumi Manjoume's heart gets broken by her cousin (who probably was only bi-curious and not really gay.) Then a heart wrenching confession of her sexuality to her friend Akira Okudaira. Then another crushing heart break by Yasuko Sugimoto who not only outed Fumi against her will and then dumped her most likely because Yasuko probably wasn't even gay curious, just going out with Fumi as a rebound relationship.

After all that what does Fumi get for a a happy ending? Standing in the snow with her best friend Akira. No confession of love, no dancing, no laying together naked (it's anime, of course those sixteen year old girl are going to get naked) LIKE IN THE OPENING CREDITS! Sure they hold hands as they walk away into the night, but is it too much to ask for a kiss?

Destiny of the ShrineMaidens pissed me off big time. We start of with the maid Outoha who loves her mistress Chikane Hemimiya but because of their social statuses all Outoha can do is cheer on Chikane. Chikane is in love with Himeko Kukrusugawa. Chikane thinks that since they are both women she can never be with Himeko. Looks like we have two lonely lesbians here. That is until Chikane turns into the psycho bitch and rapes Himeko and then tortures her during the last battle. As Chikane lays dying in Himeko's arms she tells her what she was really doing and confesses her love for Himeko. Then Chikane is healed and they hold hands, hug, get naked (of course, this is anime,) and vow to stand together against all odds. It seems all odds won out when Chikane is ripped away from Himeko, thrown in a closet and the door is shut on that relationship. As Himeko walks ever so lonely to school we see the ever so lonely Outoha looking forlornly at a tree and a hit parade of all the villains having their histories rewritten into happy endings.

We are thrown a bone during the last minute of the last episode when Himeko meets a reincarnated Chikane at an intersection and they hug. Did we really need the Fushigi Yugi ending? Couldn't Himeko and Chikane been allowed to have walked hand in hand to school with Outoha cheering them on? At least it's better than the manga ending. They were reincarnated as twin sisters. Maybe that was the inspiration for Candy Boy. (That's a rant for another time.)

Is there an anime which gives the lesbian couple a happy ending? I have watched a lot of anime in my life, but not all of it. I have watch a lot of yuri themed anime in the past few years, but not all of it. Keep that in mind as I pick my brain trying to come up with some examples.

Sakura Trick, Yuru Yuri, and Kiniro Mosiac do come to mind, but these are comedies. They are not meant to tell some great story. While Sakura Trick comes closest to some drama, it falls just short. Don't get me wrong, I like all three series, I watch them over and over. They are meant to give you that warm fuzzy, not make a dramatic statement.

What I want is the hand holding, fingers interlocked, in bed together, or wake up from a night of bliss, declaration of love moment that either ends or begins a series.

One that comes to mind is Yuri Kuma Arashi. Kureha Tsubaki and Ginko Yurishiro do have that declaration of love, hug, promised kiss, and holding paws moment. Then a firing squad unloads on them. By firing squad unloads on them I mean a line up of girls with guns sends a lot of bullets in our heroines' direction. When we see them next they are walking around a higher plain of existence. Now did they escape the hail of gunfire or did Kureha and Ginko die of lead poisoning before ascending to this higher plain?

A little less weird and ambiguity? Please?

How about Steel Angel Kurumi 2? (What I call Project AKo part 2.) We do have Kurumi carrying Nako Kagura off to school. Nako is happy, Kurumi is happy, Karinka is happy, Uruka Sumeragi is happy, and Saki is happy. Everybody is happy. Really? It's been a few many years since I watched this so I don't remember Nako making any declaration of love for Kurumi. Keep in mind Kurumi is a robot that has obedience code hard wired into her. She is in love with whom ever kisses her first. Unlike Karinka who breaks this code, Kurumi never does. So is Kurumi in love with Nako because of her own free will and doesn't mind the obedience code or is she in love with Nako because of the code? As far as I can recall this is the same Kurumi from the first series that was in love with Nako's ancestor Nakahito Kagura.

Here we have RevolutionaryGirl Utena the Movie. All weirdness aside, we do have Utena Tenjo and Anthy Himemiya (any relation to Chikane?) kissing and naked (this is anime, so of course those I don't know how old they are girls are going to be naked,) rolling of down the road together forever. Pretty ground breaking for 1999. Still, I can't leave the weirdness aside.

So far I have limited my rant to commercially made anime. By commercially made I mean its purpose is to sell merch of some kind. DVDs, Blu-Rays, toys, laundry detergent, so on and so forth. Telling a story isn't a priority. If there is a story that's just incidental.

I've also not discussed hentai. I haven't seen a whole lot and I wanted to keep my discussion limited to anime most likely to be seen on broadcast TV. A medium that has the largest audience.

If I open up my diatribe to OVA sold at a Comiket we find Kuttsukiboshi (Stars Intertwined.) While not as weird as Utena was, there is enough yuri tropes from the bad old days in these two episodes to rant about for several pages of Open Office Writer with the font set at 12. To some up it's psycho bitch Aaya Saitou meets psycho/psychic bitch Kiiko Kawakami. We do have the confession of love in an airplane bathroom. The hand holding fingers interlocked while plummeting to the Earth at terminal velocity. The together forever (naked, of course) moment on some other planet, alone. I guess the lesbians can be together if no one can see them.

It's 2015. If Akuma no Riddle had a yaoi couple together happy out in the open for all to see, why not a yuri couple?

The Image Dump.