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Aniblog Tourney – Round 2 Part 1 – Day 1-3 Digest

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No wai! I was busy...

Sorry for the long delay… I was caught up with final exams that happened on the first two days. On Wednesday, Steam for Mac was released and it came with free Portal, so I spent my time playing Portal and moaning about sacrificing my Weighted Companion Cube. I just beated the game when I totally forgot about the second round… so yeah.

In this round, I will do things a little differently. Instead of reviewing them individually, I will review them basing on content and layout/design. Content weighing a lot more than the layout/design. This will make things run a bit more smoothly.

Note: The fanart used above is made by えらんと
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Read moreAniblog Tourney – Round 2 Part 1 – Day 1-3 Digest
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K-ON!! Second Season – Episode 6 – Rain Worries and Naming Instruments

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I think I got a nosebleed here…

Yes, it’s rainy season and it sucks badly… April seems to be the month where it rains so much that you need to wear a raincoat or use an umbrella. Not only that, outdoor after school activities get canceled or put indoors because it is so wet out. There was a few occasions in my life where I stood out in the heavy rain for an hour. After going inside, I was all soaking wet, even when I have an umbrella and jacket on. Yui is the same way, trying to protect her Gitah. Getting wet by cars splashing water, puddles, a dog and falling down to the ground. This is a reason why Yui is wearing this maid outfit. I wished she kept it on since it looked so cute, but oh well…

Is this some kind of ritual?

This is a funny thing since hardly anyone would dry their clothes in the dark music room. Well, you have to put it somewhere so it could dry. However, Ui never broke the news that it was Yui’s and it left hilarious reactions on Azusa’s and Jun’s part.

You wonder where Azusa got this?

Azusa discovers online shopping where she bought various things for cheap such as a guitar raincoat that comes with a guitar desiccant, a wall mounting guitar hangar, finger trainer and a training CD. Azusa really loves to buy random things online. Buying online is usually beneficial as it costs less and you can buy items that is normally not sold in stores in the comfort of your home, but some might get too overboard and then have their place filled with unnecessary things lying around the house or apartment.

When Yui starts replacing the strings in her Guitar, the funniest scene happen when Azusa said that Yui shouldn’t talk so dearly to her Gitah every time. This makes everyone else think that Azusa is jealous of Yui and saying it is a love triangle. I laughed.

How she is going to take this off when inside?

Musical Instruments are very delicate and very sensitive to temperature and moisture. I know this because my Clarinet is made out of wood. However, I won’t go so far and wrap it with plastic and tape. It is pretty foolish because it’s hard to take off. This is why all the members decided to leave the instruments at school, but…

Yui misses Gitah.

There are some people that are emotionally attached to their musical instruments like with Yui. This is because Yui brings it home every day so that she can practice on it and even sleep with it! Normal people won’t do that with their instruments, unless they are like Yui…

Oh my! Mio is also naming her instrument.

There is some things in life that some people give names to… Computers, cell phones, instruments, Weighted Companion Cubes (no, I’m just kidding about the cube part)… you name it! I even name my computers and my iPhones after my favorite anime characters such as Fujibayashi Kyou on my Unibody Macbook Pro. Laugh of me if you want, but I am proud of it.

Yui suggests naming her bass “Elizabeth” which Mio refuses to call it by. However, Mio calls it “Elizabeth” by  the end of the episode, with the others peeking at her and giggling. Azusa also calls her guitar “Muttan.”

In the end, this was a pretty fun episode with the girls doing some funny stuff… To my surprise, what will Ritsu and Mugi name their instruments?

Verdict

8.7/10

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Kaichou wa Maid-Sama – Episode 6 – The Epic Confession

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You know what happens next…

Having 5 guys obsessing over Misa-chan is one thing, but them wanting reveal her job is a bad thing. Misaki is so concerned about her image that if she reveals her job at a maid cafe, it would tarnish her image and reputation as a whole. Then again, who wants to reveal something as embarrassing as working at a maid café, wearing a maid outfit and serving 30 year old otakus for instance? Misaki has a image problem since she holds a position that is highly reguarded, revealing that she works at a maid café would make her a laughing stock.

Usui, on the other hand is simply amazing when he retrieves the photo of that has himself and Misa-chan as a maid. Just some minor injuries from that fall, but he will survive… Also, the picture in question…

Looks good on her.

I like girls with twin tails because they possibly mean they are a tsundere. Later in the episode, I also found her cute with rabbit ears in her maid outfit, although she doesn’t give out the good spirit.

Creepy….

I find these guys creepy not only because they look the same, but they also keep following Misa-chan. They are more obsessed with her than those three guys that are fans of her after finding out that she works at a maid cafe. They want to know everything about her: Cooking, Student Council Meetings, her fighting skills and even her part time job… I won’t blame them… They are nice, but they are a bit too nosy. If I were in Misa’s position, would I want a group of guys wanting to know about my whole life? I don’t think so, but then again… I can’t be mean to them since they aren’t bad guys to begin with.

Leading up to this moment, it was quite obvious that Usui loves Misa-chan, no matter what… Since Usui officially confessed to her, I wonder what will happen to their relationship and further development of Misa-chan and her loosening dislike of men as a whole.

Verdict

8.7/10

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Review – Girls Dead Monster – Thousand Enemies

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General Information

Album Title: Thousand Enemies
Artist: Girls Dead Monster (Singer: LiSA)
Catalog Number: KSLA-0052
Release Date: May 12, 2010

General Thoughts

The Crow Song Album and marina’s singing has proven to be mediocre because something was missing from the vocals… expression! As a result, the vocals sounded so dull and flat that it lessened the playing of these songs. If I were Jun Maeda, I would be crying in my sleep because the vocals ruined my music composition. With the new singer for Yui-nyan, do you expect a fangirl of Girls Dead Monster to sound better than the predecessor? I have to say that the vocals in this album sounds marginally better than the previous, but it is not perfect.

Thousand Enemies

If we compare the instrumentals from Crow Song and Thousand Enemies, there are some obvious differences. Crow Song had more energy, but not so good vocals. In Thousand Enemies, we have better vocals, but lacks that energy shown in Crow Song. So, there is a tradeoff here: more energy but not so good vocals or good vocals but lack of energy. Pick your poison! Also, I found something wacky with the vocals midway of the song (around 3 minutes in) in the following:

Mayotta toki ni ha kokoro no chizu wo atashi ni misete hoshii
Sore nara yukisaki sugu wakaru kara
Jibun ja wakaranai dake

Something doesn’t sound right with these lines. It seems that LiSA’s vocals for those phases went out of tune or something… Overall, it is a good sounding song, but not nearly as rememberable as Crow Song, despite the not so good vocals.

Rain Song

Rain Song sounds like a JPop Rock song. Comparison to Alchemy, this song seems to be more polished since we don’t have stuff like vocals going out of range. Like with Listen!!, they seem to play it safe after the big disaster they have with the vocals on the first single. Not perfect, but a good listen.

Highest Life

I can’t say that the albums aren’t consistent as it follows the pattern from the last single. Highest Life is a ballad but unlike My Song, this song is not an acrostic. Highest Life is a good song, but has flaws. In some instances, LiSA seems to go out of range for a few seconds, but not like marina, which seems to get the worse of the out of range vocals.

Overall, LiSA’s vocals seem to be a big improvement over marina’s mediocre vocals, but that is saying too much about the album. Comparing the instrumentals to Crow Song, the former had a lot more energy and excitement, but if we had better vocals, it would have given a better result. That excitement was simply not present in Thousand Enemies, but in return, we had better sounding vocals for the most part.

Lastly, I don’t get this… Why assign dedicated singers to these insert songs instead of using the voice actors? I’m guessing they want a professional to do it, but come on… you have to give them a chance!

Verdict

7.7/10, Good

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One Year Later, I still enjoy K-ON!

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No, it's not because of the pillow fight that Mugi started.

It has been nearly one year ago since the first season K-ON!. When I first watched it, I actually enjoyed it and more so since in 2009, I was already in college and graduated from High School. I still enjoy the second season of K-ON! as much I did with the first season. So, how come I still enjoy this moeblob, music slice-of-life anime? For several reasons.

First, It brought back past memories on how my high school life wasn’t great compared the girls in K-ON and how they are enjoying school. I have attended a public high school where some or most of the students are from higher class families. The school I used to attend didn’t have a good environment because there were some students who do drugs, going out drinking, and obsessed about relationships for example. I was one of those teenagers that don’t do these activities. I had friends, but gradually I stopped talking them when college started. I was a minority in the school and the school was not a multiracial school. As a result, I was picked on and bullied in high school. These were the reasons I didn’t like my high school years compared to college years. Now looking back at K-ON!, they don’t suffer the problems and it seem that the girls actually enjoyed going to school and having fun after school and eating cake and drinking tea. I wished my high school years was like this… less teenage rage and more on enjoying school and having fun with after school activities.

Second thing I can relate to K-ON! is the music aspect. Yes, half the time spent on the whole season is watching them drink tea, eat cake, socialize, and etc, but they actually play. In middle school, I enrolled into concert band since 7th grade up to the last year of high school. I played Clarinet back then and gradually, I started to get better with the lack of practice since I spend time on the computer. Although I never got first chair in my high school years, I did enjoyed playing music. The same happened with Piano. Ever since I started when I’m young, I hardly ever practiced. However, I managed to play those pieces with some minor mistakes. I am talented like the girls in K-ON! who manages to play the songs perfectly without any practice. It was quite amazing. Since college however, I haven’t really touched the Clarinet and the Piano, but I should start playing again with Anime Music of some sort.

Lastly, K-ON! is not all about the moe factor or moeblobs. There is always going to be moe-haters, mecha-haters, action-haters, romance-haters, you name it! Deep down from the shallow perception of moe, K-ON! has what all the qualities slice of life anime have. Slice of life stories relates back to your or anyone’s life and past experiences. Although K-ON! may not a masterpiece, it is still a pretty good and well balanced slice of life Anime that most who can enjoy that enjoys the genre. Then again, isn’t a slice of life story supposed to be a mere image of everyday life? We may not see a person like Yui in real life, the character personalities can be a possibility.

Life experiences and the music is what makes me watch K-ON! like I do with the slice of life genre. While some people may not like this genre because of the lack of plot, I think most people would enjoy it as there is other elements in slice of life such as comedy, drama, romance, etc.
Attribution Information

Fanart used in this post is made by 眼鏡虫

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Conclusion of Match 32 and Contest as the Whole

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Was so close, but didn

With the clear winner, Anime Princess with 6 votes unless it changes in the next several hours, it was a very close match… but a very ironic one at best since my blog from my assumptions would have won mainly on the strength of content. It simply proves that the Aniblog Tournament is a popularity contest and the voters aren’t voting based on content, but on popularity as described on a recent post: Although with Anime Princess winning being very close with content strength, I think with some matches, the following applied:
As you may have noticed, there has often been a difference in the number of votes in the two different polls in the one post. The main reason this happens is when people link to the tourney asking them to vote for someone (usually themselves), their followers/readers/minions blindly obey and vote in just that poll, never looking at anything else on the tourney whatsoever. So while its great that people are at least writing about the tourney, we would like to ask that you perhaps write something more substantial than just ‘VOTE FOR ME!’.

Sometimes it is all politics, but not in this case. I know my flaw is the banner, but that shouldn’t be a real weakness since I found a lot of flaws on Anime Princess, but my blog I have to admit is also flawed because I’m not exactly the best writer out there. I’m surprised that I have even gotten that far considering most people stop blogging after one year. My writing may not be the greatest, but certainty not the worst.

I think there is some things I can improve on with the following:

  • Making people more aware of the blog: I think this is one of the problems. If you look at my blogroll, it is hopelessly small. I need other Anime Bloggers to help out and give the blog more exposure. Next time when there is another contest, I can probably have a better chance of winning since there will probably be more readers and such and with myself updating the blog regularly, it wouldn’t be a problem. Considering I have half the followers compared to Lossty on Twitter… it is pretty sad.
  • More original title: I’m guessing that a very generic title like ‘s Anime Blog is getting tiring. I probably need to think up another name for the blog so that it would stand out more.
  • Guest Editorials/Reviews: Perhaps I should allow other bloggers in the blogosphere share their thoughts on issues like Anime and the Industry and other stuff to get readers more interested.
  • What you think I should improve on in the future besides the banner and the theme? I know I have some troubles with grammar, but I think I am pretty good in the content department since I no longer do those summary episodic posts and more of an editorial/thoughts type now and that I post editorials time after time again.

As the results stand, I wish Lossty luck and I will help her by sending a list of stuff that she should fix on her blog so she will have a chance to win against the next match. Also, I apologize for any rude remarks I have made and I never meant to attack the blog since Lossty deserves it after the tight competition.

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Second Anime Audiosurf Competition – Spring 2010

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With a good response to the last Audiosurf contest, I decided to hold another Audiosurf Competition since Spring Semester will be complete in a few days and now leaving time for more activities with the blogosphere.

Audiosurf, if you don’t know what it is, Audiosurf as the name describes is a music adapting puzzle game where you match blocks according to what music you are playing. There are different modes you can play with such as Mono where you collect only the colored blocks and avoid greys and Eraser where you match blocks, erase a certain color block and restore them later. This competition where we pick a few songs that all participants play on separate leader boards to see who have the highest score. With the last competition, we decide on what songs we should play in the competition. Now, I will up that to 4 songs. You don’t have to play all 4 songs, but it is best to play all 4 songs to have a better chance of winning. This time, I will allow the playing of the Elite level, but only with the puzzle characters. If you don’t own the game, Audiosurf is very affordable and can be get off Steam for $10… Sometimes it is on sale, so yeah.

In the Casual Tier, Mono only with Ironmode on because most casual players won’t know how to play the puzzle characters. Pro and Elite levels are Puzzle only, but I’m sure you will get the hang of them easily with Eraser being the easiest character.

In this competition, we will choose 4 songs either from Winter and Spring 2010 seasons. They can be insert or open/ending songs. No other songs outside from these seasons may be used. The voting process will end on May 20th and the competition will start on May 21st and last two weeks from that date. To avoid confusion on artists, make a copy of the song and rename the Artist to Spring 2010 Anime Audiosurf Competition so that we won’t have any conflicts with different artist names and such.

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K-ON! – Episode 5 – Girls Night Over

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No really... Doughnuts are so overrated that Jun only took one bite of every one of them.

Otherwise, she wouldn’t be taking a bite of every one of them if they aren’t so closed… No, I’m just kidding.

This is obviously the story of Ui, Azusa and Jun who are left behind since they are not on the trip. Compared to the trip, this looks less fun, but still enjoyable.
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Working – Inami isn’t WORKING!! for me anymore!

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You might be wondering how many times Souta got punched by her?... A lot.

Like I have said before on Melative… I complained continuously on Inami’s fear of men… it is becoming really ridiculous that her Arrhenphobia have been going on so long and over exaggerated to a point where it’s becoming a major flaw in WORKING!!. After seeing so many times of Inami punching men, I came up with this conclusion after watching Episode 5:
Inami isn’t WORKING!! for me anymore… stop punching… it’s getting really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really old.

That is right, Inami is becoming my least favorite character because of this. I mean, I would want to like her character, but it’s becoming flawed because of her extreme Arrhenphobia and the tendency of punching them. Well if she does this in real life… I don’t think they would tolerate it that much. She will probably get fired for punching all those male customers and even get arrested for assault and do some time in jail, which is something that I wouldn’t like to see.

Unlike Working!!, K-ON! is still working for me since they don’t have this annoying running gag that makes it old. Working!! is not like K-ON! and the jokes are really getting old. Not only Inami’s overwhelming fear of men, it is falling into the hole of never ending jokes that have been used over and over again and not being fresh. Working!! is supposed to be the Anime that moves away from the usual school setting, but weaknesses like the running gag of punching men and some others I haven’t mention that it is rapidly reducing it’s strengths it had with the setting. Despite this, it still managed to give me several laughs, but they really need to get some more fresh jokes soon or it will be in a pool of disappointment. The only characters that don’t disappoint me are Popura, Kyouko and Yachiyo.

I still wonder, if we get Aoi-chan to go to that resturant, would Inami punch him? Not likely because (s)he is a TRAP! When Inami finds out that she is a male… she will punch him like she did with all the male customers… Seriously now… Inami… Get over your fear of men… NOW!

Read moreWorking – Inami isn’t WORKING!! for me anymore!
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Editorial: Wait? Horrible Tasting Food in Anime?

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What is this supposed to taste like?

Most often times you will normally see a girl or a boy cook rather delicious food… for example, Akiko’s cooking (except the Jam…) and Usui’s “moe moe omelet” as shown in Episode 4. However, there is a dark side of good cooking… horrible tasting food! Food that doesn’t taste right or tastes funny. Not all cooks are created equal, but I will focus on some instances of horrible cooking in Anime I had watched so far.

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