the stomach punch post
Categories: anime, commentary
Tagged: k-on:azusa, k-on:mio, k-on:mugi, k-on:ritsu, k-on:yui
16 Comments »
Nekomimi Ribbon
+5% Crit
+5% Armor
+Resist All Status Ailments
+50% Moe
So I’m playing in an 1v1 match in StarCraft 2 and my fleet of Void Rays and Carriers just decimated the other player’s expansion base. I’m going to win. Until my computer crashes. I just sit there with the stomach punch look on my face as I realize I lost the match due to a computer crash. I think I held the face for two minutes before shutting off the computer and heading off to make myself a stiff drink. Classic stomach punch moment. You think you’re winning– then suddenly– down in flames. So I got the idea… aren’t stomach punches judged by how long you can hold the stomach punch face? Here’s the levels…
As Fast As I Can Hit “Reset”. Forgetting to wait for Shadow as you escape from Kafka’s floating continent.
Two Seconds. Seeing that I got an e-mail… but it’s from Haesslich and features a trap.
Three Seconds. “Eh, so what if it originally came with a penis.”
Ten Seconds. Getting a literal stomach (or sucker) punch. Purest form. You feel the pain, and then it’s over. You’re onto bigger and better things, like breaking the guy’s nose who sucker punched you. Of course, in Mission Impossible III, the short Tom Cruise manage to completely knock unconscious people twice his size with a single sucker punch. In real life? They’ll stagger back for a few seconds then kick his ass.
Thirty Seconds. The classic, “It’s okay, it’s okay” face that everyone goes through on Press Your Luck when they hit a whammy. BIG MONEY! BIG MONEY! NO WHAMMY! NO WHAMMY!… … … whammy. You have to recover in 30 seconds because you still have spins left. Same as waiting in the cafeteria and realizing the guy in front of you just took the last serving of chicken strips and now you’re picking between some weird mystery meat casserole and a salad possibly teaming with e coli.
Two Minutes. Losing in a StarCraft 2 match because of a computer crash. Anime example… mmm… numerous. Let’s start with Panties realizing that everyone’s cell phones at Eden of the East were being bugged by the Japanese FSB. Let’s end with the common criminals who just realized that they were caught by two (crazy, but good crazy) female traffic cops.
Ten Minutes. Going to Fry’s to pick up some CF cards that are on sale… except they’re all sold out. Same as Ui finding out that Yui is going out to dinner with Afterschool Tea Time instead of having it with her. (Tied: realized you got caught reading a blog好ã post at work. Also tied: coming home from college and realizing that your pet fish died and your dad tried to replace them hoping you wouldn’t notice… “Uh, dad, I had a trout… not goldfish…”)
One Hour. Guests at Simon’s and Nia’s wedding after Simon walks away after Nia disappears. OH NOES SPOILERS! They would have accepted it because Simon accepted it.
Four Hours. Exactly four hours after popping a Viagra… and… uh… blood hasn’t redistributed yet. (Saw the SNL parody of Cialis again last night… the whole bathtub on a beach thing is weird and freaky and all… but why not a parody for anime fanboys? “Before you go buy that new Mugi PVC statue with life-like panties or take creepy underskirt photographs of Strike Witches characters, take a Cialis…”
Six to Eight Hours. Realizing you mailed said hard-to-obtain passport photos… without writing the proper amount for the passport processing fee on the check because they jacked up the fees in the week you were running around to get a passport photo. A facepalm is nice accessory to this stomach punch. (I’m not kidding. This passport is going to cost me over $150 by the time it’s over. And just FYI it now costs $400 to renounce US citizenship… who is going to pay that? Fees for everything! It’s like if MasterCard were running the State Department… OH SHI-)
Half a Day. Finding out that your blog that’s read by at least 15-20 people got hacked and is redirecting people to malware pages. Bad times… also how I felt after seeing the last few episodes of Kare Kano.
One Day. Pink slips are being handed out at your company, but you still have a job. Or, in anime terms, finding out that your school has been overrun with zombies, and you just had to kill your best friend because he got zombiefied. Good news is that it’s not you. Bad news is that it could have been you. (Great alternate universe for HSotD… what would happen if Hiroshi survived and Takeshi died? Mmmm…)
One Week Exact. Everyone of my readers’ faces (and me) when we realized that, yes, Endless Eight has continued for another week. And, thanks, Kyoto for putting us through the full 12 step program in those eight weeks… I’m sure we all went through anger (“EFF YOU KYOTO!!!”), sadness (“You had it all, now it blew it all.”), denial (“Next week, it’ll be different!”), confusion (“Why, Kyoto, why?!”), aloofness (“I don’t like Haruhi that much. No, really.”), pain (“KHAAAAAAAN!”), and acceptance (“I’ll download it anyway, just to see Mikuru’s new swimsuit.”)
Ten Days. Finding out that someone wiped out your Pokemon game save. The one with the level 100 Psyduck. Or finding out that someone high up betrayed your elite military counterterrorism unit featuring the anime universe’s most bad-ass cyborg lesbian to save their own ass. I hate those guys.
Two Days to Two Weeks. Having someone you like say to you, “I just want to be friends.” Think poor Junichi after Haruka’s first and second rejections. And, literally, this was his time frame in Amagami. Also possible hypothetical case if Mugi tries to go further with Ritsu, and Ritsu shoots her down because Ritsu is still waiting for Mio to come around.
Two Weeks Solid. Not getting that said to you, and you realize at the most sinister time. Has to be Kyou and Ryou after seeing Nagisa get beaned by a tennis ball. One of the times in the show that I didn’t like Tomoya and felt really bad for Kyou and Ryou. Also, when Simon saw Kamina and Yoko kissing… but his didn’t last two weeks as he saw what happened to Kamina the next day.
Faster Than A Knife Wound Heals. E tu Brute Lite. Shichika finding out that he has to duel Nanami. He probably knew this was coming somewhere in his heart, hence the “lite” tag.
Slower Than A Knife Wound Heals. E tu Brute. Simon getting backstabbed by Rossiu. Ouch. As painful as LeBron stabbing the city of Cleveland in the back. (Love @sportsguy33’s costume idea… get a Cleveland James jersey, should be ridiculous cheap right now, put some fake blood on it and tape a knife handle on the back. If you’re even a semi-cute girl in the Cleveland area and do this, you’ll have your choice of the men you attract with this outfit.) (Tied: first fifteen minutes of Old School.)
(Special Code Geass sidebar that’s not really a sidebar since my blog format doesn’t support a sidebar… Lulu after realizing Suzaku played for the other team? A solid year. Shirley after finding out about Lulu’s geass? Ten hours. Suzaku after seeing Yuffie get gunned down? Six months. Nina after seeing Yuffie get gunned own? Forever. Lulu after seeing Shirley dead? Four minutes. Lulu after seeing Kallen walk away from him? Three minutes. Nunnally after seeing “Zero” penetrate Lord Lelouch? A lifetime. OH GEASS NO!!!)
Yep, That’s My Knife. Jim Raynor. ’nuff said.
One Shortened Lifespan. Everyone who has received the services of one Dr. Fran.
Two Reboots. Yukki’s face after he realized that he could never make Yuno happy. Because, you know, Yuno is already overflowing with joy… this one is extra special since it spans multiple Yukkis.
Never. Putting up a “Mission Accomplished” banner before, well, accomplishing anything. Maybe Ribbons Armark and Gilbert Durandal in the last episode of 00 and Destiny respectively. You don’t recover from this. You either go down as the worst modern American president or die in a fiery explosion. No in-between.
You forgot one: I Was Born With This Face. Definition is left as an exercise for the reader.
I had a SPM just recently playing SCII, missing the “Army of Darkness” achievement by one structure. OTL
>>Two Seconds. Seeing that I got an e-mail… but it’s from Haesslich and features a trap.
I don’t want to know what you were doing after the fourth second. But, on the upside, I’m not the one who broke you. It was all Mizuho, Jun Watarase, and then maybe Mako-chan with a hit of Mariya to put you over due to the possibility of the twin.
How about incremental stomach punch faces? Like Satou in Welcome to the NHK. He hasn’t recovered yet from last chapter’s punch when he receives another… and another… this holds specially true at the end of each volume (yeah, talking about the manga here, not the abortion made by lolGonzo). Looking at his face in the first volume and then in the, say, fourth or fifth… it almost goes from stomach punch face to bleeding stomach ulcer facial distortion. Priceless.
@-rh-
Oh wow, I didn’t even realise that Gonzo made NHK. NHK goes up a couple rankings just for that.
I’ve read both anime and manga (still haven’t read the novel…) but I don’t think the anime was all that bad.
That’s a great picture. However no matter how doomed they may seem Mugi can just bury it under a Gil Toss.
Speaking of Code Geass, great TWGOK/Code Geass OP crossover if you haven’t seen it already: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOef4MnubPQ
Wait is this actually an anime? Which one?
^I would like to know too.
This post is really funny,it took me 6 years to recover from the last episodes of Kare Kano I still get shocked and do a wtf face each time I see icebergs on tv now.
I also experienced the pokemon save erasing.Ouch.
Btw Jason , you saw the psp remake of Let us Cling Together?
^ Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
…mass carriers? o_O
considering you survived long enough to mass that comp, you probably would have won crash not-withstanding. well, at least someone out there isn’t just going billion-gate.
Oh yeah, now that you say it.Didn’t thought about it.
how do you post with an icon?
Speaking of GITS:SAC, how long before Kyoto gets their hands on that franchise? Or would they have to do a genderswapped version of it to meet the bishoujo quota? “Moe moe Kyuuuun~” – Meido Batou-chan (sorry, nekomimi is special service in episode 6 only).
Sign up with Gravatar (http://en.gravatar.com/) if you want an icon.
CBongo: Given that it’s a Production IG ‘thing’… and KyoAni seems interested only in K-ON and Haruhi these days, they won’t. Besides that, if they actually do this, there will be a lot of KyoAni AND GITS fans who will be happy to post your final minutes on YouTube. ;)
Hiro Shimono as Keima, and Manglobe at the helm for TWGOK? Uuugh, stomach punch indeed.
Jun Fukuyama would have been perfect; but if you can only afford C list voice actors at least get a deep and self-assured voice for Keima. I wonder which duration of stomach punch will be appropriate for me after watching the first episode…