Moving and Watching

Another day of moving. Or should I say renovating? Either way, a bit of heavy lifting and a lot of time spent doing only physical work. At least I brought some manga to read this time around.

Also, watched a certain movie involving super soldiers and Philippines. Not quite what I expected at all.

And the finale of a certain series that will be posted about tomorrow!

Manga, Moving, and More

Alliteration yes!

Also, misleading post titles!

I was just helping my dad help out a family friend in tearing their house apart. Little by little we remove various cupboards and stuff for an upcoming renovation. Sounds like fun indeed, except it was a lot of standing around waiting for stuff to come down.

Oh well, at least I got a tiny bit of exercise and was away from my computer for the meantime. Though I guess I didn't get to do much homework done.

And I also had a fun "night" of reading manga and got a great sleep too.

8 Hours in a Bookstore for School

Who needs the library when you can simply stay at a bookstore? Of course, the fact that all libraries were closed on Good Friday helped the decision. As well as our school work, which was actually directly related to the bookstore we were working at.

This particular bookstore was nice and cozy with a large window drawing in plenty of healthy sunlight, as well as the light sounds of downtown. Also, free wifi and outlets for laptops were a big plus.

Shoddy Code while Rushing

So rushing to produce something workable through programming usually results in quite a bit of shoddy code.

That's what happened today, as I worked to help a friend with his work that I've been putting off for a long time. Usually I have an unrealistic vision of perfect code that follows proper standards and doesn't come as a mishmash of sources. However, that doesn't happen. It always becomes some crazy storm of code that sometimes doesn't make sense to me, but it works.

I'll clean it up later, but I know that this type of things will eventually happen again. I need to act slightly more professional!

Another day of Voice and Film

Voiceovers, filming, snacking, pizza. Yep today was a fun day indeed.

Lots of footage and sound to sift through, but at least we still have quite a bit of time to make everything nice. I just hope I don't have to rerecord more voiceovers.

Also, currently signed up for various music courses online. I hope for good things for them.

Hastily Edited with Easy Music

Today was very much a day for me to slack off and then subsequently edit a video for a class. I learned that it is simply not a good idea to that anymore, as the rendering time is too long, and the editing ended up being shoddy. Next time I'll just do it the night before no matter how tired I am.

But at the very least, I had a very easy time picking out my choice of music. The K-on! OST served as a very good basis, as it makes for nice and easy listening. Perhaps I'll try to have a listen to other "easy" OSTs out there so I'll have a wider variety for music.

Also, Still Alive radio version is great for random background radios in stores.

UuU~ Genki Birthday for Yayoi!

200% Genki and all about Family!

It's the lovable and reliable genki girl Yayoi Takatsuki's Birthday today! Bursting at the seams with energy and the loving care for all her siblings, this girl really deserves a great day for all her hard work!

Here's this strange little "Human-powered Vocaloid" video of Anzu no Uta, sung(?) by Yayoi!

Nico

Sneaking Video; Playing with Audio

Yet another day of filming was done today, except it actually wasn't that much. Hanging around a certain store and doing some filming for a video that hardly anyone wants to spend much effort on. Great fun indeed, especially since I go to see even more manga that I want to read in the future.

Then comes a long session of me wrestling with Audition a bit. I really want to learn how to do this audio stuff, but there's just so much to learn and so little time for me to do it. So I tried to split a whole bunch of clips in one track into their own tracks for easy exporting. I know it'd be a messed of tiny .wav files, but I wanted it to make importing it in the video program a lot easier. The reason? Because we recorded the voice over and want to use it to help time the video, instead of the other way around. Incredibly strange to do without a video for timing, but it's what has to be done.

Anyways, I'll continue on... in anticipation for the GENKI day tomorrow. I shall be bursting with energy and radiance because of a certain someone with a sunny disposition!

Dreaming of The Web: Absolutes and Hotspots Again

I am full of shame after resorting back to a certain way of doing things to make websites "work".

This is all for the sake of quick and simple prototyping, and to relieve myself from the stress of working in Flash. I do not want to touch that piece of software anytime soon.

Instead, back to the Dreamweaver for a tiny bit, before heading straight back to the land of hand-edited HTML and CSS, with a large helping of JS and the use of LESS and/or SASS.

For such an easy program, it still gives me stress over certain "easy" tasks. Thank goodness for Google.

Noodles, Film, and more Noodles

Today was a day of filming for a school project. I was in charge of sound capturing, but that did not go too well due to the lack of tripod to keep these mics stationary. Instead I used my horribly shaky hands, but I'm sure there will be too much handling noises for half of the sounds. Next time I'll be more careful.

In between, we had some noodles.

Then I went out to eat some ramen with a bunch of old friends. It was fun to see them again, though I felt a bit sad that I was so awkward with them after all this time not seeing them again.

An Intermediate Story (Pre-movie Fun)

This post is going to be about what happened before I got to watch the 2nd movie screening yesterday.

There was a costume contest with a bunch of random assorted cosplays that thankfully included quite a bit of the series' characters. These included one Male!Madoka and normal Madoka, plus a cute epilogue Homura. There was even a guy "cosplaying" with one of those Aniplex Kyubey masks, who said he was cosplaying as "Kyubey's Head". But the cake was the one who cosplayed as Male!Mami, affectionately called Manmi by the audience. Then there were a bunch of random characters, that I didn't quite catch. Manmi won by a landslide, so he got tickets to the local conventions happening in the summer.

Afterwards was a pretty awkward "Transformation Contest", with random normal people in the crowd doing their own transformation sequences. Let's just say that the guy who won put his hair to great use. He did some spinning, then "transformed" his long hair into twintails. Excellent reaction from the crowd followed.

But what really amazed the audience was something completely unexpected. When the movie was set to start, the projection was a bit funny. Everything was pixelated!

The Everlasting Story

Also known as "Madoka Magica the Movie: Eternal", part 2 of the Madoka movie trilogy.

I thoroughly enjoyed this one as well, although I must admit that lining up at least 2 hours in advanced plus getting a poster could have added to my already biased views.

The movie felt like the last few episodes with more super nice transformation sequences, and additional scenes that tended to be on the typical somewhat creepy art side of things. Gekidan Inu Curry certainly had fun with those. Contrary to the previous movie, this one felt longer than usual because I don't think they really cut anything out of these episodes. They had a little less than 2 hours to fill, so that made sense.


Spoilers abound afterwards:
It started with the film reel countdown with a curtain opening. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it very much reminded me of episode 1.

This time around, I got to watch the new opening animation. I'm not sure what to say about the sound, as it sounds slightly similar to Connect, but I found the animation itself to be great. It pretty much half-spoiled many things if you hadn't seen the series though, although that number of people would be few. I really liked seeing all the happy Homura and Madoka moments, especially the somewhat infamous check to check snuggling scene. Too cute.

I quite liked the parts during Homura's long time travelling episode. Right before that, the obvious use of CGand/or strange foreground/background layers in the graveyard kind of threw me off, in addition to how drawn out that scene waas. At first I was hoping for the manga-only scene of Kyoko and Sayaka in the "afterlife", but sadly that didn't happen. Instead we feasted on even more imagery in Homura's time travelling travails, along with an even more eerie version of the countdown from the beginning of the movie, except it is counting up and distorted. It even ended in an altered, more happy version the anime opening animation, including "Connect" by ClariS. I'm not sure what to say about that.

The Kyubey entropy and thermodynamics of the universe lesson was always a great part to watch. Big screen Inu Curry visuals are great.

The episode 11 part felt very much the same as the TV version. Not much to say other than how crazy it is to watch Walpurgisnacht getting attacked by Unlimited Arms Works on the big screen. Also, the cleaning of the bloodied Homura's face by Madoka was really nice.

Then the changes start to get a lot more interesting in the final stretch. It could just be my imagination, but everything felt spiffed up when Madoka started traversing time and space. It was hugely apparent during the fantasticly sparkly galactic rift part where Madoka and Homura are having their one last time together. They added dresses! I absolutely love this addition, not only because it makes it slightly less awkward, but also because of how beautiful it looks.

Then of course it went back to the "present", but before that we had a detour of Madoka picking up Sayaka. This, and the parts where Madoka went to pick up the other girls, were the parts that almost made me teary eyed. I truly felt the sacrifices and the bittersweet happiness of them being saved by Madoka. Sayaka's story, though a bit less significant compared to Jeanne D'Arc or Cleopatra, still resonated strongly as being a great sacrifice for a good cause.

Now actually back to the present day, very much like the TV series again, though seeing Homura's happy face at a large size is great.

Then it strangely cut to credits filled with runes, in the obvious style of Inu Curry. I ought to search up what these mean, because they could be pertinent information for the 3rd movie or something. Or maybe they're just credits. I really like the orchestral version of Connect used here as well.

Then back to the "aftermath" scene with the winged Homura and the great quotable text, followed by the film reel ending showing silhouettes of the various magical girls of the ages. I was fully expecting a trailer or something to appear, but instead we are treated to the real credits with the new song by Kalafina.

And after that was done, I was still expecting something, but alas it did no come to being.

-end spoilers.


So overall, I quite liked the two movies, as they covered pretty much everything. Perhaps the one gripe (other than me missing out 10 minutes of the first movie) would be the odd pacing of the second movie. It was starting to feel like they had to pad some parts to make it longer, and it really felt like I was watching the episodes all over again sometimes. The total of four credits (minus one if you don't include the runes-version) felt a bit strange too. Though I admit that I liked the inclusion of Connect in two places, even if it was awkward.

And that's it. I look forever to whatever follows, though my hopes for it coming to Canada any time soon are low. Perhaps in 3 to 4 years at minimum.

Why Can't I watch Ebichu MVs?

Also known as "Why are there regions locks for music?"

Seriously, why does DefStar and/or Sony Music of Japan decide to block their Youtube videos? I mean, sure there's some legal lining involved somewhere, but I still have to question their decisions.

This all came about when I was going through Ebichu's (aka Shiritsu Ebisu Chuugaku) music videos on the Stardust Digital Youtube page.

Of course I was partially interested in this group not only because of them being "little sisters" of Momoiro Clover. Not even because of Hyadain's crazy compositions for them. But partially because these girl's voices and randomness in their videos really hits me somehow. I don't know why, perhaps it's the sudden low voices of some of the girls. Or perhaps it's the screechy annoying voice of that one girl (not likely). Or maybe it's just that cute girl with the braces who looks and sounds slightly out there, but is rather fun to watch and hear. I just don't no.

Anyways back to the rant about region locking. I found out that they were actually signed to DefStar Records, so that was the reason why there were no more new music videos on Stardust's page. So I sought them out, going through Wikipedia of all places. Although not the best source for new info, I found out that Wikipedia usually had links to the music videos of various group's singles. Of course, this usually only happened if the group's song was popular enough to have its own wiki page.

I sought it out and bam, I was hit with the old "The uploader has not made this video available in your country".

Why?

Then I decided to try other measures to try to watch it, but I just couldn't do it. How sad, even trying to watch it through official channels is too painful. I assume this a Sony thing, but who knows it could just be DefStar. If I cared enough I'd do some research into the politics of this silly thing, which I know probably affects other non-North American countries more, but I just don't feel up to it right now. I just wanted to complain, cause it's such a shame that these great videos aren't published for one reason or another.

I know I might not have been as eager to try out AKB48 if it wasn't for the huge catalogue of PV/MVs on their Youtube channel. I remember when I went back to find Aitakatta, there wasn't any official video page. Lo and behold, it was DefStar who held them before. Of course they launched into super fame with their signing of King Records now, and maybe the whole open to all Youtube thing helped a bit.

And that's it. If anyone (hello there sole reader) would like to enlighten me about this situation, that would be great. Either way, I'm still going through other channels to get more enlightenment about Ebichu and other videos that don't make it across the oceans.

(Also, the reason for these super long posts is partially due to the writing style influence of a certain other blog that I read recently. Who knew that writing long rant-esque posts could be so therapeutic?)

"Video Games as Art?" Presentations

Today we finally got the in-class presentations of "Video Games as Art" from our fellow students.

The first presentation was a slightly obvious choice of the Metal Gear Solid series as a whole. It touched on the cutscenes and the almost photo-realistic graphics on the PS3 gen games. Plus it had a bit on Hideo Kojima as well, like how he started out wanting to be an illustrator. And also how he created stories that were far too long for anyone to develop, until he got to Konami of course. The rest is history.

The guy also showed the Director's Cut trailer for Metal Gear Rising. Of course it was the English version, with it's somewhat hilarious amounts of strange English. I almost always chuckle every time anything is CAPITALIZED or ends with an exclamation!

Then followed a short discussion including how Metal Gear Rising felt like a huge tangent from Metal Gear Solid, as it was extremely fast paced focusing on Lighting Speed Action and stuff like that.


Afterwards we had a short forced discussion about Minecraft being art or not. Apparently the TA had only played a few video games in her life, one of which included Minecraft. And she barely played it too. She complained about the graphics a bit, but also about how utterly pointless the game might be. It didn't have any narrative at all! Where's the ideology in that? But of course, the discussion came about that this one game is more of an experience you create yourself that might end up being art. I think someone came up with the analog of a finished painting, where you can explore the piece throughout, but it has already been completed. Now the game could very much be the act of painting itself perhaps.

With this analogy, I can even relate those "building" games to the fine art of music as well. There are a variety of instruments that can create many sounds that might end up art. Perhaps those games are simply tools. Although there are instruments that themselves could be art pieces, be they the most beautiful lacquered wooden instruments, or a nice polish brass. I'd like to think that even improvised instruments could be art. And in this way the "building" games could be art themselves.

Or at least when the music starts playing. Oh how I love Minecraft music.


Then we got a long presentation about Silent Hill being art. Although I admit to not having played these games for long, the short experience of Silent Hill 3 was enough to make me agree with his points. A point that was quite interesting was the fact that the representations in the games through monsters and the other world are actually connected to the character themselves. It's not just there to creep you out at random, but rather as pieces to a puzzle to helping yourself. Either way, it's creepy and I don't know if I have the guts to ever finish the game quite yet. I have yet to "complete" Yume Nikki either, though that's one of the games I would've really loved to draw from if I had to present video games as art.


Finally, we had the presentation that I was not hoping for. I almost cringed in my seat as I saw the handout fly around.

It was Final Fantasy.

The guy presenting went on and on about features and the cool cutscenes and stuff. I don't even remember if he talked about how the gameplay and cutscenes were at least somewhat integrated, or perhaps how far removed they are.

I remember reading about how Kingdom Hearts was getting remaded for the PS3, and how that one game in the series was simply condensed into movie format. Although some people said it was better since it cut out a lot of tedious stuff, the final boss battle would have been great to show even in gameplay without the spiffy cutscenes. For example, I really felt the tension in the final battle of Persona 3. It lasted for a long time, but I knew that it felt good to be in control of what actions I had to do to beat this huge boss.

Anyways, he went on to cite Hironobu Sakaguchi as being the big guy of Final Fantasy. Of course, as the creator of Final Fantasy, he's largely a part of why the series was so good.

Then he showed a video of Final Fantasy XIII-2. I was shaking my head, as it goes to show that he did not do enough research. Sakaguchi had already left the Final Fantasy series as the producer for any of the games after Final Fantasy IX. Part of that reason could be attributed to the whole Spirits Within box office disaster too. With spiffy new graphics of course it's "art" right? Well I guess it could be, but going with it as a pure game, it's another filled with cutscenes after cutscene with somewhat bland gameplay in between.

I guess Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy does have some parallels in it's modern day games. Although perhaps one of the big differences is the vastly superior story telling or execution of one game over the other. Sure they're both art, but I guess you should just say which one is "better". I, for one, already know my choice.


Anyways, that was one of my longer rants/summaries for a while. I think video games can be considered art, though there's various ranges of what is "good" to what is "horrible". Perhaps I should actually get around to finishing all these games before being a critic myself.

Oh and the class ended with a presentation demonstrating some neat virtual reality stuff including the one with the camera and the soldiers. And another where you sort of had these extended arms that could grab stuff from this planet thing that was stuck onto the center of the screen. The visuals reminded me of Starcraft's Protoss somewhat, with it's golden-ish plated contraptions.

Happy 18th Birthday to Akarin!

Blue 18!

Oh the memories.

It's the beautiful slightly tomboyish "cool beauty" Akari Hayami's Birthday!

Though she is not a part of Momoiro Clover Z, she will always be remembered as part of Momoiro Clover. She was especially good at MC and rapping like no other member. And her voice was the most unique out of all of them.

And now she's an actor/model!

"Akarin~"

Last Minute Bootstrapping

Now I'm seriously getting into Bootstrap. It has made things both easier and harder. I really have to finish this prototype by Monday, but learning jQuery and CSS (with LESS) and a whole bunch of other stuff is really taking its toll on my sanity.

It's a good thing I was learning PHP on the side, since I'll definitely need that for search forms.

But why must this be so last minute?

Happy 18th Birthday to Momoka!

Green 18!

Profile Picture : Saraba Angel version.

Happy 18th Birthday to Momoka Ariyasu, the little bit baka and chibi giant!

She is probably the strongest vocalist of the group, and one of the top dancers too!

"Ariyasu!"

The Beginning Story

The poster that some people got.

I just came back from watching Madoka Magica the Movie Part 1. It finally came to my city so I was able to watch it! Unlike the showings in the states, this is actually split up into the proper Part 1 and Part 2, so I'll be watching the next one another day.

I really liked how they did it. I'm surprised they were able to compress all that into 2 hours, because it certainly did not feel rushed at all.

The redone transformation scenes and the remixed music were some of the highlights of the movie. I especially liked the Japanese lyrics version of Mami's theme "Credens Justitiam". I kind of miss the whole "Kajiuran" chanting from before, but this was just as good.

Also, the end credits were really like a super extended version of the TV end credits. They certainly seem to foreshadow what is to come in the next few movies. Spoilers now : There were now more magical girl silhouettes, quite possibly those from across all ages and times. And the end was Madokami holding onto Madoka. Very interesting.


Sadly I missed out on the first 10 minutes of the movie with the new theme song by ClariS. Due to certain school circumstances, I barely even got to watch the movie. But then, somehow I was able to claim a ticket after it was stated as "Sold Out" for the first 10 minutes. The last ticket too. Even though the seats were not ideal, the movie was still perfectly fine to watch. The nice thing about knowing the story beforehand is the fact that I could almost ignore the slightly localized subtitles to watch the bigger picture.

I look forward to watching Part 2, wrapping up the TV arc and possibly foreshadowing at Part 3.

Enter into... the 5th Dimension

Through the Neo Stargate, these 5 girls will enter the 5th Dimension after 3 phases.


5TH DIMENSION is the new album by Momoiro Clover Z that is set to be released on April 10, 2013.

Check out the site at http://5thdimension.jp/

There was a time when this site was interactive, and the stages (and tracklist) were being unlocked.

Playing with New Tools for the Web

Just started playing around with the various CSS preprocessors. I had to install Ruby, so I just went with the full Rails installer. The instructions were a tiny bit vague, but I got through them.

Then I switched out for the JS compiled preprocessor. So far it works fine too, though the initial problem with Chrome was kind of annoying. Thank goodness for my previous installing of WAMP.


Also, I finally decided to cave and join the ranks of Sublime Text users. I've been using Notepad++ for a while and it worked fine. But Sublime Text is just so nice, I can't look back anymore.

People Chase

We did some weird things today. Involving a video of car chase and Batman. Recreated using unusual methods. Yet it still ended up awesome.

Also, Happy Birthday Mariko-sama! (even though it's passed in Japan already).

Trek to the last Zs

The last few Z stores that are close by are closing very soon, so I decided to check them out.

Turns out, just like last time, most of the stuff is junk or overpriced. Also, at least half of the store is completely wiped out. One of them even has the top floor completely blocked off.

I shall return in a few days to see if I can acquire a certain game system for a cheap price. Who knows.


Also, currently eager about the 2 Madoka Movies coming to the local theatres very soon.

159%

Super huge watercolour Cirno! | Source

It's March 9, and that means Cirno Day March of 2012!

Another AKB Voice Actor to Graduate

First Nakayan... now Shawako!?

So, Sawako Hata just announced yesterday that she was going to graduate to pursue her dreams of becoming a full-fledged voice actor. As the voice of Suzuko in AKB0048, she had gone through one step towards her dream.

I was shocked and sad at first, but... graduation is always bittersweet. I had recently been paying attention to SKE48 because of her. She's a nice person, though super shy for a long while, she got stronger and stronger. Plus she has an awesome range in voices, like her Takarazuka voice. And she's also a pretty good singer too!

As one of the more eccentric and mysterious SKEs, it's sad to see her go, but still I wish her good luck to her future voice roles! Maybe she'll join up with Nakayan again in an anime someday!

It's Eri's Birthday?

Eri, why so cool?

Happy Birthday to the cute and somewhat geeky net-turned-real idol girl!

This should be a really nice day? With plenty of inflections that make sentences look like questions?

And her's BL@CK ROCK SHOOTER featuring Ellie (with the voice of nayuta).

Nico

"Senpai~! Congratulations!"

A Megane Graduation

Even though I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, Nakayan's (Sayaka Nakaya) Graduation concert was held today. I've read some articles and seen images floating around and it seemed nice. And it indeed got emotional at the end. Oh Nakayan, I hope you become a top voice actress one day!


As for other less "bittersweet" things that I did today... I didn't really do much other than go on more trips down the AKB48 video tube. Learning about a specific soft-voiced SKE48 member, and seeing more of the AKB0048 main star, made me more hooked into this whole franchise. Although I do admit that it's really crazy and money oriented, the appeal comes down to the individual members for me, instead of the whole being. Especially since most of the single songs aren't really that appealing to begin with.


Oh and it's "megane" because Nakayan used to be one of the few that wore glasses on stage.

An Enka AKB

Her latest song from this year.


Her debut single.

Sifting through more and more AKB48 content landed me on this one girl: Iwasa Misaki, or Wasamin.

She has an amazing voice, and it especially shows in her debut with enka! Definitely one of the top vocalists of AKB48. Such a great feeling to know that she got a solo debut.

FX Titles and Media Art Presenting

After a night/morning filled with presentation preparation and After Effects, I finally get to sleep for a long time.

The presentation went quite well, and it seems like the TA was interested in it. No one seemed to comment about the non-relevant art piece though. Too bad.

The After Effects was surprisingly fun. I was able to mess around and get something decent looking, while also shoehorning some anime OST music into the mix. Taku Iwasaki does some nice OSTs indeed.

The Aspiring AKB Voice Actor to Graduate

A day late, but still quite important!

After learning more and more about the AKB48 girls, I came across the story of one girl who aspires to be a voice actor as her dream. During her days in the group, her dream came true! Of course, she wants to be more than just a one-off, as she really wants to do this for her life.

This girl is Sayaka Nakaya.

Then the news broke yesterday. She put up a blog post saying she was graduating from AKB on March 6 to reach for her dream. I'm both very happy and a bit sad.

She is the voice actor for Orine Aida in the AKB0048 anime, so that was probably another big push towards her dream.

I hope for the best for her, as the seiyuu business is quite tough. Maybe one day she'll big in the big leagues one day.

Arigatou Gojaimasu

Completely out of nowhere, a wild Korean video has appeared! Except it's in Japanese?

I just came across this hilarious piece of work with one simple, yet catchy tune.


Arigatou Gojaimasu for this fun video.

Nostalgia AKB Trip through Videos

Today was a long day of watching old PVs for AKB48, with a whole bunch that were not on the AKB48 official Youtube channel.

I started with "Sakura no Hanabiratachi", then "Aitakatta", which were the most nostalgia inducing. I remember listening to these years ago, before AKB48 got huge. "Aitakatta" was the most catchy tune back then and it still is now. I remember just downloading these two songs, and never coming back to check out the rest of their releases for the rest of these years. Little did I know that this niche group filled to the brim with girls would end up being best-selling juggernauts of the Japanese music industry.


"Sakura no Hanabiratachi" Original


"Aitakatta" English subbed. Oh the nostalgia.

Then I went through a whole bunch of other videos until I got a bit sick of simply watching PVs for these songs that didn't really catch my attention. It was a good chance to recognize some of the idols though, since there were a lot more solo parts back then. I did find the "edgy" songs a bit interesting, especially since the PVs are a far cry of their current PVs and songs. I wonder if they'll ever have a chance to tackle these themes again.

Tons more videos to watch, but so little time. I ought to finish those posts about Momoiro Clover too.