Staying at my cuz's and K-ON!

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Earth hour, Anti-twilight forums and Doujin Games

So how many of you Bruneians out there joined in on the earth hour event? I sure did. Spent an hour hidden in darkness last night. The other houses around my granpa's place didn't seem to be interested in joining in. Sadly, today's the last day of the holidays and yet my nose is in a horrible state. This is the third time all my sneezing caused a cold burning kind of feeling in my head and my mom's been worrying about a headache I might get from sneezing for the past few months. I wonder what is that a symptom of? It's starting to worry me as well since I've been waking up with my left nostril coated with a pale yellowish stuff for the past week. It seems to be blood plasma since it's there's a a little bit of red in there and occasionally in tissues after sneezing.

Anyways, I've been roaming around online and I've found a few interesting things to share. For starters a couple of videos with some great music. All of them have earned themselves "Crowning Music of..." on TV tropes so you know they're good.

Godzilla Theme, I cannot help but feel pumped up at hearing this. GODZILLA!



V for Vendetta - Evey Reborn. Loved that movie. The 1812 overture was brilliantly used in that movie.



Kagamine Rin - KOKORO, This earned a crowning moment of heartwarming i think... Or was it a tearjerker?

GReeeeN - 刹那 @ Yahoo! Video

GReeeeN - Setsuna, A new PV that Omni of Random Curiosity brought up. Hasn't earned any mentions from TV Tropes yet but the song and the video is pretty good. I feel that it'll probably get a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming once one of those tropers finds it. I always wondered what the power rangers did after taking down their Big Bads.

While I was roaming around on TV tropes I found a link that led to an anti twilight forums. There are quite a number of things on that place, including a list of attacks by crazed twilight fans. It seems that list is still getting longer. You should realize by now that I think that twilight is a piece of trash overhyped by hormonal teenage girls that shouldn't be as popular as they make it out to be. Even just by looking at the cover of any of the books I could tell that the stuff inside wasn't going to be worth my time.

http://twilightsucks.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=fangirls&action=display&thread=5175

It bugs me that trash like that is out on the global market while there's plenty of good light and visual novels from japan that's waiting to be translated. It's just a matter of time though, Rozen Aso is heading the country that Otakuism came from after all.

Sadly, I do know a few girls who fit the category of those crazed twilight fans but I know not to push the buttons too far. Though I have to say that girls nowadays seem to be getting more and more mentally unstable with each year. The teachers really have their work cut out for them.

I was amused to see that there were quite a few girls on that anti-twilight forum but I was stupefied to see the many videos of young girls screaming out their obsession with the book featured on the forum's video topics. I laughed at the comments left by the members though. Gotta give props to guy who plays the main guy for outrightly saying the books. That takes guts and with his character's fanbase, it's amazingly brave of the guy to even be filming the sequel. He's digging a grave for himself though, it's only a matter of time before one of his stalkers kidnaps the guy.

Here's some luzworthy images:

Some webcomic I found linked in TV Tropes. She made the right decision

A memorable forum post from someone. Do the fans even realize that Meyer vampires and edward are fiction? Not very good pieces of fiction at that

Part of someone's sig. The second part says that Raiden sparkles better than Edward. Gotta agree with him there.

It's almost time for the finale of gundam 00 to show up. Unfortunately, the soonest I'll be able to watch it is this tuesday so I shall have to resist the temptations of visiting blogs to know what happened. I want to enjoy that episode spoiler-free so these will be a long two days. On a side note, Bandai are evil #$%^&*s because they just announced a 1/100 00 Raiser Designer's colour that comes with the GN sword III. I really feel like swearing louder than any sailor would dare to because of them. It's even supposed to come with more lighting effects for the head and GN sword III (Not that i'd be able to get the batteries for them here). On the upside, they're releasing a HGUC Hi-Nu gundam so I'm looking forward to that.

To wrap things up, here's a couple of videos of doujin games from comiket. Amazing work for a bunch of amateurs.

Magical Battle Arena - Where Mahou Shojo's Kick Ass!




Ultimate Knight Wisdom XP - Mecha Pawnage In Excess!

Ribbons Gundam!

Awesome news for gundam 00 fans. Someone posted up scans for the final episode and it contains a spirit booster for those who have felt the last stretch of the series was less than epic. Despite the fact that Evil Amuro a.k.a. Ribbons Almark was piloting the GN guncannon at the end of episode 49, we WILL have our Gundam vs. Gundam final battle!

Here's the GN Guncannon. Allegedly it's actually called Ribbons Guncannon. What else would you expect from the mobile suit of a guy with a god complex?

Ribbons Guncannon

Here's what's underneath all the extra armor:

Ribbons Gundam... God Complex At Work

Fanart of Ribbons Gundam

I for one am expecting an awesome battle considering that judging from the picture it's got:

• Pseudo Twin Drive System
• Trans-Am
• Fangs System
• Garazzo Fingers
• Virtue's Purge System
• Shoulder Mounted GN Cannons
• Psychoframe-like Controls
• GN Fields

There's also been speculation as to whether the position of the drives on the arms mean that we'll be seeing a GN Finger. Trans-am + Burning Finger = Made of WIN! GO for it Bandai! GO FOR IT! (You can tell that I'm getting it as soon as it gets announced)

This hand of mine glows with an awesome power!

Its burning grip tells me to defeat you!
Now, here I go!
RIBBONS FINGER!

Again, he has a god complex. Aside from that, rumors also say that Ribbons gundam is powerful enough to steal the 0 gundam's original GN drive from Setsuna and that the remnants of the CB crew will travel to Jupiter. I am anticipating this epic battle very much.

Movie Review: Dragonball Evolution

I went to watch Dragonball Evolution last Saturday and quite contrary to what I initially expected I actually enjoyed the movie. Sure it has its plot holes here and there and the actors were painful to watch aside from Goku, Chi Chi and Son Gohan but I still enjoyed the movie. The trick to doing that is not to overthink things and just sit back and enjoy the ride. Bring along your friends who have fond childhood memories of the manga and anime so you can have a good time laughing with them. I don’t mean that the movie is so bad that it’s good but rather that the jokes are actually good. Also don’t go in there thinking that it’s a straight up adaptation of Dragonball or else you’re just going to be pissed during the entire movie. It’s fun to compare the differences between them though. There were some pretty good scenes in the movie too and I actually found the direction better than most of the blockbusters Hollywood is churning out nowadays.

The plot itself made enough sense at the beginning and the middle but they really lay it on thick towards the end. The Oozaru thing should have at least been foreshadowed better even though the fans know what’s the deal with it. Seriously, if I didn’t know anything about Dragonball I wouldn’t be able to accept that being in the movie. The special effects were quite good actually but I just wish they made them more dynamic. Wispy blue flames are impressive in any context but it would have been more fitting to use a “harder” version of it in the Kamehameha showdown scene at the end. Hopefully they’ll correct it in the sequel. Don’t groan! It was an enjoyable movie and with how it sales are going around the world a sequel is definitely coming. The script’s ready too.

The music wasn’t exactly memorable but it did the job and went along with the scenes quite well. I will be getting my hands on that Hamasaki Ayumi song though. The lines themselves had some corny things thrown into them at various parts of the movie but nothing too bad. Goku’s interaction with Chi Chi felt quite natural if you ask me. The latern scene went particularly smoothly for them. The jokes didn’t make me groan at any point in the movie but they didn’t make me laugh all the time either. The implications of some of them did amuse me though. For one thing, I’m still wondering about what happened to bug that got shot into Son Gohan’s mouth. The old man did eat chicken feet so I wouldn’t be surprised if he just ate it then and there.

Rather than the plot, I have a bigger beef with the characters. Despite the complaints about Goku not being asian he was actually the one who gave the best performance out of all of them. Remember! Goku wasn’t even an earthling in the manga so that not asian matter is rather silly. Chi Chi and Son Gohan gave out good performances too. I liked how they still managed to keep Roshi’s character close to the manga’s version but they really chose the wrong actor for it. I don’t care if Chow Yun Fat is asian and is a big name, it still doesn’t make up for the fact that he was disappointing as Roshi. I can forgive him for not wanting to be bald but he didn’t even wear the sunglasses or whiten his hair and beard. He’s a good example why race doesn’t really matter when it comes to acting skills. It seemed like he was trying to act more like a stereotype of those old Chinese martial arts masters rather than Roshi! Did that guy even bother to do the research on his character?! Come to think of it, I’ve never been impressed by any of the asian roles he does.

Bulma’s actor was so-so but there were parts in the movie where it felt like she was just reading straight from the script rather than acting out her lines. Yamcha was the one who annoyed me the most. His character was pretty much the same but the accent he used to speak was terribly, terribly annoying. I don’t know if I could say it was his acting but it’s just that he picked one of the most annoying accents I’ve ever heard! Piccolo’s actor did a good job in showing off a badass evil attitude but I think the main problem is that the choreography for his end of the fights just weren’t vicious enough. He really didn’t carry any of that intensity with him into the fights. Acts of evil destruction, so very YES. Straight up fisticuffs, no. There is a limitation as to what live action can achieve compared to animation after all. It’s odd but it was the characters that had the most changes to their character that had the best performances. Scratch that, they all had changes to fit the actors but most of those actors just weren’t fit for the job.

Basically this is a movie worth watching if you’re willing to give it a chance. It had a lot more good to it than bad and the reason my review contains more criticisms than praise is because people remember bad things more often than good things. It’s never going to be a masterpiece but it is an enjoyably good movie overall. I enjoyed it more than Harry potter movies 3 and 4 and it’s definitely more enjoyable than that waste of hype Twilight. Seriously, I still cannot believe people like it.

Trust me when I say so because my list of what anime I remember watching (Not all of them completely finished though) is more than enough credentials for my level of Otaku-ism. My opinion is a lot fairer than anything a fanboy could tell you. Do not get me started with my list of manga cause unlike my anime DVD’s I never made a list to categorize which ones I own. I am working on it though but it’s hard to remember which ones I’ve gone through. In fact I only just remembered to add in the anime my brother buys and had to check my music files to remember which ones I’ve watched. I do my best not to be biased when I watch anime so that I can pick out the good ones for every season. I do wonder why Toradora isn’t on Chong Hock’s list yet though, it is VERY good.

My last words for this post:

Don’t take the movie so seriously, it’s a homage to Dragonball so enjoy it as a homage!

Holidays once more

Schools holidays have just started but I’m already feeling that it’s way too short. According to an encyclopedia I read years ago, Brunei is one of the top ten countries in the world with the highest number of school days. We’re probably still in seventh place since we had 200 school days then and we still have 200 school days now. I really envy those living in temperate zones since they have fewer school days thanks to their own holidays and seasons. Our ten day break hardly compares to theirs which last months. With global warming, it’ll probably get even longer too. On a side note, this time my Dynames fell off my mirror table while I was a sleep last night. Not very strange unless you count the fact that it was far away enough from the edge that it shouldn't even reach the edge if it falls. I've also added a chatbox here.

To get the anime club in the mood for holidays early, I decided that we should watch a movie for the last day of the term. By the way, our school’s projector bag is ridiculously big. The projector itself could fit in my laptop’s backpack but the case was the size of a luggage bag. I showed them “Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo” and they seemed to like it quite a bit. I had to cut it short though because we were strapped for time because of time delays caused by faulty power points in the room so I had to skip the first ten minutes. Even with that much time skipped over, we had to stay back five minutes more to get to the farewell scene at the end. There was quite a lot more laughter than I thought there would be but I guess that’s a sign of my experience with anime compared to theirs. Ahahaha… you watch enough anime and those small visual and tsukkomi gags will only be able to bring a smile rather than a laugh 97% percent of the time.

I was very amused at the farewell scene though. It’s a kind of slow scene that was deliberately paced so that it looked like the guy was going to kiss the girl. It was at that part where I heard everyone squeal in delight. When the psudeo kiss scene actually turned out to be a heartwarming embrace, everyone went “Awhhhh”. It made me consider the possibility that my juniors are quite the romanticists for wanting a kiss scene. If you ask me, it would have been an awkward and sudden development considering the relationship of the two characters. That hug was a smart move on the director’s part because unlike Hollywood movie directors, the Japanese directors seem to prefer going for the feel of the movie rather than go for what everyone’s expecting. To me, hugs are a more natural start for romances than kisses because it’s a more comfortable and natural pace than a kiss that implies many things in an instant. It is one of the reasons I find Twilight to be overhyped trash. It’s supposedly getting an anime adaptation but with that kind of story I doubt even KyoAni could make it appealing to me. I can’t even get myself to watch or read Vampire Knight because I really don’t like vampire stories. Why are people so fascinated with vampires? There’s plenty of vampire fanfics at fanfiction.net even in stories where nothing even remotely resembles one of those bloodsuckers.

From there it got me to thinking this, why do girls paint their nails? It looks terribly unnatural and I don’t any guy who actually finds them appealing. They’re basically the same thing as tattoos and you have to cut them anyway so why bother painting them in the first place? I guess it’s probably the same reason why people dye their hair but it still doesn’t seem sensible in any aspect. Directly from there it made me figure out traits I’d want in an ideal girl. She’d have to be smart, cute and have a challenging and troublesome personality. That way, I can have a lot fun being entertained by her antics and annoying her. I’d never be able to enjoy being around someone who bores me for a long period of time. However, if they possess the inability to read moods and are overly needy or talkative then that would make her too annoying for me to stand. Unfortunately the closest match to that would be Suzumiya Haruhi or Kawashima Ami but unlike most Otakus, I don’t feel the same attraction they do towards 2D characters. You have a guy who’s never cried at movies or anime talking here. I’ve watched “Grave of the fireflies” and “Air – The Movie” and my eyes came out dry so the chances of me getting the least bit emotionally attached to any character are close to zero. I do have favorite characters for particular series but I never relate myself to them. They were tragic movies but they weren’t tragic enough. I say that to those who did and they’ll either call me a liar or some manner of a heartless being. The internet keeps saying that I’m the latter though. People like Adlan would call me a liar since he can’t seem to accept the fact that I don’t like hentai no matter how many times I say so. There are people who have seen and rejected the “darkness” of the Otaku world and I’m one of them. He’s one of those people who believe that the “darkness” is what the Otaku world really is. That’s what happens when what you look for in anime isn’t the storyline.

Speaking of storylines, the second half of Heroes season three is ridiculously predictable and dull. Anyone with a brain should have figured out that Rebel is Micah since no one else has super l337 haxxorz skills. The only good parts of the show are usually Sylar’s and Hiro’s but they’ve been less than satisfying in terms of development lately. I really do hope they get rid of Claire soon though, she’s the most annoying character on the show and letting her mother in on this needlessly long undercover act didn’t help at all. I’m even enjoying one Nanoha StrikerS episode as much as three Heroes episodes and that’s the season with the slowest pacing out of all three. I do hope that they’ll animate the fourth season using a single cour length since a double cour would just slow down the pacing again. Lost on the other hand was amazing in the fourth season and nearly as good this season. I just wish that they’d hurry up with the smoke monster’s reveal.

To show exactly how good it is, here's a Nanoha video dubbed over with voices from an ace combat game:



I just saw a demo for the upcoming Miku –Project Diva PSP game and it will bug me that I don’t have a PSP to play it on since from what I’ve heard and seen, this could be one of the best PSP games ever. Kingdom Hearts - Birth by Sleep is a close contender though. It basically plays like guitar hero only that the commands fly all over the screen a pattern so you can watch Miku dance in impressive backdrops while playing. I imagine that might prove to be detrimental to players score seeing as how distracting it can be. I can see how high the playability will be for this game with all the customizations this game offers. You can even add in your own mp3’s to play to, a feature I’m still wondering why guitar hero doesn’t have. Hopefully they included a Tako Luka character inside as well but since there aren’t as many Luka songs as there are Miku songs so she’ll probably have to wait for a sequel before showing up.

Here's a couple of gameplay videos





Here's a link with a video showing more of the features:
http://www.dannychoo.com/detail/mac/eng/image/15937/39+Secrets:+Hatsune+Miku+-Project+DIVA-.html

Good news for Gunpla collectors though. They’ve announced the HG 1/144 sets Susanoo, Arche Gundam and 0 Gundam. 0 Gundam’s release date isn’t confirmed but judging by the fact that Susanoo is set for July and Arche set for May, the 0 gundam will most likely be in June. Hopefully they’ll release a 1/100 model for Susanoo and 0 gundam because the announcement of their 1/144 kits is tempting me to get the Trans-Am 00 Raiser too. But knowing from Bandai’s penchant for being evil bastards, they’ll be releasing a 1/100 Trans-Am 00 Raiser next followed by 1/100 Trans-Am Cherudim, Arios and Seravee coming with the extra equipment. This is the work of pure evil since the extra equipment look pretty damn cool and now I don’t know whether to go for any of the 1/100 kits just yet. But since the Innovators have Trans-Am now, it’s quite likely that they’ll be releasing Trans-Am kits for Gadessa, Garazzo, Gadessu, Gaga and Susanoo. Probably Arche too if they show Ali using it next week. And as for the upcoming MG Unicorn Coating version, it looks like a pretty good kit. The shiny coat goes quite well with the clear plastic pink between the armor plates.

Trans-Am 00 Raiser. SOOOO TEMPTING

Susanoo a.k.a. Samurai Flag

0 Gundam

Arche Gundam

To finish things off, I'll leave up the winning design for a new flag for the welsh on an online "Redesign the Welsh Flag to include a Dragon" competiton. It won the contest in a landslide and that's not surprising considering that it's based on Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

RAW! RAW! FIGHT THE POWAH!!