MSNBC…Really Now?

Working really hard at work as usual……I read up on MSNBC to check out what’s around the world (including BBC, CNN, etc), I had to really Face Palm on this one. Last year when a friend showed me the youtube video of this Rebecca it was already a fail for letting a 14 year old whore herself out to the world and selling DVDs of her. Didn’t someone catch up on the stereotypical Japanese Otaku and little girls (*Looks for pedobear*).

Come one MSNBC, keep it real and at least report about cancer about or something.

Yumeiro Patissiere

When this series came out, it was much of a gamble whether or not it’s going to waste my time sitting at my desk. Jumping to conclusions, it wasn’t a waste of time. The story goes with a girl named Ichigo Amano who since she was a child be a pâtissière (female pastry chef). Starting off (so far with 3 episodes) telling her depressing story of how her grades aren’t all that great and she’s not good with sports or many activities. On top of that she goes on telling about how her sister is good with the piano while they are on the way to a recital. Afterwards is when the story really kicks in with a few flashbacks of when Ichigo was with her grandmother (is is a pâtissière). Then after that story, it’s Ichigo ending up finding a pastry festival where all sorts of things happen at once. Everything from getting food to the stereotypical forgetting money then another story time about the grandmother who some random guy knows about. From then on, the main part of the story comes into play with Ichigo being able to transfer to St. Marie school of cullinary arts, after a blackmail incident from the mother to the father about some golf clubs. This is all in the first episode so it’s more of a stage for the entire series.

After the enrollment into the new school, there’s the whole new school experience that’s almost like when Nagisa entering Astrarea Hill from Strawberry Panic, minus the yuri scenes, but things takes a downhill turn for Ichigo right afterwards. Things turn out that Ichigo never really had much experience in the culinary field, so she’s scolded left and right by some douche students, and nearly leaves the school. But like most any shows (not just anime), life lessons are thrown in; in this case, not giving up. After the long wet wait at the bus stop, she returns to the school and starts her own crash course in the kitchen. While in the kitchen attempting to make crepes, a fairy shows up wanting to help Ichigo. From this on out, it’s starting to be a pattern of screw ups, fix ups in the kitchen, and finding the inner Ichigo.

Truthfully, this has been an interesting series…so far. In the outros, there are showings of other fairies in the show that will most likely pop in later on.

After each of the series, there’s a little special on some real life Japanese pastry chefs. Man I’m hungry.

Seitokai no Ichizon

The fall season has finally kicked in and finally good things are coming out instead of Haruhi Second Season or 07-Ghost (not bad or anything, but it had potential to fail with boring people). One of the series that fianlly got to episode 2 on is Seitokai no Ichizon. At a private school, a student council is voted in by popularity and high grades, etc. In the group is the only male of the five in the group, Ken Sugisaki, who of course acts like the stereotypical crazy anime male in the series. The few activities so far have been, studying, approving clubs, and approving more clubs. So far only Chizuru Akaba, Ken Sugisaki, and Mafuyu Shiina have made huge scenes in the series. Maybe later on in the series the other three characters will play a role, since they are main characters too.

Seitokai no Ichizon doesn’t bore the crap out of a person (like a lot of them last season of animes), but rather throws in the usual comedy to make it enjoyable. Not the Last Exile enjoyable, but more like the first season of Haruhi, but taken a step further. I mean how can a male in a harem not be funny, there will be times where he gets abused to pieces by videotaping females in costumes. For the nerd side, how the heck can a person play a H-game on a 5.25″ floppy?

Can’t really say for sure how the series is by the means of “hands down good / bad,” however, so far after watching the first episodes, it maybe a series that’s worth continue to watch.

2009 Otakon –where does the time go!?-

The saying goes that time sure flies when you’re having fun. What a very true statement to say because this con disappeared in a blink! In a very simple and quick way to say what Otakon was, it was fun and smooth this year. Attendance was very high, the weather wasn’t all that bad in the evenings, and a few more food choices this year (if you like street vendors)!

Attendance was higher than expected this year in which that’s always a great thing. What truly makes anime cons fun are the people. Who doesn’t love hearing shouts and echos of “Buttscratcher!” all weekend? Granted, the registration lines are always a bit of a nightmare (long lines are long) but I can understand there’s not really much Otakon can do about that. Part of the convention center was under construction (the outside platform in the middle building, second floor) and I’m sure this didn’t help the spacing and stuffy hallways. Still, part of the glamour of Otakon is that the con is just filled with tons of people so it’s part of its unique charm.

Like last year, only con attendees were allowed into the convention centers. They would have staff members check badges. No problem with that though and it works out quite well except this year, seems some non-con goers snuck in and was going around taking pictures. Luckily, it was nowhere as bad as a previous Otakon (right after the end of a baseball game, many drunken tourists hassled several people).

The layout of events hasn’t really changed much since last year. The dealers’ room still occupied the whole giant part of the downstairs, lots of photo shoots in the waterfall area, etc etc. The escalators actually ran all weekend though sometimes they were randomly blocked by staff and sometimes they were free for all. However, the whole layout can be fairly overwhelming for anyone new to Otakon. A simple look in the map will tell you how to get to places but it would be extra convenient if the staff members also had the maps and showed you how to get to places (a lot of people did not know where the masquerade was even being held at).

For future reference, the new Hilton hotel that opened right next to the convention center (fully accessible through the beautiful skywalk) is a fabulous hotel. Not only was it very convenient (never even have to step outside), but the hotel was beautiful (plenty of spots around for some great photoshoots), the rooms were very spacious, and the staff was courteous. They actually had staff guarding the elevators, checking to see if you had a room card. At first this was annoying and it didn’t help that they were a bit rude about it. However, this did seem to keep the elevators going nice and smooth.

Onward to the events of the convetion, this year was blown away with the guests performing at the convention. Kanon Wakeshima played on Saturday to satisfy the crowd with the cello / dark music and Mell to kicked in with the techno type / jpop to make the crowd jump up and down.

Other guests came VAMPS (JRock group), Becca (Singer), Kikuko Inoue (voice actress) who’s known to play Belldandy in Ah! My Goddess, and Noboru Ishiguro (Director/Producer) known for works on Battleship Yamamoto and the original Macross. Unfortunately like many other US anime conventions, not many Japanese guests showed up, must’ve been the swine flu epidemic.

Otakon is not Otakon without the industries releasing information on what’s going to go on in the near future. Some of the round ups is Funimation licensing some anime including, Spice and Wolf (First Season). Spice and Wolf is about a merchant who finds a wolf deity on his travels and then after some story about the village and a bargain, the two set off to travel to several of places.

Bandai has raised its Bandai flag by announcing that they acquired Kannagi ~Crazy Shrine Maidens~. Of course that means it’s coming soon to a store near you. Later in the year the second volume of the series (episodes 7-14) will come out later this year. What better way for Bandai to announce the US release of Kannagi than at Otakon? You have the industry, large convention, and the director Yutaka Yamamoto who directed Kannagi and a handful of other known series, Haruhi, Lucky Star, Full Metal Panic to name a few.

No anime convention is without a masquerade and once again, Otakon throws one in the 1st Mariner Arena. As usual the amount of people attending was larger than any other main event during the convention, bringing in forty skits. The amount of good skits for the crowd to cheer for was more than last year’s; however, not much more. Some of the surprising ones would be the Spice Girls Sailor Moon mix and the Naruto Taiko Drumming caught attention of the audience, merely because a lot of people thought it was going to be bad but turned out to be exceptionally well done. Since it is an anime convention, there was the occasional current day joke, including Michael Jackson thrown in there. Too soon.

Of course there’s the Sunday drag, or was it? It was like /b/ in Otakon with the “Awesome,” Santa, bagpipes, “Buttscratcher,” and well… just madness. There was just no way to explain what happened on Sunday except it was exceptionally interesting. Okay the entire weekend was something, like the Billy Mays and Vince battles, or was it team work? Oh well, well both cosplayers made the convention a little more interesting. Either way the convention was well done this year.

Finally this year, the lights were turned off in the rave. Thank you thank you. This really changes the whole rave to a different level. Great music and with the lights off, the rave was off to a great start. But for such a huge con, the spacing for the rave just isn’t enough for everyone. Without too much space, the bad odor really reeked this year even more. Here’s hoping that they could find a giant space somewhere to host next year’s rave.

There were tons of other events during the weekend, but like every convention it was pretty hard to go to. The Baltimore Convention Center is a large venue to house over 26,000 people so a lot of calories was lost during transit that needed to be replenished. Other events included the game show, the Bleach Panel that was rumored to be a 4chan panel in disguise, art auction, and many more.

All in all, Otakon went very smoothly. Even with the recent hard drives with the economy, its great to see everyone get together and just have a great time. The best closing words for Otakon? “Buttscracther!”

K-On!

So this series comes to a lot of anticipation of being a good series, and well, it is. Starting off with the first series where Yui is a freshman in her new high school, she is lost in which club to join. During the time Ritsu desperately tries to keep the schools, “Light Music Club” intact. The main problem with the light music club is the previous group had all graduated and risks disbandment if the club does not have four or more members.

K-On! is another school series but with tweaks here and there to keep the enjoyment alive without many fillers. Story does start from the introduction, but then things are added at times with new scenery from other than the school to secrets revealed about the music teacher at the school.

Nothing of this kind of anime is without the fan service, but not to excessive. Unlike anything compared to Strike Witches, everything just blends together; from the breasts jokes, to the usage of moe, it’s all tolerable, well unless you’re some hardcore conservative from the 1950s.

There are a few parts where it was a pain to watch such as when Yui lost her voice during the school festival but with Mio being scared out of soul made up for any problems with the series. It’s great that the series brings out the weakness of each character and doesn’t beat a dead horse with it, there’s always something new to the same joke over and over. One example would be Sawako Sensei herself and her past relation to the old old Light Music Club.

Overall the series is well worth the watch, no matter who you are. If you’re thinking, “oh this is another loli series,” then whatever. The story is great, the jokes are enjoyable, and the storyboard is tolerable. Definitely not the Lucky Star type where things can drag on about one thing (nothing wrong with Lucky Star, just the drag some times).

Chromed Shelled Regios 1-12

Chromed Shelled Regios started off as one of those no-so-known series; however, it contains different genres of entertainment to avoid making the series dull. Right from the beginning there’s already a fight scene with a monster and some explanation about the main character at a young age. Things blow up, organs splatter (and blow up), etc. for the few minutes until the opening starts to roll. Then it’s Layfon himself walking in a new domed city of Zuellini. Here more things gets destroyed and then sooner or later Layfon was forced to join the Military Arts sector of the Zuellini university (even though he only wanted to do general studies) by the president of the University (who’s ultimately the president of the domed city). This puts Layfon into the 17th platoon under the owner named Nina Antalk.

From there the story revolves around Layfon slowly showing his strength, past, and intentions of why he moved from Grenden to Zuellini. Explanations include why Layfon’s lost of his status of being a Heaven’s Blade carrier, exiled from the city of Grenden, and his relations with Grenden.

The story also carries out the background stories about the members of the 17th platoon. This goes for Nina’s past to move to Zuellini and her relation with the electric fairy who’s city’s conscious and her struggle to fulfill her dream to become stronger. She creates the 17th platoon to prove her strength and enters competition against other platoons in Zuellini.

Felli is the psycho-kinetic of the group who is also the sister of the president. Her apathetic attitude makes her unique to the series and a target for the writers of the series. Her signature shin kicking makes the series tolerable to watch as anything she doesn’t like she’ll get revenge. This goes for the episode when she gets a part-time job at the maid café, to the time Layfon helps her cook, and especially the 11th episode where she breaks her brother’s leg. Her role is to mostly support her group with navigation and communication from a remote distance, acting as a phone carrier at times and GPS locator the next.

The other members include Harley and Sharnid who’s stories have not been revealed much after the 12th episode, but it’s sure going to get interesting from there.

While this whole story takes place, most of the time it’s inside Zuellini which is a moving city that protects people from the polluted air outside. Outside also has something called Filth Monsters that tend to go to these cities and wreck havoc. That’s where Layfon’s other past comes in where he use to fight these commonly. Also surrounding these Filth Monsters are snippets of Legend of Regios that took place before Chromed Shelled Regios throughout the series.

Delicious Library

First of all, I’m very tired from staying up late last night from studying, then finding this program.

Delicious Library is a catalog program for OS X which allows a person to scan pretty much anything with UPC code relating to books, music, video games, toys, and a few other groups. All it does is put the products into it’s groups for record purpose. To input data, you can either input the UPC then it AUTOMATICALLY looks for the product and puts it in to the database or for the Mac users, you can use your iSight camera to get the computer to read the barcode. Of course iSight isn’t perfect, but for the most part where the UPC code is pretty big, it works. Delicious Library seems to be working with Amazon.com to grab cover art and information for the product, along with ratings, synopsis, and reviews for the product from Amazon.com.

Other things with this program is to publish your collection into HTML format and upload it to a website. There are also options to upload directly to a .mac account, ftp, or iWeb.

Here’s an example of an uploaded Delicious Library made catalog for HTML.

Another feature it has is the ability to loan an item out and record it. This feature I haven’t tried myself.

The few problems I’ve encountered was the iSight camera and the inability to read a lot of UPC codes because it was too small. The iSight camera was never good for capturing photos in general, but for the most part it took most of the things in the example. This includes bar codes of figures imported from Japan. Another problem was the program itself unable to locate some of the items correctly. Some of the Halo books I scanned came up as some Anne Rice’s, “Interview with the Vampire.” The UPC code is apparently the same, but the ISBN number is different.

If the scanning doesn’t work, you can manually find the product using the UPC code or ISBN number. One thing to remember is if you are finding the items manually, select the item you’re inputting, otherwise it would not find it.

This program is by Delicous Monster.

Unfortunately, this program is mac only; however, my windows side says, “anything a mac can do Windows can do too.” Since google is your friend, Mediaman it is.

And….The Package

Alright the package is here from Play-Asia, and thanks to that, I’m going to put off much work tonight. Why?

-The package included all the Idolm@ster stuff except the PSP itself in the pic.

I’ll post more later. This then stuff in my real life…like studying, if I can stay awake from the long day at work.

White Album

This series was originally created by Leaf as an H game for the PC back in the late 90s, recreated for early 2000s, and finally as a Playstation 3 game was announced for 2009 recently. The series is finally not a game where you get a girl and go along with it, but rather you start off being a college student how already has a girlfriend named Yuki at the beginning; however, she becomes a rising pop idol, and you deal with a lot of drama ranging from another idol, local school “friends,” to the manager of your girlfriend.

The anime does follow somewhat of the path of the game, but not really. So far the first five episodes has started to build upon a train wreck, similar mood to the last few episodes of School Days.

Back to the story Toya is the main character that was hooked up with Yuki before she became a pop idol with Ogata productions. As she became an idol, the communication between the two starts to break down; however, Toya and Yuki tries to stay in contact as much as possible. The relationship does not seem to end during the first five episodes; but things do get nasty when some of the Ogata production folks try to break up Yuki and Toya for to avoid any problems with Yuki becoming an idol. This includes Rina trying to get the manager to take Toya’s heart or mind to get him away. Things do seem to break down in the fifth episode when the phone calls start to go unanswered and contact is limited. Are things going to end? Who knows… The main goal is for Toya NOT to lose his relationship with Yuki and do whatever it takes to hold on to her.

Along with Toya’s relationship issues with Yuki and himself, an anime series modeled after an H game is not completed without the main character having too much on his plate. This goes with his other female friends how is hinted to like him. This goes from Haruka a friend, who seemed to have hooked up Toya with Yuki back in High School; Mizuki who is a colleague of Toya at the college they go to; Rin Ogata who is already a known idol under the Ogata productions, who is hinted to liking Toya.

So far so good with the series since it doesn’t involve a lot of drag or action, kind of a good in between lay back and watch series. The drama isn’t too sobbing like Kimi Ga Nozmu Eien to the point you want to shoot yourself in the face, but it shows a relationship struggle that a person can stand to watch and try to understand in the circumstance. Okay not really, it really starting to get screwed up.

Continue reading White Album…

Idom@ster for Playstation Portable (PSP)

Screwed asian is screwed with the title. Sometime this winter, The Idolm@ster SP for the PSP will come in three games and from it looks like on idolmaster.jp: Makoto, Haruka, Yayoi will appear in Perfect Sun; Azusa, Chihaya, and Ritsuko in Missing Moon; Iori, Yukhio, and the Futami Twins in Wandering Star. (Source: Famitsu)

Idolm@ster is an Idol simulater with the protagonist (player) interacts with idol(s) from checking their mail to getting them prepped auditions to gain popularity. Many of the high points in the game is to be with the character almost every step of the way, helping them with their morale, dances, singing, etc. The game is so interactive, you can even decide what the character wears during performances from the very cute to the most “WTF?” Nothing wrong with some Jpop and Idols, right? (especially now that it’ll be portable)

One major plus for the port (from what it looks like, it’s a direct port), that the PSP games are region free. This makes it so a person in the states have to fly over to Japan to play the actual arcade or buy a Japanese Xbox 360.

Will the Sony PSP sales actually over take the Nintendo DS? Even if it’s just for one day? Oh wait it already has.