(It’s so cute!)

Hello everyone, I’m The Xenomorph, your new contributer, I’m your typical everyday xenomorph otaku that likes his anime with a great premise, and not some series made for the sake of fan service, a.k.a no moe blobs for the sake of moe blobs (I eat them). I’m also a strong advocate for the preservation of the male character in the modern anime (tired of these all female driven casts, sometimes you need a man’s touch). My video games are all about the story, if it isnt at least twenty hours, it better be as fun as hell (Monster Hunter) or a masterpiece. But in all honesty if you give me something different I’ll watch it and I’ll give a cool collected response. I may be called The Xenomorph but that doesn’t mean I’ll bite your head off (unless your Mami).

Now you may be wondering why I, your everyday xenomorph drone, would want to write about anime and video games?  Well I say good question! To be honest its my biggest hobby, outside of trading cards, and I think that after all the anime I have watched I can make some valid points about the story, motifs, characters, etc. I think my greatest attribute is that I started my anime life in the 90′s and have experienced the transition to what anime is today and I think I can give great insight on the pros and cons in what this new generation has become and where it is heading. In all reality that’s really what I want to do with my articles: to compare the old generation to the new; I want to get my beliefs out there and see who agrees with me. Same goes for video games, the days of the rpg of my childhood and this new generation that is so fps and competitive gameplay focused. Bottom line I got some opinions and I’d love to share them.

Hmmm….what you want to know why I call myself Xenomorph? Well I’ll tell you, back in the day of my childhood I was tramatized and at the same time facisnated by these adorable majestic creatures; as a result I have been a fan of the dark, the mysterious, the creepy and above all the badass. I want to share these concepts with my reader. Xenomorphs fascinate and scare me, I want my readers to know my fear…to know my intrigue.

My first post is coming soon……..

-The Xenomorph

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

niconico link: sm14639636

Before you’ve reached even this far down this post, I assume you’ve listened, or are reading this while listening to the above music. I hope you’ve reached the same conclusion as me: “Sure sounds a lot like Radiohead.” Even if you don’t make the same connection, it’s not the usual upbeat Vocaloid music.

So is it really that different from any similar Vocaloid music? It’s a sound I hear all the time in the rock space of music: shoegazing and what not. But I hardly ever get to hear it in the Vocaloid community. It’s detached from the usual cheery stuff. All of the Vocaloid music I had been listening to are generally of the lighter-hearted and cheery sounding music. It’s meant to energize — even if the lyrics are to be interpreted as scary or anything other than optimistic. More importantly to me, the song I’m linking to is a Vocaloid being used for a focused sound: sinister and moody. The effectiveness of a voice among it’s own kind of instruments — synthesized — is incredibly powerful. The sounds of synthesizers amplify Miku’s ability to reach eerie tones, something I normally thought was reserved for the analog and living.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Vocaloid stuff. I’ve been around the stuff for a while, but it wasn’t until the last month or two that I decided to invest time into looking for Vocaloid music.  I gravitate towards the stuff that’s not very catchy nor flashy. I’ve found that I really like the music that uses the Vocaloid music banks — which we all recognize as characters (e.g. Miku, Luka, Rin, Len, Kaito) — as another instrument.

Yes, the previous statement sounds obvious, but there’s a fairly distinct and detectable difference between Vocaloid composers. On one hand, there are those who prefer writing lyric centric songs and have the kind of melody and backing that’s intended for the voice to stand out. In most cases, this is what people do. It is an easier way to write music for Vocaloid, and in no way do I dislike it. There’s plenty of songs that I’ve heard that are very good that take this route. Songs like Ura-Omote Lovers by wowoka and World Is Mine by Ryo are driven by the voice and lyrics, which should already be emphasized by the mix.

Then there’s the ones that feel like they’re written with instruments before Vocaloid is taken into account. To some, the order of things is writing the instrumentation first, then implement the voice, and later, back and forth tweaking to compliment the ranges and mood within the song. Often these songs have to be imaginative about structure and implement flourishes within the song to keep it interesting. Sometimes you can hear the vocals being mixed into the music at low volume, as if to the hide the lyrics. The melody might not be as catchy, but it fits right in with the rest of the instruments — never feeling like it’s stepping over heads just to be heard, nor is it way in the back to fly under the radar. Kiichi, a.k.a. NantokaP, is the kind that does this. Should be no surprise since he’s done BGM for games such as Corpse Party. Admittedly, while I’ve been addicted to his music, I’m not sure it would fit in a Hatsune Miku live concert. Wouldn’t complain if it showed up.

Keep an eye out for kiichi’s music. The caliber of his compositions are nothing to sneeze at, unless you’re near allergens and can’t help it. Speaking of which, kiichi wrote Fluticasone, a great song featuring Luka. Straight from wikipedia, fluticasone is a synthetic glutocorticoid that acts as an anti-inflammatory. The more common variant is fluticasone propionate, which is used to treat asthma and hay fever.

.. What a derail.

I suggest using this link to get an mp3. Just in case you folks want to download it.

-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