Monday, July 17, 2006

   We were lovers....
So, I just finished watching the first episode of Gankutsuou.

I love it just after the first episode. Which is unusual for me, It takes me at least 3 or 4 episodes before I love or hate an anime. (Unless you’re Eureka 7, then you’re just too horrible to watch.)

The art style immediately sucked me into it. It’s hard to describe it really; it’s like some sort of painting collage mish-mash optical illusion thing. If you survived the opening of Elfen Lied (x.x too much nudity) it has a similar effect as that, but better… Anyhow. Here, enjoy random screen bits. For the best effect, you need to see it moving. It’s hypnotic.

The OP/ED themes are awesome. As soon as I’m done posting this up onto you, my Dear Otaku Blog, I’m going to gendou to see if they offer a download of it. In series-wise, I can’t really recall much BGM that was especially noteworthy. That’s okay, almost all anime BGM is…forgettable. (However the biggest exceptions in the world, for me, are Escaflowne and FLCL.)

Granted, I just got a tiny peak into the plot. From the art style and the conversations between the Count and Albert, this is going to be a cerebral and surreal ride, which I am looking forward to immensely.

This really isn’t a review, just some of my impressions of this particular title. Right now, I can’t urge you to buy this title straight away, but rather download a fansub or go rent it.

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Saturday, July 15, 2006

   HAHA! I saw it this coming a mile away!


For those of us who have an ounce of common sense and skinny wallets, we could see the UMD format for movies was an utter failure. Sony just can’t win at formats. I dub thee, Beta-Max Curse! They officially stopped making movies for UMD

Basically UMD was a kooky looking disc that Sony developed to play games, movies, music and all that other stuff. For the most part the games didn’t have any problems selling on the UMD format (d’uh) but movies sold poorly.

Not considering any of the limitations you have with the UMD technology…it was doomed to fail. Take this scenario.

You’re in a store. You want to pick-up a movie you want that was just released. Well, as a PSP owner, you have two options. A DVD or UMD. If you get the UMD, you can watch the movie pretty much anywhere so long as you have your PSP, but man, that’s one tiny screen! What about a DVD? You can watch it at home, on your computer, anywhere so long there is a monitor and a compatible player.

So your options are a movie you can only watch on your PSP or a movie you can watch on a more than one system?

But wait there’s more! Because of the size limitations of the UMD disk…you only get the movie! No spiffy bonus features or alternate tracks, where as your DVD comes with all kinds of spiffy stuff…most of the time…

It seemed obvious to me that was a STUPID idea. Whatever. So now Sony is planning on releasing “Media Packs” or whatever…basically some kind of stick medium…only compatible with their Sony brand cameras, video cams and of course the PSP. Sony, Sony, Sony. WHY DON’T YOU EVER LEARN?

Excuse me while I laugh at their next ridiculous venture..

For the life of me though, I don’t understand the appeal for portable movies. Personally, I’d only want a portable movie for long trips trips/vacations. But, if you have the dough you can mount monitors in your vehicle and do the setup for a DVD player or chunk down the cash for a portable player… even that doesn’t seem worth it to me. For daily commutes, any hardware like a PSP or a portable DVD player seems to be too expensive for me to tote to work/school/etc. Also, the length of movies….a normal Hollywood film is 1 and half to 2 hours long. I like to watch a movie in one sitting… not 20 minutes there or half an hour there… Of course there’s always television series or anime series on DVD…but again…I’m afraid of loosing them or having them stolen. In car traveling, you always run the risk of heat damage to your disks as well. I’d much rather leave my gems, safe and sound at home.

Why not just turn to books, music and games instead?

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Friday, July 14, 2006

   KiSS of the Week- 3

This week is….

‘Princess Sailor Saturn’ by Tyler “Sakura Fairy”

Background/Style: ‘tis a small departure from her previous styles, but a logical outgrowth really. This doll is an example of the tiny/fairy/elf doll fad…It’s a bit annoying sometimes but it didn’t hamper the enjoyment of the doll for me. She did an excellent job with this doll, pulling outfits from the manga art books and of course the obligatory senshi fukus. What’s kind of cool is that she includes her own fan-fic based one and one from Sera Myu. A lot of the outfits are heavily influenced by the elegant gothic lolita fashion, a few seem a bit more “rocker” infused and there’s another one outfit that is bit more on the classic elegant gothic aristocrat. It’s also a ‘monochromatic’ wardrobe…not in the true sense of the word by rather my own definition of a color theme. All of the dolls clothes are purple, black or white.

Features: Several different backgrounds for the doll to choose from. 2 different eye styles, normal hotaru and Mistress Nine. 4 different hair styles normal and Mistress Nine, each in purple and black. No snap to, normal a lack of snap to makes playing with a doll very frustrating for me. But since this is such a small bodied doll it’s not issue. This allows for some of the accessories and such to be placed however you like them. She has a good moderately sized wardrobe, but limited layering options. The good thing about the smaller dolls is that their wardrobes are better organized.

Age Rating: PG-13…It’s not her clothes or anything but another anatomically correct, despite being rather small, it stills rather obvious. Not a doll for the kiddies. Just be careful when you play with it. I don’t know why artists feel the need to do this. Sometimes I feel like a weirdo when a PIXEL doll has detailed nudity on it. However, it’s a well drawn doll with some cool clothes, so I refuse to delete it.

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Thursday, July 13, 2006

   Kare Kano Review
His and Her Circumstances or Kare Kano (because the English and Japanese title is fecking long.)
Length: 26 Episodes
Genre: High School comedy/romance with some drama
Recommended Audience: Anyone who loves a character-driven show
Content: No foul language or any gory violence but it touches on some darker personality issues and child abuse. There is a love scene involved but it’s tastefully handled and much tamer than you see in a soap opera
Rating: 7/10

Plot: Kare Kano really has no plot. It’s a character driven story and it does it quite well. There are some threadbare parts in the story-line but I’ll get to that later.

The story is really quite simply and fairly well executed. It’s about going through high school, putting on our own charade, our struggles to find out who we really are while trying to balance that out between social and academic obligations. Our main and some not so main characters are truly fresh and seem like real individuals. Because Kare Kano is a 20+ volume manga being turned into a 26 part TV series, other characters do suffer. Miyazawa and Arima, our cannon couple gets the most attention to them, so they seem more true to life. Other than Tonami and Sakura, the others come off as caricatures or unusually flat. Shibahime, when she first appeared seemed like she would be a large player but ended up becoming little more than beast-like comic relief character. However, the scenes that she is in ARE amusing so I do forgive them. However, I should be a little lenient with this series; it’s hard turning a long shojo manga series into a more compressed anime. So this should be considering a teaser of what’s in store for the manga. Thankfully, it’s handled better than Angel Sanctuary or Descendents of Darkness, two other anime teasers for their manga counterparts.

GAINAX, creators of Evagelion, FLCL, is a studio noted for putting some gratuitous fan service into series. (GAINAX bounce anyone?) I was quite surprised to see they made a shojo anime with no undergarment flashes or absurd character designs bordering on the moe. At the same time, Kare Kano lacking those things probably made the studio rather bored, which becomes obvious around episode 19 and on.

They chose a somewhat odd place for an ending… Granted stopping at the budding of Tonami and Sakura’s relationship (as the narrator puts it, the beginning of a new His and Her circumstance) is rather good…however it was in the middle of the cultural festival and since a lot of the last few episodes dealt with Miyazawa and company’s struggles in getting their play off the ground, logically speaking, we should’ve seen said play.

On a final note for being a high school series, Kare Kano avoids going into the soap opera melodrama and angst. [8/10]

Animation: It’s pretty obvious that GAINAX had a low budget to begin with. We probably would’ve had high quality shots, albeit less character develops, if they had decided to shorten they episode length. But maybe it’s like American television and they had to fulfill their required 26 episodes. For the most part, they make good use of the budget, 70% of the series is pretty standard for a television series, maybe slightly below standard. It’s hard for me to judge correctly because I watched the entire series on VHS primitive-fan sub rips (Don’t worry; I plan on buying the series!) They employ some rather clever techniques to get the most out of their animation budget. Episode 19 is where I think the studio got bored… as it’s a rather experimental job…but I thought it was amusing. Episode 25 looks rather cheap: it takes the 1970’s American cartoon route by not bothering to paint in iris for the characters. 26 is rather annoying as being the final episode they should’ve animated it…Instead it’s mostly voice overs going through some stills. I’d be surprised if they used over 300 cels for that one. Another obvious short cut is abundance of recap episodes. There’s two in a row around 14 and a lot of the later episodes (almost all of them in general) take 2-5 minutes recapping the story to this point… and there’s a few episodes where only ½ of it is an actual episode, leaving the rest of it to recapping.

It may be harder to introduce newer anime fans or those who are spoiled by the digital age and their candy colors. However, GAINAX’s uses of live action shots here is an obvious influence to their later crazy cool ending sequence for FLCL. Kare Kano does sport some cool backgrounds and pan shots. [3/10]

Voice Acting: I can only speak for the Japanese, but the entire cast was suburb! Really, may be not perfect, I’d probably recast Rika and Miyazawa’s sisters…They all did a wonderful job with it; I honestly can’t find a thing to complain about. Miyazawa’s seiyuu, whoever she may be (don’t really follow seiyuu or VA’s…) was a GEM. She was fantastic; she perfectly captured her character’s rather manic moods. <3 [9/10]

Kare Kano may not be a perfect series, but its close. It’s truly enjoyable and touching romp through high school that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It avoids becoming angsty or soap operatic. All the characters are genuine and likeable. The voice acting is SUPREB. The story and some character develop is lacking in some place but there’s nothing too aggravating. The only thing that keeps Kare Kano from becoming a true anime classic is its animation. It’s passable at it’s best and shoddy at it’s worst. Had they been able to reduce the amount episodes, I think GAINAX could’ve done a better job. But overall, they did pretty good considering this is a VERY shojo and reflective series

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Tuesday, July 11, 2006

   Professional Bloggers are Professional Duds; Hell's Kitchen part 5
Blah.

So whatever, I like to look on the blogs that AIM today features. The only one worth reading is Cienmatical, which off course talks about movies. Der. The only other two I looked at were the games one, Joystiq and the TV one, TV squad. They’re both fairly crappy.

Joystiq – eh. The writers have kinda a snarky attitude that comes off like they’re still in junior high for being “professional” blog writers. (Where as someone like myself, who blogs personal stuff can be as snarky as she likes) The “community” there is also fairly…annoying.

TV squad– I only read two posts…One was for Hell’s Kitchen. I write better posts for Hell’s Kitchen… They should hire me instead. Basically almost the entire thing was a recap of the episode…written poorly in a choppy fragmented style. Hey, if I’m critiquing your writing, something’s wrong here. And the last paragraph criticized the entire cast as unfit to run a restaurant? Okay… it’s only the fifth episode here… >> The only one truly unfit to run a restaurant is Sara…and possibly Maribel. It’s only the 5th show…remember, it’s a boot camp…from Hell. And the show is edited to make them look bad…the worse they perform the more Ramsey yells and that’s what you want to watch… Basically the writer and the commenters sounded like they never watched a NETWORK reality show. The other post was just some sort of feature column that basically was a synopsis from some old Angel episode… it was retold so boringly I couldn’t finish it. The writers there need coffee…and the community is full of idiots.

Now for my “better than professional quality” Hell’s Kitchen post!

I really do hate Sara. Her individualistic attitude is a problem. Right now you’re still teams you dolt! You can take your whole me-first attitude when you actually reach the semi-finals. For now, your main concern needs to be ‘How can I manage my team better? Where are our weak points? How can we finish a service?’ I don’t know what station she was on last night, but hey, she could’ve helped Rachel. I felt bad for Rachel… I think she is good cook, but she’s run into some tough spots… I think being on team with that moron Sara has just exhausted her mentally. I think if Sara wasn’t there she’d have a better time. On the Red team. I personally find no one likeable… Sara annoys, Maribel is whiney and homesick…and Virginia…is…a priss pot. To put it nicely.

Was a little disappointed in Heather this week… I think was trying to overcompensate when she took over Garret’s station. A better thing to do would be to ask Garret if he needed help… Or TELL him you’d get started on a ticket that he hasn’t prepped yet. Keith’s reaction? I understand it. He’s thinking. Yeah yeah yeah, Chef. Yell at me so I can get back into the kitchen and COOK. Haha. Silly man. He needs to control his facial expressions otherwise he’ll just get yelled at him more.

No surprise that the red team lost this time… I think if Heather can keep herself from becoming flustered the blue team can cook fine… but we’ll see… next week is a menu-off!

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Tuesday, July 4, 2006

   Bleh.
I’m pretty foolish. I get upset over some strange stuff. It prolly seems dumb to most of you. It’s not dumb to me, because I’m weird.

I don’t have very man friends. I have one friend that I can trust, she and I are “in the same boat” on many things. I don’t trust people. 99.999999% of them are simply aren’t worth it. So, I’ve simply enjoyed the company of animals. Animals don’t consciously hurt you….Notice how I said consciously. Even animals can unintentially hurt you….if you’re overly sensitive like me that is.

My neighbors have been letting Gouda inside their house. No wonder I haven’t seen in him a couple days. Yeah. I got upset. Why? I don’t know. I was under the strange impression that the cat enjoyed being around me. Apparently he doesn’t. I’m also upset with my neighbors a little bit. They’re nice people, I really do like them. I only think the reason they let Gouda in is because of their granddaught, Hailey. Okay, fine. I don’t care if Haliey plays with him too…but… Gouda is a part of our family. I love him too, you know! I don’t I deserve to be able to spend some time with my own cat! He’s not yours! You don’t have to let him into your house.

I feel like I have to compete for my own cats’ attention. FINE. Two can play that game. I’ll start leaving cat food on the porch too then. I used to feed them inside as means to encourage them to come back inside… but since Mr. Will and Mrs. Cathy leave cat food on their porch for strays. I’ll leave food on the porch too. Well…atleast I have Sugar and Speedy. Sug, she tolerates little kids, their too noisy and stuff for her. And Speedy? He’s too dopey to have favorites. He loves everyone equally.

I know. It’s dumb to have my feelings hurt over my own cat’s affections. Most cats don’t have a sense of loyalty. They’re independent, they go were they feel like it. Tch. They’re time will come too. Gouda won’t want to play around with Haliey all the time. He’ll do something stupid over there and get himself kicked out.

Maybe it’s just PMS why I’m so sensitive right now. I guess at another time, I would’ve thought it funny. I’m babbling. I wanted to vent. Leave it to be to get depressed over a cat. Most of you wouldn’t understand anyhow. For as long as I can remember… I’ve had more animal friends than human… So how should I feel when my friend abandons me?

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Saturday, July 1, 2006

   Weekly KiSS part 2!

This time it's Sora by Punky


Background/Style: Punky is a well known, and a great KiSS doll artist. Her earlier dolls, while not great by today's standards, were better than most artists starting off. From her creation "lydia" on, she was golden. This doll, Sora is a bit of a deviation from her previous dolls. Punky's earlier dolls had a more typical anime look...large candy colored eyes and bright hair. I see a korean influence in Sora as well, the design seems similar to korean manga as well as Korean made BJDs. The clothes in this doll, seem aslo to be influenced by japanese EGL, however Sora still contains alot of punk-ish clothes. What I like about this one is that manges to be "frilly" but not overly "girly" so I don't feel like a dork playing with it.

Features:She has a HUGE wardrobe. 12 different hairstyles, of those only 2 don't have alternative color choices... a few of them have up to 5 or 6 color combos. Lip color changes, 8 choices. No ultra fancy Fkiss effects but the variety in hairstyles and clothes is plenty! GREAT layering capacity. The outfit that I made? that skirt is actually 3 different ones. Tons of shoes/belts/stockings. It's hard to get bored with this doll.

Age Rating: PG-13 She's anatomically correct. On some of the sets she isn't wearing a bra... So if you don't want to see I highly suggest dragging one over to her and let it snap-to before you start to play. No sexual content.

[p.s Can you tell I like skulls alot?]


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Thursday, June 22, 2006

   KiSS of the Week!
Something new I want to do. Every week I'll post my favorite Kisekae for the week. This week it's...

Princess Lily from the Movie Legend

By Zoe

Sorry the picture is so big, but atleast you can see her entire wardrobe. ^^

A decent doll, I love it. It's based off the character of the same name from the movie Legend. (Which if you've never seen, it's an awesome movie)

She doesn't have a huge warbdrobe. The long flowing skirts and dresses limit it also because you can't see the stocking/shoes. However, the cel layering on this doll is pretty good so you can actuall layer the clothes on the doll to get some neat looks. She also has a lot of different hair styles, lipstick colors, two make-up options and 3 wing options. And it has a large body! I prefer the bigger dolls than the tiny dolls...though the tiny dolls tend to have alot of clothes...

It's also nice to see how the artist has improved on her Kisekae. :3 I look forward to see what she'll make in the future.
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Wednesday, June 21, 2006

   KiSS Dolls.
Does anyone remember those? Kiseke or KiSS dolls. They were so much fun. For those of you who never heard of them...

A KiSS doll was essentially an electronic paper doll. I know, don't say it, it sounds lame, ne? They are actually pretty cool, because they weren't your typical paper doll.

They were often anime characters and you could dress them up.... Okay, that just sounds creepy. And there were some creepy dolls, some folks felt the need to create hentai ones...*twitch* even some of the "normal" ones were kinda creepy... They're dolls, some artists felt the need to make the them anatomically correct. I prefer the barbie doll form of nudity. The good thing is that alot of the artists made the undergarments "stick" basically you had to purposefully click on the doll a thousand times (Literally)to remove the undergarments. Those who did have changeable undergarments, thankfully, often they let you "layer" them on, so you can change the color of a bra and remove the old one...

Not all the dolls where actual animecharacters , in fact few were. Most were drawn in the anime style... the good kind, not the kind you see in "How to Draw" books that look too ridgid. [Big eyes and purple hair is not anime!] Alot of the clothes were goth/rocker/raver/club wear/japanese street faishon.

The neat thing is that alot of the dolls had back stories...

I know, I know... That sounds fun for a whole 10 minutes. The cool thing is with later dolls, they got really creative in the programming... There were all kinda of little "secrets" You could change their hair, make-up...mirrors... secret wardrobes, backgrounds... they just oomped up the interactivity of the dolls and some "talked" depending on what you would click on.

They were just a lot of fun. I know. It sounds weird.

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Tuesday, June 20, 2006

   Large rambling post of doom!
Haha. Death Note the movie beating out the Da Vinci Code in the box office? AWESOME. I want to see it. Death Note that is... I actually read the Da Vinci Code... Decent book...do I want to see the movie? Not really.. I simply see it as a piece of commericalism garbage...I can't believe They also made video games based on it... C'mon. Once you know that Mary Madaglene is the "Chalice" and she and Jesus had children...doesn't it make the game kinda moot? And all the people who make such a stink over the religious implications of the book/movie...Lighten up... IT'S FICITION. It's kinda like a fun "what if" question. Lighten up... sheesh. If someone's faith is rocked by a simple ficitional story...Methink it wasn't strong in the first place...
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HELL'S KITCHEN

Down to 3 men and 5 women? Hm. Awesome. I'd rather see Tom go, rather than having Giacamo leave. Tom is a cranky, full of crap, sexist jerk. Giacamo is rather a mop-headed moron who can't light a stove.

I don't know if having more people is good for the women though...I think in the next dinner service they'll lose... They still have alot of clumsy careless folks in the kitchen... While the men may only have 3... They might be able to have more cohenison... they'll be more stressed, but they might be better organized...however...I suspect Tom might weight them down...

Heather needs to relax a little more in the kitchen too... I think she's a little too ingraned in the "sous chef" role.
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Kaleido Star

...A deceptively good anime...atleast the OVA is.

I've seen DVD's for it at Suncoast...Dunno why but the cover art looked kinda doinky....and it looked like it was going to be some sort of moe-ish anime...

...I was wrong. To say the least I was intrigued...especially by Layla's character growth in the OVA. Sora, our cannon focus looks like she could be likeable. She looks a bit stereotypical...very much an embodiment of the Japanese culutral ideals of cooperation and teamwork... I manged to find a fansub of the first episode on LimeWire and a rather nifty AMV.

The AMV has some fantastic transitions and shows some of the performances in the show... Pretty good animation... I'm intrigued... I definately want to see more of this series... It looks better than I expected.
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For some reason... I really want to play with my beyblades and refine some of my builds.... >>
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