Sunday, October 28, 2012

2 more weeks to AFA'12!

time really flies, a burnt weekend followed by a long one and as we welcome the long weekend: its gone before we know it O_O

last weekend was too short, and these 3 days felt the same too... went to play Badminton on Friday with JC friends. Awesome time and playing badminton over in camp really does help myself to improve haha. Saw myself stuck over the rest of the weekend, stoning at home. Headed out yesterday night to Downtown East to have dinner where there was the Halloween event held at the D'Marquee as well. The queue was so damn long too O_O talk about a paid event! Went by Chrisford too and got to ogle at the guitars over there. Gotta get myself a red one soon!  :D Saw the exact on that I wanted over at cash converter for 169 bucks... was tempted though... but I personally would rather not get a 2nd hand one.

what I had in mind was this: would take a look over at peninsula when the time to buy is right :) hopefully it comes as a set!



-----



have bought the festival + stage ticket for Saturday and am planning for a normal festival ticket for Sunday. Sadly *SCAPE only sells the F+S tickets so I'll have to get the Sunday F ticket on the event itself. More importantly, AFA'12 has brought along the 1st 2 madoka movies that have been shown across many countires. This wasn't actually surprising since it was earlier confirmed on the Madoka website that the movie will be shown in Singapore in the later part of the year and coincidentally AFA was also in the same timeframe so I kinda had the hint that it'll be packaged together. However the ticket didn't come cheap though, for early bird tickets, it was a total of SGD50 for 2 movies inclusive of movie premiums. Had it been just the movie itself, I might have reconsidered but since the package was so tempting, I got it anyways :D

Looking at how the 3rd new movie that will be shown next year, I won't be that sure if it'll be shown in AFA'13 or just in the cinema. Would prefer the latter though, better sound quality compared to the normal Expo Hall for the 2 movies this year. 2 more weeks to go and I'm getting excited and worried at the same time. Please don't burn my AFA weekends! *prays*

Robotics; Notes


3 episodes down and I'm slowly beginning to experience the so called post Steins;Gate syndrome. On 1st look, it looks like just a small Robot Club trying to complete their gundam-size robot called Gunvarrel but on the other hand, it looks like the characters each might have developed certain abilities that might make the series as large scale as S;G was. Our female protagonist has a syndrome where she'll experience a fast-forward of her time, meaning that minutes of time to her would pass as mere seconds. The male protagonist has almost identical abnormality but he somehow can control his movements when the symptoms appear. Which means that he actually has the ability to "accelerate" himself. *Accel-world anyone?*

On a bright note, it does have its colourful elements with certain injects here and there to possibly bring suspense into a series of high expectations. Considering how successful and wonderful Steins;Gate was, it would be difficult to leave this series as a standalone. I really do have quite high expectations for this.

-----

It was a rather shocking week for Shin Sekai Yori's 5th episode. It had almost seemed like a totally different series I had watched for the past 4 episodes. Animation quality had drastically changed, the storyline gets extremely confusing, the time portrayed in the episode seems so haywire that I don't even know how many days had passed since Saki and Satoru had separated from the others while running away. The episode even started with the monk been blown by the "balloon dog" and blood and violence ensued over the span of 24 minutes. What came more surprising was the intimate scene between Saki and Satoru. Did the animation changed to make the scene less awkward as it might have been if the character design causes them to remain as 12-year-old look-alikes? What's more, that scene was totally random although it could be understood that the 2 of them were stressed and possibly worried and thus had confided in each other in such a way. The series has been promising and hopefully it'll continue to be, and hopefully the quality returns to how it was for the earlier episodes. It was heart-wrenching to watch something that doesn't make sense accompanied by distorted characters. Though I do give the suspense some credits.

-----

Sword Art Online has finally moved on to Alfheim Online or ALO for short. SAO was pretty much over and looking back, other than the particular episode where the 2 of them confessed to their love and moved on extremely quickly from there, I would've thought that SAO could have ended itself over the last episode with Asuna awaking. But since the series is now following the Light Novels, ALO has arrived with another "female protagonist" called Leafa which in real life is Sugu, Kirito's "little sister" which in fact is his cousin. Sugu has developed feelings for Kirito after she learns the fact that they were not siblings in real life and gets disappointed after she realise that his "brother" has already fell for Asuna. Not knowing Kirito in ALO is her "brother" Kirigaya Kazuto, she seems to have fallen in love with the in game Kirito as well. Talk about coincidence. I bet she'll be extremely disappointed once she finds out about the truth. Now I thought that Kirito had made headlines as he was the one who had cleared SAO and freed the players? Now why would Sugu not know about Kirito being the ign of her "brother"? Or at least question about it? Not much has been explained over how SAO had ended since it was focused on Kirito trying to get Asuna back. Seeing that he only has less than a week to clear the world tree, the series might skip various battle scenes to fast forward to focusing on Asuna's rescue. I would've preferred it SAO way though but since it's a different game, having a different perspective where the players are more free where they are "allowed" to die and log out, the seriousness of the game might have been taken out and thus the battle scenes as well.

"A game where you can die is too easy" - Kirigaya Kazuto

-----

God Eater Burst OP by alan



Sunday, October 14, 2012

Original Series FTW


somehow I just don't have the luck in pulling Kyouko out in any merchs. Even the gashapon on soul gems yielded me 2 of Sayaka's. Bad luck yea =.=

AM SO LOOKING FORWARD TO AFA '12! Hopefully scheduling goes well though... *prays for no clashes in activities*

Psycho-Pass


so here comes another original series by Production I.G., consisting a group of amazing seiyuus. Talk about awesome voices! :)

From the main protagonists: We have Kougami Shinya voiced by Seki, Tomokazu (Yzak Joule from Gundam Seed / Destiny), Tsunemori Akane by Hanazawa, Kana (Kanade from Angel Beats!) Kagari Shuusei by Ishida, Akira (Athrun from Gundam Seed / Destiny), Kunizuka Yayoi by Itou, Shizuka (Lenalee from D.Gray man), Makishima Shogo by Sakurai, Takahiro (Suzaku from Code Geass).

Now that is what I call an epic group. The story revolves around an advanced world where people or criminals are judged by the system controlling the city called Sibyl and the enforcers or the police, wields the Dominator, a gun that switches between non-lethal paralyzer and lethal extermination depending on the target's Criminal Coefficient. Once it exceeds a certain value, the gun automatically switches mode by itself. Seems like a wonderful setting to set the story going with many controversies over whether people should or should not be judged according to their mental state and their probability of committing a crime. One side of the argument might be that the system judges such individuals to prevent them from committing crimes and hurting or even killing other people as a result and the judgement deters that from happening. But in the end, is it truly right? Is plainly judging on the behaviour of the human be able to judge their future actions? Nonetheless, this would be one series that I'll be following quite closely given it's debatable storyline.

*din't actually have much inspiration right now to get the rest of the post done, so I'll leave some impressions and a heads up on Robotics; Notes in the next entry :)*

Jyuu-bosou! ZZZZZ-CUNE!



Atsui hibana ga zukyuuuun to chitta
Itami wo koraeteru tsubomitachi
Yuukan na yume ga kowasubeki mono wa
Ai wo tsuranuite mamorenai
Jibun desho monster

Seed wo yadoshita
Shintai no oku ni aru uchuu
Futari no mirai wa sekai wo sukuu

Aoi tsuyosa to miracle
Ashita wo shinjite
Yubi to yubi wo karametara
Kiseki no hana ga hiraku no
Shirayuri hime Heroic lily
Hadak no kokoro ni afurechau jounetsu
Yuujou no ecstasy
Tsuiteiku to iu no nara
Niji wo miseteageru wa

Burenai tamashii kometeyukeru nowa
Nando mo jibun wo oitsumeta kara
Tatakaitaku nado nakattan dakara ne
Muda ja nai yo tte iu egao ni
Sugu waretesodatta

Mitsumeteageru wa yokubou no arika wo jitto
Shisen ni nugasare hajiireba ii

Anata to wakachiaitai hatenai yokubou wo
Seigi towa kimochii mono wasuretakunai kaikan
Shirayuri hime Heroic lily
Mezameta inochi wa mune to mune synchro
Ugokidasu DREAM MACHINE
Doko made ga anata na no
Doko kara ga watashi na no

Hitotsu ni naru to jiyuu ga fukamaru
LOVE no tame umaretekita watashitachi wa,

Aoi tsuyosa to miracle
Ashita wo shinjite
Yubi to yubi wo karametara
Kiseki no hana ga hiraku no
Shirayuri hime Heroic lily
Hadak no kokoro ni afurechau jounetsu
Yuujou no ecstasy
Tsuiteiku to iu no nara
Niji wo miseteageru wa

Sunday, October 7, 2012

What-? I don't even-

shocking, shocking. simply mindblowing. I was deceived, hard, by how cool the trailer actually was:

I should have wiki-ed it beforehand...



what I had actually expected was what I had seen in the 1st portion of the trailer. A mysterious, supernatural genre that would leave another great impression for the season. How wrong I was... It turns out that the "ability" and the sword / coat that our main male protagonist has is actually an effect from the "eighth-grader syndrome" where kids that age tend to believe they possess certain powers. Which in this case belongs to our high school female protagonist Takanashi Rikka. She believes that she possesses the evil eye and has reacted to our male protagonist Togashi Yuuta, the ex-warlock (self proclaimed). So all in all, what I had expected out of this series has been flipped upside down, becoming a slice of life anime that retains the k-on cuteness but more random and interesting storyline than mere club sessions of 5 girls playing instruments. Not that I particularly hate the sudden turn of events but this could be a good time killer every week :)

There was yet another mysterious series: K. As short as the title is, I have absolutely no clue of what exactly was going on after the 1st episode. People calling each other kings and fighting each other with certain powers. Somehow the security forces seem a bit like the Shaman King holy knights. They were just a tad similar IMO. Don't really know what is going on in K but nonetheless it seems promising.

Hayate no Gotoku!'s latest season may have high hopes due to the storyboard being written by our own Hata-sensei but the animation style is a pain to watch. I really do prefer the old animation style that hooked me up in this random butler anime series but the constant change of style, from the movie to this latest series is really disturbing. To put it frankly, I really didn't like the new style at all. Hayate looks like his own hair is eating his own head and the others just had awkward hairstyle animation styles. It has its own storyline this time as well, running separately from the manga. Would be a good break to take from the manga too since the manga is going essentially nowhere. Am not really sure what Hata-sensei is trying to take the manga series from here but I do think that there is no end to be seen as of yet. Oh well, at least its hitting the rankings and am still continuing weekly. So as a rather loyal fan of HnG, why not?

Sword Art Online has finally concluded their 1st major arc of Aincrad which bumpy rides here and there, and if SaO had decided to pull the plug with their 14th episode, I would have literally punched the screen right there and then. I wouldn't say that the series is entirely bad, I still believe that the storyline has really been great and the inclusiveness of RPG elements into the anime series was a wonderful sight to see. Seeing the players fishing, crafting and even drinking potions, it was an interesting show to begin with. What possibly led to the fall of the back few episodes of the Aincrad arc was many rushed developments and less enforcement of RPG elements and relying more on mere miracles or "bugs" in the system. That was clearly shown in the 14th episode where Kirito, who was supposedly dead after being killed by the final boss had suddenly managed to keep his spirit in the game, with no reason explained anywhere, and kills the final boss with ease. Without even the game showing enough of the strong boss monsters, where the skulled boss was probably the 1st that the advance party had actually faced difficulty fighting. I mean hey, Kirito solo-ed the Gleam Eyes fairly easy by himself and I would honestly say that the skulled boss had piqued my interest in how future bosses would be like. And what did I get... the final boss "appearing" right after that, Kirito solo-ed him. Asuna disappears and thats the end of the Aincrad arc. IMO, it might have been better to feature more bosses, stretch the Aincrad arc up to 25/26 episodes, have more main character development and then finally reach the final floor, clearing the game and reuniting with Asuna in the real world. Kinda cliche but I really don't want to see this series as a draggy one that could become yet another monotonous mainstream anime.



Little Busters! has finally aired after what I believe would have been years of waiting. Essentially as a work from Key Animations, I am leaning towards the series's strong storyline, character development and the various heartbreaking arcs that might occur in the rest of the series. Seeing how none of the Key Animation works has yet to disappoint me, or I would rather say leave me without tears, I am really having high hopes for this ever since Clannad has ended. It first reminded me of Anohana where a couple of friends group together to help the community or to play as a group, I wouldn't say I see romance coming into Little Busters! yet, but that is an option not to be dismissed. A promising series and one that I have actually waited and the series IS looking good. Not sure if it's just me but doesn't Natsume Rin's seiyuu seems weird? I was expecting a Kyou style of seiyuu. Kinda cutesy for a tomboyish girl though...

Had grabbed another box of Nendo Petit from Latendo. And unfortunately, I missed Kyouko yet again... aw. Nonetheless, AFA is arriving, so it's time to wait :D *gonna fix Homura up next week* :)