| Kurenai Episode 6 |
[May. 14th, 2008|08:15 pm] |
OH MY GOD. KURENAI THE MUSICAL. SO MUCH LOVE. <3<3<3
(In other words, this series continues to be the epitome of excellent voice acting, now with bonus really good and extremely bad singing. If you're not watching this show yet, what are you waiting for!? Go and watch it NOW. I demand it.) |
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| More Kure-nai Ramblings |
[May. 13th, 2008|07:36 pm] |
Naturally, instead of being a good girl and working on my essays (which have thankfully been passed up now!) and studying dilligently like I should have the past few weeks, I succumbed to the usual Procrastination Syndrome and ended up catching up on some anime series. I even ended up watching quite a few episodes of a series that wasn't particularly high on my priority list, but more on that in a later entry.
My favourite two anime series of the Spring season so far, and likely to maintain those top positions, is Kure-nai and Toshokan Sensou. This entry will be about my impressions on Kure-nai only, since my ramblings once again stretched out so long that I think I'll spare those reading this from making it a Great Wall of Text. :p
( Impressions after the first 5 episodes )
So yes, I would definitely recommend Kure-nai to those trying to decide which anime series to try out for the spring season. ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) hyourinmaru and sapphodil can attest to my attempts to pimp this series to them. :p |
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| Crisis Core thoughts |
[May. 1st, 2008|06:26 am] |
My long overdue Crisis Core entry is done! I actually got re-inspired to finish it up after re-watching the ending. No matter how many times I watch the ending, it never fails to move me deeply. I think I still somewhat hold my breath every time I watch it.
( The Legacy of Zack )
So yes, finally a Final Fantasy game that I can say well and truly without any hesitation at all that it is one of my favourite video games ever. Zack, you will be sorely missed. i_i |
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| Five Favourite BL Mangaka |
[May. 1st, 2008|04:40 am] |
I've realised that out of my favourite BL mangaka, 4 have names that start with Y, out of which 3 of them have names which start with "Yama", and of those 3, 2 of them use the 山 kanji. And if I add another favourite BL mangaka whose name doesn't start with Y but who also has a 山 in her name, I seem to draw three possible (silly) conclusions:
(1) I have some weird irresistable attraction to Y/山-named BL mangaka,
(2) Y/山-named BL mangaka are all very talented, or
(3) Y/山 is just very common to have in a mangaka's name.
Maybe all three of the above. :p
But anyway. Although it might seem there's absolutely no point to this entry, there actually is. *hears mock gasps of surprise* I thought I should stop being such a slacker and start writing more reviews on my blog, especially since I've been updating only sporadically. So, as an incentive, I think I'm going to do "mangaka overviews" for some of my favourite BL mangaka. Since I tend to start by writing long-winded spiels which never get finished since I get bored of them, I'm hoping to first do very brief overviews of each mangaka, and then later add on more in-depth reviews of each manga as and when I feel like it my monstrously long reviews. Let's hope this strategy actually works. :p
So anyway, the five mangaka I will be reviewing sometime in the (hopefully near) future:
Yamada Yugi
Yamato Nase
Yamakami Riyu
Yoshinaga Fumi
Fujiyama Hyouta
Prepare for lots of fangirling to come. :p |
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| First batch of Spring anime impressions |
[Apr. 14th, 2008|08:29 am] |
I have two essays to pass up in slightly over 3 weeks, and exams in less than one and a half months oh which one is 100% of the ENTIRE YEAR'S work, and I've already started perusing the Spring season anime. Someone just shoot me now. *dies*
*revives herself*
*coughs* Anyway, just a few quick thoughts on the ones I've watched so far: (Yes, please do me a favour and deliver me a swift kick in the butt after seeing the sheer number I've watched so far. -_-)
( If only I could write as much as this for my essays... ) |
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| Crisis Core Gameplay |
[Apr. 5th, 2008|05:59 am] |
So now that more than two weeks have has passed since I finished Crisis Core, I finally feel at peace enough to do an entry on it. I can never seem to do justice to the games I love - I did attempt to blog about Tales of the Abyss and Xenosaga III previously, but ultimately gave up because I'm just not able to put into words just how wonderful I found those games. But I'll try my best. :p
( Minogasu na yo! )
And whoops, I think I'm going to have to break up my entry again since this one has gotten too long (as usual). It's amazing how I can find so much to ramble on about, really. ^_^;; Anyway, next entry will be mostly about Zack and the story itself. Be prepared for lots of Zack fangirling. XD |
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| Special Crisis Core Pre-order Edition |
[Apr. 1st, 2008|05:01 am] |
For those who don't know, Europe's getting a special pre-order edition of the English edition of Crisis Core which comes with special cover art with a box to go with it as well as a 48 page artbook. Normally visiting game shops here in the UK make me sad, since there are all these lovely relatively cheap PS games beckoning to me from their shiny shelves which I can't buy (Since I have an NTSC PS2 back home, not a PAL one), but for once I'm thanking my lucky stars that I'm here, being the ginormous special edition whore I am. :p
The extent of my Crisis Core insanity is evident in how I've ordered the game from BOTH HMV and Amazon. ^_^;; I was originally planning on just getting it from Amazon, since I had a 5pd gift voucher just begging to be used, but at the time I placed the order, the expected release date of the game was set as 30th July, which would be after I'd graduated and were already back in Singapore. But since there were a bunch of other sites listing the game as coming out much earlier*, as well as the fact that it was slated for a Spring release and apparently the Spring game release season ends on 21st June, I thought the likelihood of it being released earlier was pretty high. And I was right, since the release date has been updated to be 20th June, which seems to be confirmed by most of the other sites that stock this special edition. However, being the typical "kiasu" Singaporean (kiasu = "afraid to lose" in Singlish, for those who don't know), I thought that to be on the safe side, I'd order the game from HMV as well, figuring that I could sell one of them off if I ended up getting two copies. The amount I'm paying for the HMV version is, of course, going to be slightly more, but at least I have a 10% discount so it's not really that much more expensive, and the price in Sing dollars, even after conversion, is roughly equivalent to how much I would have to pay for the normal game in Singapore anyway, plus or minus a few dollars. A worthy investment for the artbook, I say. :D I just hope the pictures in it are worth it and not too composed of the common Crisis Core pictures that have already been released so far. Though considering how gorgeous the game is, I suppose I'm actually not going to complain if I can have a pretty high quality colour book of the artwork. :) (Or should I say "booklet", since it's going to be the size of a PSP box.)
Anyway, I'm eagerly looking forward to getting my hands on the English version of the game. Although I understood probably about 75% of the main story, I didn't really bother reading (+ couldn't actually read) much of the in-game mail that Zack got, which I unfortunately found out later sometimes held key pieces of information that helped make more sense of the plot. (Eg. The reason for Lazard's desire for revenge.) And I didn't bother doing much sidequests either due to headache all the extra text would have brought me. Hence I'm looking forward to striving to get all the summons this time round, since I missed out on a few and Zack is just so darn cute in some the summons that it'll be great to actually see them in action. XD
End game commentary on the next post so that this entry doesn't get too long. (And in case you're wondering why the sudden multitude of posts, it's because I'm backblogging. :p) |
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[Apr. 1st, 2008|12:02 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | anime | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Nottingham | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  Warm | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Vanilla - Gackt | ] |
After a really long time of not really bothering with the past anime seasons, it seems like the upcoming season is going to have tons of shows that I want to follow or at least try. As Murphy's Law would have it, the timing of this absolutely SUCKS since this is the last semester of Uni for me as well as my last chance to ensure I snag my 2-1, which I am oh so very screwed if I don't get. >_>
But I digress. Anyway, spring season is really appealing to me most notably because there's lots of variety, plus the fact that there seems to be a lot of shoujo shows, which have been quite rare these past mostly-harem-shows-saturated-seasons. Needless to say, I'm probably going to try most, if not all, of the shoujo anime this season. Now on to my list of shows that I (may) be following:
(For those who'd like to know what series there are to watch, check out this entry for a comprehensive list and a good overview of what's to come.
( On to the list! ) |
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| Not so much a review as a babble in which I say nothing of much substance |
[Mar. 23rd, 2008|02:50 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | josei, manga | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Nottingham | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Caramelldansen (Speedycake Remix) - Caramell | ] |
And I continue my streak of stumbling upon and reading one in a long line of really good but absolutely mind-fucking manga. O_O (Other such manga are Magic by Shimizu Reiko and Houkago Houkenshitsu by Mizushiro Setona, which I may do short reviews of sometime in the future. And considering I rarely swear, me calling them mind-fucking shows how insane I think they are. ^_^;;)
I first came across Omae ga Sekai wo Kowashitai nara because someone on ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) free_manga community was asking for help in remembering the title. From the short description, I assumed that it was going to be an entertaining, if slightly fluffy manga about vampires.
Boy was I wrong.
( And the screwiness begins. )
I'd definitely recommend this manga to people looking for an intelligent and moving read, especially if they like doomed lovers stories, and as long as they don't mind the fact that it's all so depressing. Just don't let the cover put you off because it's actually got pretty much nothing to do with the actual story itself. (In fact, I remember not downloading this before whilst I was combing through the Storm in Heaven website because the cover and description didn't really appeal to me.)
p/s Yes, I know I've been terribly neglectful with posting and commenting. Shall probably go on a commenting spree sometime in the next few days, so flist, beware. *laughs* |
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| Just finished Crisis Core. |
[Mar. 18th, 2008|09:10 am] |
Oh, Zack.
... I miss you already. |
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| Much sadness. :( |
[Feb. 28th, 2008|04:19 am] |
Crap. What I've been fearing has finally been confirmed - the new Tales game, Tales of Vesperia, is going to be for the Xbox 360. ARGH. I kind of expected this, since there were lots of hints that it WOULD be for the Xbox 360, just that I was being optimistic and hoping it would at least be announced as being multi-platform since the leak about it being on the 360 had gotten pulled earlier.
This sucks, because I was really excited for the game after watching this absolutely gorgeous trailer (which has the most amazing quality I've ever seen on a Youbtube video), and because I've never planned on ever getting an Xbox 360. I don't have anything against it, but the Xbox just generally doesn't have the type of games I'm interested in, plus I'm somewhat of a Sony fangirl. (Even despite all the cock-ups and bad decisions and horrible advertising they've been churning out in recent years.)
Man, I really hope they eventually do port it to the PS3 - because although I don't have a PS3 (I don't own any of the seventh generation home consoles), I definitely want one once they come out with a cheaper and more stable and perhaps even slim version. (Hopefully with backwards compatibility, but I'm not getting my hopes up. *sigh*) And since Eternal Sonata, a game I was really interested in, is going to be ported to the PS3 as well (it's originally an Xbox 360 game as well), I suppose I can cross my fingers and hope that Tales of Vesperia gets the same treatment.
I do wonder why they're releasing the game on the Xbox 360, though. The Xbox has performed pretty horribly in the Japanese market, so it's likely that the game may not do so well if it's released for the Xbox only. Maybe they're hoping to cash in on the American market? But the Tales series does waaaaaaaaaay better in Japan than in America - according to statistics, the American market makes up only 8% of the revenue that the Tales series rakes in, and 8% is PUNY. So it's unlikely that American gamers will magically start buying Tales games, especially since from what I've seen, the RPG genre isn't nearly as big over there as compared to other genres, with the exception being perhaps the Final Fantasy series.
Unless they're hoping that the Tales brand is strong enough that Japanese gamers will be willing to buy Xboxes just for Tales of Vesperia? Whilst that MAY work, especially if they release limited edition Xbox bundles with the game (I am sad to admit that that would almost tempt me into getting an Xbox 360 for myself, but thankfully my rational side is sane enough to realise that with my budgetary restrictions, that is JUST NOT POSSIBLE.), I doubt it's going to help Xbox sales in Japan that much more.
Whatever the case, I shall just wait patiently and see if my PS3 port dream comes true. I have plenty of time to wait anyway, since I won't be getting that PS3 any time soon. :p
EDIT: Just came across an earlier link which DOES mention the possibility of a PS3 release in the future. So all's good. :D |
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| More English Crisis Core OMG-ness |
[Feb. 24th, 2008|02:27 am] |
OMG ANGEAL WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOU!!!!!!!!???? (The video in question is the third one from the top)
I thought Lazard was flat, but the voice actor for Angeal is even WORSE! He sounds like he's just reading emotionlessly off the script! What happened to his warm, mentor-ly joking voice!? And the speed of his speech is so slow that he sounds like some kind of dead pan mannequin.
At least the video confirmed my prediction that I'll be able to least tolerate Zack's voice, since it's acceptable, just that I will forever be (possibly unfairly) comparing it to the Japanese voice all the time since English Zack is just nowhere NEAR touching the suitability that Suzuken's voice is to that character. But Angeal? I think I'm going to just take out my earphones every time it's his turn to speak.
(Btw, if you listen carefully to the background audio in the video, you can hear someone playing Patapon. XD)
And for those interested, here's a vid of Sephiroth's english voice. (It's the vid on the right.) Again, the English voice isn't as suitable as Morimori's since it's slightly rough and isn't as smooth and elegant as Sephiroth's voice should be, but I think it falls into the realm of "tolerable" as well. |
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| Of Summer Milo and Rancid Water |
[Feb. 17th, 2008|01:12 pm] |
Oh wow. Through all my years of reading scanslations, I thought I'd seen my share of really horrible translations *points at title*, but I recently came across one which was SO BAD that it just shocked me and made me wonder if the translators even knew what they were reading when they were doing the translations.
( Lots of rantage up ahead ) |
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| Crisis Core English trailer and ramblings |
[Feb. 11th, 2008|05:09 am] |
Nooooooooooooo!!!!! I just came across a trailer for the upcoming English translation of the Crisis Core game and... and... the voices! The bad acting! Arrrrrrrghhhhhhhh! *convulses*
Though to be fair, although I don't like the sound of Zack's voice per se, he did do the whole excited bit fairly well, so there's hope that after I get used to the sound of his voice, I'll find his acting adequate. (He's no where near as adorable as Suzuken, though. But I AM speaking as an utterly biased Suzuken fangirl.) But Lazard, could you be any MORE emotionless? And Angeal's voice just doesn't really fit his personality very well. It's got more of a detached blase superior feel to it than Inoue Kazuhiko's deeper and more... fatherly? voice. (I'm trying to think of a better word to use than "fatherly", but I can't think of one for the moment. Angeal's Japanese voice strikes me as giving the perfect impression of being the strict yet I'll-pretend-to-be-harsh-on-you-but-I'm-actually-always-looking-out-for-you sempai.)
Speaking of Crisis Core, the Japanese in it hurts my brain so I've actually been progressing pretty slowly in it. I've decided not to spend as much time on the extra missions and stuff and concentrate on the main storyline instead; the extras can be done once I get the English version and can actually properly understand what's going on. ^_^;;
( Cut for Crisis Core and the latter half of FF7 spoilers. )
I've actually got a lot more things to ramble on about the game, but I'll save that for a separate entry when I progress further in the game. (Will probably talk a bit more about Crisis Core's very different battle system in that one.) Especially since I've still got to finish up that Kyoushi mo Iroiro Aruwake de Chapter 2 summary which is 3/4 done so far. :D |
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| Yusheng |
[Feb. 7th, 2008|06:15 am] |
I don't normally write about RL stuff on this blog, since I have another blog which does the job, but since not many of the people on my flist celebrate Chinese New Year, I thought the following might be of interest to some. Especially since I personally like learning about other cultures, I thought I'd do some knowledge-sharing about a part of my own. :)
( All this talk of CNY food is making me have MEGA cravings. )
So the plan is to do Lo Hei with my friends tomorrow. It's funny how I never really thought about how I would celebrate CNY this year but now that it's here and now that I've got the idea of making Yusheng stuck in my head I'm REALLY excited and can't want to start. I'll probably be blogging about it at a later date, especially since there's something I would like to blog about but can't just yet due to a certain reason I'll like to keep secret till tomorrow. Hopefully I'll actually have honest-to-goodness pictures up with the upcoming entry too! :D |
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| Christmas 2007 celebrations! (albeit very backlogged. :p) |
[Jan. 20th, 2008|01:54 am] |
This is an extremely backlogged entry, since it's been sitting on my harddrive since a few days after Christmas. XD People adverse to walls of text *looks pointedly at hyourinmaru and sapphodil*, please avoid at all costs. :p
I had a great Christmas this year! It was probably the first time I ever had a real proper present-swapping thing with my friends, where we all got each other a gift. (Though we did end up pooling our resources on some gifts for each other) A Mok also came down from London to join us, so it was the first full Mok Mok gathering we've had since school started. We had so much fun, in fact, that we ended up having a three night sleepover at La Mok's room - I think that's the longest sleepover I've ever had. :p Not to mention we all totally wrecked our sleeping schedules since we slept at around 7am the first two, around the same time on the second, and for the third we just stayed up all the way until it was time to send A Mok off at the train station for her 12.40pm train. :p
We also had a semi-proper Christmas dinner, since we actually bought a whole chicken to roast - and of course sapphodil was the one who prepared the chicken, even though she'd never done it before and had just looked up for instructions on how to do so online. :) I made some tofu cheesecake for dessert, though it ended up a bit TOO tofu-y since we didn't have a weighing scale and so it wasn't as nice as I wanted it to be. (Even though I've made this recipe quite a few times, the past three times I've made it it hasn't turned out as well as I wanted it to - the past two times it was kind of grainy because the gelatin didn't melt properly. *sniffles*) There was also a bit of miscommunication between me and sapphodil while we were in the kitchen (it was getting a bit hectic since EVERYONE was crammed into our tiny kitchen and there were... *counts* seven of us in a kitchen that's really meant for two) and I ended up accidentally throwing the side dish of mushrooms and carrots into the bin thinking it was trash, but thankfully since it was securely wrapped in aluminium foil, we managed to fish it out and rescue it... and yes, it tasted fine. :p
The REAL reason behind this post, though, is because I want to be ego and show off all the lovely presents I got for Christmas. XD
( Be prepared to be bored with tons of text... although at least there are pictures? :p ) |
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| Kyoushi mo Iroiro Aruwake de by Yamato Nase |
[Dec. 30th, 2007|03:39 am] |
I came across this wonderful new series by Yamato Nase, one of my favourite BL mangaka, whilst browsing through the latest BexBoy Gold scans, and since I realised I haven't properly done a manga summary in ages, I thought my liking for this story warranted a reprieve from my chronic laziness to get a summary/review. :p
( The usual wall of text ) |
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| Skip Beat Chapter 116 |
[Dec. 28th, 2007|11:49 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | manga, skip beat | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  In a moe mood | ] |
| [ | music |
| | All for you - Janet Jackson | ] |
If I had one word to describe this chapter, it would be MOE. 
( Beware of incoherent babbling ahead )
Oh Skip Beat, you just keep getting better and better... |
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| Best fanmade Tales of Destiny video EVAR |
[Dec. 8th, 2007|01:10 am] |
OMG HOW AWESOME IS THIS.
To those who don't know, it's a spoof of the Lucky Star opening as well as the Air opening, featuring the characters from Tales of Destiny. The Air opening isn't particularly fantastic, though it's kind of cool to see ToD being spoofed as a Renai game, but the PURE GENIUS is the Lucky Star bit. I especially love the fact that the creator of the video substituted the "Raki Suta" text with "Tei Desu", which is derived from the game's title "Teiruzu obu Desutinii". XD
Anyway, it's really cute how for some bits you can tell that the creator used the original Lucky Star character faces and just changed the hair and clothes.* Stahn with the >w< face is simply ADORABLE. And it helps that his long hair is perfect for him to substitute for Konata, since it also does the flappy wavvy thing when he jumps up and down. :D Also, Leon kneeing Stahn in the legs during the "chattering legs" bit? SO APPROPRIATE. XD (Oh Leon, I still remember how you used to masochistically electrocute Rutee and Stahn for much of the beginning of the game. XDXDXD) Another favourite scene is the cheerleader scene, where the girls stand in front with the cheerleading outfits and the pompoms, and the guys stand at the back with the traditional japanese black cheerleading outfits. It's interesting to note that Mary is in the "guy" row - oh Mary, you ROCK. XD
For those of you who don't know any of the series mentioned above, I'd still recommend checking the video out since it's really cute. :D
And in other ToD related news, I... I think I may actually succumb to horrible temptation yet again and get the Tales of Destiny Director's Cut Premium Box. The price has my wallet weeping in agony, but...but! Not only have I been dying to play the Tales of Destiny remake ever since I first heard of it, THEY DECIDED TO MAKE A DIRECTOR'S CUT EDITION WITH AN ADDITIONAL LEON STORY PATH. AND THEN THEY THROW IN AN ARTBOOK OF INOMATA MUTSUMI'S GORGEOUS ARTWORK AND A SOUNDTRACK. Tell me, just HOW am I not supposed to cave in? Especially since Tales of Destiny is one of my favourite RPGs of all time.
... Ok, ok, so it IS possible to still resist such a giant temptation. I'd admit I'm just choosing to ignore that fact, materialistic person that I am. >_>
*EDIT: Oops, just read the text in the beginning and I just realised that I was slightly wrong about that - the creator didn't alter the original Lucky Star drawings per se but rather drew the ToD characters from scratch, just that he modelled the style on Lucky Star's designs. My bad. |
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| Bleach mutterings |
[Dec. 3rd, 2007|09:13 am] |
Just caught up with Bleach, and although the boring fights continue to drag on (I'm just glad the boring Ichigo-Grimmjow chest-thumping fight is FINALLY OVER), I at least have one thing to say:
( Cut for spoilers for chapters 291 onwards )
In other happier news, I really like the colour cover for chapter 298, it's really adorable. And although I'm more of a Renji-Rukia fan and I like to think of Ichigo and Rukia as having the sort of special relationship that's beyond simple friendship but isn't one of romantic love either, I have to say that I find it kind of cute how Rukia and Ichigo are kinda-sorta wearing matching clothes in the illustration. Awwww. :p |
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Sleepy
Sad
Icky sore throat. >_