Music: Japanese VS. English

Recently I acquired some character albums from one the anime I like. Honestly I wish Kyoto Animation would hurry up and deliver the second season but at least they’re continuing another one I like in the fall season. Anyway, the character albums for the main cast weren’t anything special but two of the support characters’ albums really stood out. One had a really upbeat and happy melody but I can’t come to like it as much as I could as the character for that album kept reminding me the dangers that one of my friends now poses to all girls under legal age. Hopefully whatever that guy is doing now isn’t something that could destroy his social life or get him sent to jail. Surprisingly though, there are a lot of people like him who mix up the world of anime with the real world and turn into creatures that society no longer recognize as humans. That sort of thing may have been normal centuries ago but now it’s illegal to indulge in those sorts of preferences.

Anyway, the other character album was really good. Go look up the seiyuu, Shiratori Yuri, on google and you may find a link to a song she sang. I actually set the one I liked best as my alarm despite the fact that it is so melodious and soothing that I may actually fall asleep again unlike the effect that my previous alarm had which would probably turn heads if people heard it because it’s almost unheard of for there to be a song that’s a mix of opera and rap (Iwasaki Taku is an amazing composer!). If I ever figure out how to host it on this blog, I’ll set up the songs I like for you to hear if they’re available for online streaming.

Most of you probably don’t get what I’m talking about or who those Japanese I mentioned were. Both of them were Japanese workers in the anime business. Seiyuu is the term for voice actor or voice actress and a composer is someone who comes up with the songs in the anime. The reason I know these things is because I am very big fan of anime. Despite being a citizen of Brunei Darussalam, I have watched and completed over 200 series of anime and read nearly 150 different manga of various genres in the past 6 years of my life(I did read Doraemon and Dragonball when I was younger but it was only in 2003 that I realized that they came from japan). Incidentally, about 35-40 new anime are introduced every thirteen weeks for each season of the year so I’m not even close to having watched 10% of all the anime out there.

This would seem very biased of me, which normally I try to avoid being but I have to say that Japanese music is so much better than English music. English music only occupies almost a fifth of my entire music library while Japanese music takes up 70% percent leaving the remaining ten percent split between instrumental music and game soundtracks( All the games were made in Japan though).

Why is it that I think that way? To set things straight, it’s not because of the language. If it was the language, I probably wouldn’t be enjoying the few Malay songs that I have. In fact, even though I can watch an anime without subtitles and understand everything that’s being said, it’s still too hard to translate the meaning of those songs while listening to them.

The reason I prefer Japanese songs over English songs is because so many of the English artists seem to be copying off each other while the Japanese keep on experimenting with their sounds. For example, if you listen to a song by Bow Wow and another by one of the many rappers out there trying to make names for themselves, you’ll find that their songs sound very similar. However if you take the songs “Evolution” and “Voyage” by Hamasaki Ayumi, you’ll find that despite both songs were made up by the same person, both are done in very different styles and are very good in their own way.

I’ll admit that it is true that Japanese songs have the same problem as well but it happens far less often to them than it happens to the Americans and that there are artists who are still finding ways to bring out good songs. I can name some of them: Akon, Linkin Park, Goo Goo Dolls, Sean Kingston, Black Eyed Peas and One Republic. You can probably tell that these guys are at the top of my list of favourite American performers(Stephen Colbert is at the top while President Bush is 2^nd who is still funny even though his job isn’t actually performing in front of people) despite the fact I haven’t heard any new ones from them lately. I do applaud Linkin Park and Black Eyed Peas( Or to be more specific WILL.I.AM. and Fergie) for having so many different sounds in their albums, they also had some of the more interesting videos. I still can’t understand why critics would slam their albums so badly just because they wanted their songs to go above the norm.

The fact is that a majority of American artists lack creativity in their songs and seem to be filling up their albums that have one or two good ones with a dozen other mediocre ones just to fill in the gaps. I do have to say that they definitely beat the Japanese in terms of music videos which is quite odd for a nation that hold so many superior musicians. They really should think of getting the anime opening directors to direct their videos instead. Look for any video by the “Brilliant Green” on youtube and compare it to say – the anime opening sequence of “Xam’d: Lost Memories”. Love its song by the way.

There’s also the fact that most of them use vulgar concepts and words in their songs which make it hard for me to enjoy them. How is it possible for people to enjoy listening to other people sing about what they should only do in private. Even though I seem to have lost 95% of my ability to feel embarrassment, I can still see how awkward it would be for someone to be blasting such inappropriate songs in a public area. Hell, the juniors at school even seemed to be bothered by the Kingdom Hearts boss music that I was listening to at school while waiting to be picked up and that didn’t have any lyrics in it(Though I only lowered it so that only people in my immediate area would hear it if they really seemed disturbed by it).

The Japanese on the other hand always seem to be trying outdo themselves in their fields, whether it’s in technology or music. Just look at the Nintendo Wii, Xbox360 will NEVER match its sales because it’s the most unique console yet. That’s why I always seem to be finding new Japanese songs that are fresh whether they be sung by singers or composed as background music for an anime. The variety that they have to offer is much wider than any other country I’ve heard(Don’t get me started on Korean songs, almost every single one I hear is a love song about someone missing someone else). Thank god that the same also applies to anime and manga.

Sick Dreams

I wonder what you thought when you read that title. Whatever it was, that thought shows what kind of person you are.

To continue with my post yesterday, I'm going to write about this dream that I always have whenever i get a high fever. I get fevers about 4 times a year thanks to my tonsils so that's every three months that I get fevers. Not all of them are that bad though since most of them don't go any higher than 38 degrees celcius so i don't have that dream as much as I used to.

Here's how the dream goes:

It starts out with me seeing a pure white background. It's always silent during this dream and it's not like I'm staring at anything in particular but more like I'm staring at everything. Everything in the landscape is pure white white no lines whatsoever and even though everything I see is all white, it feels like the landscape is moving closer and farther at the same time. At certain times the view feels like i'm almost touching my nose with some sort of wall and at others it feels like I'm falling far away from it .

I'm not sure why but i don't feel the passage of time in this dream. Even though I said it starts out with all white, I just say that because it's the most dominant image I see. Instead it seems like i see everything all at once all in the same place. It'd be a very disorienting thing to see in real life but here it feels like I'm not there and everything is just happening in front of me.

While I'm seeing the white background, I'm also seeing a creeping darkness. It's not misty or liquid-like but solid shaped darkness. Everything was black in the same intensity where it was balck and the same could be said for white. Even though everything looked white where it wasn't black, I still knew somehow there was a white blocky wave on the side opposite the black wave in equal sizes but they weren't in contact with each other. They area between them looked white but it wasn't white. It didn't have a color and even though it looked white it wasn't really white.

What happens is that i see both waves stationary and unmoving while i also see them lashing out at each other and crashing head on. I also see white lines penetrating through an endless dark abyss and black lines crossing across a vast empty whiteness. I never see any other color than white or black and both colors were always intense.

Another part of this dream has me watching a colorless dawn on an empty field of non-whiteness with indivdual bits of white and black that seemed dead to me. I saw this dawn repeat itself over an uncountable number of times in what felt like an instant.

There's this other part where I see either a vast blackness or whiteness and i see this small drop of black or white that looks like it's dropping into a black lake or motionless sea that stretched as far as I could see. I'd see that drop fall down so slowly that it really felt like it's been forever since i started seeing it fall but at the same time i see it repeatedly falling into that blackness over and over so quickly that it didn't even seem like an instant.

Finally I was surrounded by a lot of black individuals that seemed to be in infinite amounts but at the same i was all by myself in an empty white world. Again my sense of time was incredibly chaotic and illogical. I wasn't even colored at all.

Throughout the entire, even though any other person I know would probably be insane after even going through it even once I always felt at peace while I had this dream. It should disturb me but for some I've felt that even though it made no sense logically, it always felt sensible to me.

Dreams

A few days ago, my friend told me about this dream where he saw the Kingdom Hearts, Naruto and Disgaea worlds combine into one. He said it was cool and weird at the same time but I didn't bother asking for the details.

Anyway we then started talking about dreams and was saying how that the dream he saw was the weirdest one he ever had. I then told him about some of my dreams and then he just told me that my dreams are way too weird.

I knew that my thoughts and ideas wouldn't be easy for them to take in, but for my dreams to be so weird that it exceeds the weirdest he had. I can understand if he said that about the recurring dreams I had and the ones I had when I was seven or so but he said that to me after I told him about my dream where an avalanche of tennis balls were coming out of the classrooms of my former ugama school. Even then I didn't go on to tell him that it got weirder than that when I ran away from them only to find a barn opposite the school where I saw a cow hanging from the ceiling inside of the barn. The cow then fell to the ground when the rope snapped and for some reason tennis balls started coming out of nowhere from that huge barn window thing. I Can't remember what happened after that but I'm sure it involved a well somehow. What I find weird about this dream is that I never even played tennis before having this dream.

Years ago, in form three, I remember talking to these two girls about the ghost incident that happened in a particular building in the school a few days before. Two minutes into the conversation, I told them about a recurring dream that I had when I was seven.

It went like this:

I was lying down in my bed asleep at night. But, I wasn't seeing from my own eyes as I was looking at myself. Every was incredibly dark and silent. My bed at my old house was right under a window covered by a peach curtain. I saw my sleeping face facing me arms wrapped around a pillow and sleeping on my side looking to be at peace with everything. I was staring like that until I realized that there was hand dark green long thin and claw-like hand hovering over my face.

My line of sight tilted upwards and I saw, right there sitting on the windowsill a devil like creature. Very dark green fur all over its body and scaly dark green wings tucked behind it's back. It had green pen lengthed bony horns potruding out of its head and incredibly huge red orbs for eyes. It had no mouth and nostrils or ears but it was breathing like a normal human would as its chest was expanding and relaxing slowly. The eyes covered at least 2/5 of it's entire head and they were bulgy like a fly's but were oblong diagonally and glowing a soft red light that got more instense towards the middle.

I calmly looked at it as it stroked the air above my hand in a circlar pattern as it looked down at me. As always, I wondered why I hadn't noticed it when it was right there in front of me. At that point it stopped stroking the air above my head. It slowly rested it's hand on my hair for a brief moment before retracting it back behind it's wing. It slowly lifted it's head and we made eye contact. Its posture made it look like it was going to leave soon but all it did was stare into my eyes until the end of the dream.

After I told them about it, both of them looked a lot more spooked about it than they did when we talked about the ghost thing. I asked them why they looked like that and they both asked me why wasn't I scared about dreaming something like that. I told them I just wasn't and that it never really did anything to me except watch me.

Honestly I do understand at how that would be scary but I just wasn't scared of that dream. It just seemed normal to me at that time and when I think about it, I always had this odd feeling that something was watching me whenever I was inside my house when I was little. After that they just said that I was too weird to be normal.

I really do wonder about myself sometimes. I don't get scared that easily and I don't really have any fears towards the things in this world or on the other side. I wonder what that guy would have said if I told him about this particular dream...

How people see me...

I'm having a bit of trouble with my memory lately. Just the recalling function though as I've been confusing when the things I remembered happened. I suspect it might be due to the random and useless visions of the future(I've actually dreamt of passing by a poster for the last harry potter novel two years before it came out and I actually experienced that event in real life) that I see from time to time. It happened to me multiple times on a few individual days in the past week and now I'm confused when things happened even though I'm remembering the events perfectly and my internal clock working flawlessly( I actually wake minutes before my alarm activates every morning).

Well anyway on to the main thing. Recently I've been told by a friend that my face is actually somewhat scary. She heard from another one of my friends about me scaring off some people when i made eye contact with them at the mall weeks ago. I found that pretty damn funny and it got funnier when I tapped my friend on the shoulder and stared him in the eye. Sure enough he turned his head with an anxious look when he realized all i was doing was staring at him. It would explain why some people seem nervous in front of me even though I just put on a bored face because smiling hurts my jaws.

Although, if i did smile more frequently people would probably be a bit more afraid as my normal smile has only one side of my mouth raised making it look more like a smirk. My cousin who is under the alias of Kuris Khun on my cousins' blog actually once told me to stop doing that when I smile because it makes me look evil. When I grinned at him for saying that he got worried that I was up to something and therefore that makes my grins look somewhat demented.

Oh, how I do enjoy scaring people so~

Well it does explain why people get annoyed at me for using logic to ruthlessly slam down their arguements. It's most likely that they thought I was being condescending when I was just explaining the faults in their opinions. I know several people who just won't accept the reasoning I give them and just keep trying to reinforce their own ideas by repeating the points of the idea in different ways. The digusted looks I saw on some their faces really brightened up my mornings and whenever I do it to one particular classmate who seems to be trying to get me to admit defeat in an arguement lately, he does thing where he tries to block out my voice by blocking his ears and saying sounds, I always have fun with that. Good thing we weren't debating philosophy as he wouldn't have just lost in that, he would most likely become terribbly depressed to the point of a break down as I'm certain that he's not one that can handle the absolute reasoning behind my conclusions on certain topics, most people aren't.

On a side note, I recently took a personality test that said my personality was the same as Albert Einstein. Guess some of you guys get to say that you were right about that at least.

Here's the link:

http://typelogic.com/intp.html

Butterfly Effect - My Actions, A Perfect Example of It

For the past a few days a lot of things have been happening around me and my incredibly strong intuition tells me that tomorrow will be a busy day for me. I am getting this premonition that I will somehow cause something to happen again.

I was actually surprised and thoroughly amused that I can influence people so easily. I even inspired some people to pull some things at school. For example, last Monday a friend of mine told me that he was annoyed at how some of the fanfiction for a game he likes had a certain element that he didn't like. I asked him what that was and his answer was that the element was "yuri". I can see why a girl wouldn't like that but he said that I was being dirty for telling him that it was normal for guys to like that( A very big hypocritical paradox considering what kind of anime he watches, the guy ignores story value and simply goes on praising shows that I wouldn't even bother watching for their "graphics").

Then he told one of my other classmates who had become a lolicon because of various incidents including involved me accidentally giving him a now very fitting nickname that me and the others who were present at its debut at the time couldn't stop laughing whenever someone brought it up that day due to its very humorous nature. From what I know, I think it started when I lent him my Mahou Sensei Negima CD's back in form 3, there were some questionable things he said after he watched them. Though now I am regretting it as he seems to be becoming a very dangerous individual towards young girls( I am actually finding ways to remedy this situation and also training my little sister in self defence for when she gets older. I am already annoyed by boys her age that I know and I hope the self defence will help her drive them off should they become bigger nuiscances.).

Anyway, back to the story. Both them mocked me for what I said(both of them have very similar tastes in anime) even after the girls around at the time agreed with what I said. The lolicon even tried to give me a nickname that doesn't fit me at all. The thing with nicknames is that they have to fit the person they're given to and apparently I have yet to meet anyone who actually came up with one that actually fit me. The word "unique" is often attributed to me though. I mean really, am I that mysterious and different that people have so much trouble trying to describe what I'm like. Even the freshmen this year seem to be afraid of me simply because I don't like to tuck in my uniform after classes. Whenever I need to go "bomb Japan" (Any japanese people reading should not feel insulted as that phrase seems to have been made up by someone in my P.E. classes years ago and it doesn't exactly have to be japan that's bombed. Some people even substitute it for america and italy) at the toilets in their building in the afternoon, I always seem to startle them whenever I come out of the toilet.

Then again, I remember getting the same reactions when I went to the mall to watch dark knight two weeks ago from various people. I wasn't even trying to sneak up on anyone but I somehow manage to scare people just by putting on my normal expression(Bored just so you know. Thanks to that I can't use the phrase "Why so serious?" as effectively as other people can.). Aside from that people seem to think that I'm being serious or diligent while I have that expression on my face while doing something.

Damn... I got sidetracked again. I'm not going through the trouble of deleting that as that itself makes my entry more interesting(I think). The next day, they still tried to mock me but that was quickly dampered when one of our male friends agreed with me. The looks on their faces... funny was the only way I could describe it. Eventually it somehow ended up with asking a whole lot of guys the same question and thanks to that I now have new insights on some of the people I know and a small amount of blackmail material to use agaisnt the ones who have girlfriends. Right now, one of my closest friends is even holding a poll about it on his blog.

Incidentally I did manage to find a way to strike down those two guys who wouldn't believe me by saying a few gruesome facts about some of the anime they watch. Those two can be quite stubborn at times and it is fun to watch them try to deny the cold hard facts that I have for them.

I should also mention that I have also started a movement to bring parkour to MS simply by showing a video and that I planned to do the same things in it. So far I have accumulated about 3 confirmed partakers, 2 unconfirmed ones and 5 people for support staff. I'm going to have a fun December this year. Just need to prepare the ninja suit for that day.

Looking all this over, I do seem to lead quite a fun life. I wonder what tomorrow will bring. My intuition tells me I will cause something and from past experience and several testimonies from my friends and family it is going to happen no matter what i do.

I am going to have a fun day tomorrow.