Now now, Miku.. I say another one, but really, I missed one I wasn’t able to watch to begin with anyway. Your people didn’t want others to record the show. And there was no livestream. Stop looking like a copyrighted series that I’m currently watching.

Aside from acting like a faggot just now, there’s another Hatsune Miku concert going on. HATSUNE MIKU LIVE PARTY from Singapore happens this Friday at 19:00, for us west coasters in the US that ends up as 3am. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure if it’s going to be any different. Perhaps the setlist will have a few new songs. It’s interesting to note that I have another Vocaloid related post right behind this one, highlighting the composer NantokaP (kiichi). Maybe I’ll have my wish granted. This I’m sure won’t happen because I’ve checked the view counts on nicovideo and they’re paltry compared to the songs that make the live concert setlists.

So is there a reason to watch this one? It’s already cheaper than the previous livestream. I remember paying around $18 USD last time, and now it’s $11. The cost of a lunch from where ever. I think I can skip food to watch a lithe Miku dance in front of me with the support of a damn good live band. If it’s the same guys as seen from the AX2011 and the original 39s-Giving Day showing, then you can bet your ass (or other equally valuable asset) I’m watching it.

Besides, I already laid down the 11 quid to watch the livestream. Can’t go back now.

***

I’ll also take this time to reference the image above. It’s a Hatsune Miku drawn in the style that has been used in Denpa Onna to Seishuun Otoko and more recently Boku ha Tomodachi ga Sukunai. If you’ve crawled danbooru for a while and other anime related imageboards, you’ll probably know the artist Buriki. I first took note of the artist when I found his Touhou fanart — most notably the one where Nitori and Cirno do a hit-and-run skirt flip on Sakuya. (Since when is a skirt flip not hit-and-run? If you’re not running away, it’s just revealing girls’ panties. Oh, technicalities.) It’s been thanks to the adaptations of his art that there’s a noticeable difference in character art.

Lips. They’re drawing lips on the characters. Normally they’re drawn only when there’s a need to draw attention to the lips, or it’s a close-up. Even then, a lot of anime simply don’t draw the lips. Sometimes a character is lucky enough for it to be a focal point of their design (e.g. Mamimi from FLCL). It seems a little silly to give some praise for such a minor detail. However small it is, people took note to realize these character designs looked significantly different from the modern crop of anime. So to that, I salute the original artist and character designers for both series.

Sometimes I can’t tell if my standards are falling, or it’s just me getting hooked on an art gimmick. Maybe it’s both.

UPDATE: I misreported the time as 3pm PST, when it’s actually 3am for those in PST. The concert starts at 19:00 this Friday (11/11) in Singapore. It has been corrected in the post.

-maserbeam

Oh.. no.

I was not able to handle this episode. I thought I’d be able to handle Engrish, but this is genuine Japanese English. The effort put into grabbing english speaking actors went full throttle and beat up my nutbladder beyond recognition. Of course most of this is hyperbole, but I can’t ignore the Japanese-ness of it. There’s still that hint of it, but it’s clearly spoken in a way that a Japanese person would understand. It’s interesting to listen to the kind of inflections that is acceptable for public Japanese TV, because a very low percentage of Japan would be able to decipher the subtleties that are in Californian english, or…

Bah. Who am I kidding? The engrish in this episode was awesome. I was laughing and facepalming the entire segment. Go watch it now. I’ll even forgive you for not meandering around my website. Just watch it! Squid Girl/Shinryaku! Ika Musume season two. No excuse to not know what I’m talking about anymore.

-maserbeam

Yeah. I have that problem of reading Mirai Nikki as Yume Nikki instead. Remember that article on this site (if you’ve actually been a long time reader, thanks.) that was about Yume Nikki? That was thanks to kodakami hanging with me at my house; we stayed awake at 4am theorycrafting about Madotsuki’s journey through that twisted dream world. But no, I won’t turn this entry into something about that.

It’s been a long time coming, but it’s now here. And boy am I ready for the rest of Mirai Nikki. As said in a previous post, Mirai Nikki is something I’ve been waiting for. I had read the manga a long time ago, and assumed it was going to be turned into an anime. The format just seemed prime for an adaptation, and look what I get several years later. In fact, I’ve never noticed it until recently that the manga I really end up liking get adapted. Is this a hindsight type of reaction? Maybe. But it further cements the idea that I at least certainly prefer animation.

Click me if you can read walls of text that don’t exactly always fully pertain to the anime at hand.

-maserbeam

“Prehensile hair activate!”

Oh yes, how I have longed for the lovely invasion squid. My body is ready!

Aside from my silly over-excited self enjoying the first episode of the season season, it was a pleasure to listen to the voices again. I’m not so sure if I followed another series with Hisako Kanemoto as a main lately. The last I remembered of her is her character Tomonori in Is This a Zombie?/Kore wa Zombie desu ka?. It’s also good to be listening to Rie Tanaka’s voice. I can never get enough of that sultry voice. Oh right, Ayumi is there, too. (lol)

The teaser preview for the 2nd episode looks like it’s already going to show off it’s animation prowess with another sports segment. Baseball got it’s chance in the first season, and now we’ve got soccer. That kick shown in the preview alone kind of surprised me; the kid had good form and the animation itself felt great despite it only being 8 frames. As far as I can tell, none of them felt like in-betweens. I’m such a sucker for small details like that. Some people would agree with me that a well done action animation with a believable center of gravity just cements the desire to watch it more. It happened to me with Ookiku Furikabutte — I don’t normally watch sport anime, but that was an exception. Nary a failed nor awkward bat swing or pitch.

As bad as it might seem, I don’t care if anime — in general — gets sequel-itis. It’s such a prominent complaint for any series that gathers a significant following while still having plenty of material to work off… and then just ends. Gotta have them sequels. I’ll take this time to mention that I’m super excited to see the new Last Exile this coming season.

***

Concerning details about the site here, I’m feeling rather sad that I haven’t mustered up the forces required to have another podcast. I don’t even know if people listen to it. No one’s said anything about it. Then again, no one’s sent me angry emails about it either. For those who’ve actually been to this site, I’m curious as to what anime you watch. If you’d rather lurk around and not respond, that’s fine too. A silent listener is fine too.

I’ll use this space to redirect you to Chartfag and Randomc. Plenty of info there on the upcoming season. The three anime I’d most likely be posting about, it’s these three: Last Exile, Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, and Mirai Nikki. I’ve got plenty of reasons to be so decided in following these. It’ll be interesting to find out whether or not it was smart dooming myself to finish these whether I like it or not. Randomc.net has decided to do episodic entries on those exact three as well. I don’t feel like competing with such a juggernaut of the anime blogosphere, so I’ll have to try and say different things for the sake of difference, unfortunately.

I nearly broke my guitar in excitement when I learned Last Exile was getting a sequel. True story.

-maserbeam

Oh Haruka, why are you next to jelly?

I did not like episode 9 of Idolmaster. It focused on the twins Ami & Mami. I thought I was fine with having such characters around. But when the Merry-go-round of Character Focused Episodes rotates far enough, there’s a high chance of experiencing a character focused episode on the character(s) you’ll learn to hate even more. Is it just me? I honestly found myself skipping throughout most of the episode. Couldn’t bear to watch such a pointless episode. Didn’t even feel like a generic filler episode, that usually is supposed to have some kind of vague point, or some character development in it. What did I learn about Ami & Mami in this episode?

They’re fucking annoying.

I don’t think I’ve ever come to the point of blogging an episode because it really got on my nerves (in a bad way), but this really did it. It was the combination of their voices, and the meaningless plot of “Let’s act detective-like because of nothing” pushed right up in my grill that really got to me. If I’m lucky, this will be the highest concentration of (M)Ami I’ll ever see in any episode.

Ugh. Now that I’m done watching and talking about this horrid episode, I’m off to kick jellies in Vindictus for a silly +2 boost to willpower.

-maserbeam