Zero no Sekirei

Pardon the terrible title. LOL

New shows coming up to replace those which had just ended their run, namely:

Vampire Knight

Image from moesome sister

Kurenai

Image from moesome sister

Toshokan Sensou

Image from moesome sister

Kanokon

Nothing really stands out from these that are done. Although Vampire Knight is slated for a return in 2nd season I believe that it won’t be scrambling over myself to catch it. The first season puts me off emo anime for the time being ^^;

Kurenai was fun and confusing because of the way they tried different genres in freaking 13 part anime. Dangerous moments with 7-year young loli were hmmm… surprisingly, few and far between. Musical episode ala Disney (?) forever etched in brain. See below.

Toshokan Sensou took the story liberally and runs away with it, leaving everyone in the dust (or is it only me?) Most memorable character being Shibasaki -every anime needs a cool gal or two.

Kanokon… is quite the lightest of them all -excluding Chizuru’s assets- going full throttle for your most guy’s weak point. ^^;;

Zero no Seikirei will be added to my watchlist (for the time being)

Here’s a peek at Zero

and Sekirei

Oooh what fun, dangerous DD action coupled with whip wielding masochism.

Nothing to niconico about

For the uninitiated Niconico is a Japanese video uploading website. Some of the anibloggers in my read list refer to it from time to time mostly to highlight outstanding videos, in particular those MADs(AMVs). It’s also a great source that taps into areas already covered by YouTube but it goes beyond that I must say.

Digression: niconico(ニコニコ） is Japanese onomatopoeia for smiling.

Thus with much dismay when I see news in the tubes saying that Niconico made an agreement to pull copyrighted material from their site. The last time I logged in there, I see tonnes of anime-based videos; it is not unbelievable to say none of them will be there if Niconico enforces this agreement strictly. What’s unbelievable is that a site that had its popularity shot through the roof with the likes of “illegal fan-made” material turned its back on the community they put together.

Ouch.

In the spirit of fairness I should also say that commercial entities are often caught between a rock and a hard place. Not the best place to be when the law had not yet caught on to technology or common sense (!) and hence is exploitable by lobbies/organisations with vested interests.

Ted.org had a speaker who expounds on this topic rather eloquently here. Sorry, video is not embeddable (garrrr worpress).

Edit: Found youtube link to the TED video

News discovered via alafista and dannychoo.

Garden of Sinners

Seeing the availability of part two of Kara no Kyokai (The Garden of Sinners) on BU reminds me that I’ve still lagging behind my to watch list. So I “picked” it up and gave it a spin. (figuratively)
A few words and moderate (I hope) pic spam on part one.

A few minutes in, we’re treated with a fair amount of blood ^^;;
Her name is Shiki, love her vacant eyes =3

If memory serves me well, Shiki works for the woman with red hair by the window. Seems like some kind of private agency, or am I confusing it with Mnemosyne?Shiki when pissed off… One may want to piss her off intentionally to look at her beautifully rendered eyes.Did I also mention Shiki seemed to be part marionette? Creepy spare parts, that’s one collection I do not want.This is probably the clue to what Tsukihime and Kara no Kyoukai had in common as indicated on AniDB. I’m not going into details as I watch it sometime ago and can’t remember much to avoid spoilers.

Kara no Kyoukai is also beautifully rendered and even looks good when viewed on a lousy setup. Who cares if the water physics isn’t real when the water catches the moonlight prettily (‘~’ )

Moving on to part two was a bit hard, lost some of the story from part one due to my failing memory. As expected I was a bit confused for most part of the series especially at the end where Kokutou visits Shiki at the hospital where she slumbers in a coma. So what/who was the marionette in part one? I probably can find out on the net, but I might wanna save it for myself till I can get my hands on all of the series. Hints are welcome, spoilers not xD

Hit the jump for some framegrabs.

Eternal Vigilence is the Price of Liberty

Its time for another non-anime/manga/japanese related post =x

First of all ask this question. Have you heard of Eric Schmidt?

If yes, then have a look at his open letter over here which I stumbled upon recently. If you have not heard about Schmidt, he is the CEO of Google Inc. The corporation that had changed the internet in a big way since the advent of its ever popular search engine.

To be frank I’ve not heard about the House of Representative debate until that and I was a bit taken aback that even a country that prides itself on its freedom can have a day such as this. What will you do to…

…save the internet?

On a slightly different note, data discrimination is already in wide-spread practice (at least in the States) according to independent research by folks over at the Mac Planck Institute for Software Systems. Not surprising Singapore’s StarHub made it in the list.

Image from Imouto

Unboxing

As written in my previous post, the package had arrived…

Originally wanted to take my time to play with the contents and take many pictures but I have an appointment later so have to cut some corners here and there =P

This is what was lying in wait all along… Is this a disappointment? Neither is it Nenderoids nor adult figures. =P

A clearer view of the box… Sorry for the lousy pictures, I’m an idiot at photography.

The figma and accessories. Oh just in case anyone was wondering, the figma is called Saber originally from a visual novel Fate/Stay Night. For me, I finished watching the anime first before I tried the novel. There are 3 story arcs in the novel and currently I’m on the Fate (first) arc of the novel, need more time before I can finish ^^

The windswept hair piece had a flaw… orz

The two “teeth” (arrowed in the picture) are too close together making it impossible to fit on the head.

Probably fixable with some cutting, not very confident though. Other than that I have no problems with the figma.

Probably can tell the person had zero experience in posing figma ^^;

Another picture taken with a shaky hand… Damn I need to lay off on the coffee *jittery*

Second-rate photographer neglects to check the background… orz

Perhaps this one better? ( ‘~’)?

Boxed happiness

Happyness because it finally arrived after nearly two weeks. My first purchase from HLJ, so was a bit worried even though the cash value wasn’t that much ^^;

Will leave it on a weekend to open this up~

REC

Before Neutrinos was a anime person, he used to read slow frame rate anime aka manga. That was a number of years ago when the broadband internet was fairly new and unaffordable for a high-school student not to mention scanlations weren’t as prolific as now. As such the only way was to buy those chinese-translated manga available from the comic stores. Its kind of a hit and miss affair, some times the story might seem intriguing only to have the latter part fall flat after a few volumes. It’s an unacceptable situation for a student with limited allowance to be in therefore gradually the buying stopped.

Hence it’s a blessing to be able to read all the manga he wants to and pick only the best for collection; having english translation is also a big factor because of his lousy chinese abilities.

RAWR… Enough! Writing in third person is irritating!

Anyway I have stumbled upon a really nice manga (REC) IMO. In fact I found it so nice that I chased down its anime adaptation and devoured it in a single setting…

Synopsis

Matsumaru Fumihiko is your average salaryman working for a snack company. One day he was stood up by his date, outside the movie theater, just as he had given up and about to toss away the tickets he heard a voice from the tickets! Actually that was Onda Aka an aspiring seiyuu. Not wanting to waste the tickets Matsumaru watched the movie together with Onda, after which they get to know each other a bit better over some drinks.

Salaryman with no hopes for future – clichéd yet rings true to me Orz

As fate would have it, Onda’s apartment was burnt down that night, feeling sorry for her Matsumaru took her in and that was the start of their relationship.

Later on their ties were further cemented when Matsumaru’s company decide to use his project and employ Onda as seiyuu for their marketing campaign. The two of them went through a lot to hide the fact that they were living together from co-workers and later on when Onda became more popular the situation becomes even worse.

Working as a seiyuu is tough for a rookie like Onda. She had to take up whatever jobs her company assigns her, such as recording for a erogame.

On a incognito mission…

,,. to rent erovideos

Seriously studying

What!? I have to ask Matsumaru for help?!?!

One might envy Matsumaru for having such a cute voice actress living with him…

… for such a sight *ahem*

But their relationship wasn’t going as smooth as it seemed…

Matsumaru had a hard time controlling himself it seems…

Something was keeping him up all night long…

No, it wasn’t cuz he got lucky, it’s the exact opposite… So near yet so far… T_T

Used screenshots from the anime because its in color and art wise pretty much close to the manga itself. This was the series that made me aware of the fact that I have an unusual liking for female anime characters with red hair. ^^;

Other notable red hair characters:

melon pan no shana

hanaji* no kotori

* Hanaji (鼻血) is a japanese word for nosebleed ^^

** Any inconvenience caused by ungrammatical pseudo japanese is regretted

Python

Having pushed myself recently to learn something new, I’ve picked up a new language. Python is a very high level programming language and so it should be quite easy to pick up. So I thought. Well to be honest it wasn’t that tough, as least I did accomplish a mini-task I gave myself to serve as a test of some sort. Its only at the end of the test when I tried to modify my project to increase its usability that I find myself lacking in understanding. Throwing my hands up in disgust (at myself) I decide that since the project did whatever its suppose to accomplish albeit without much finesse, it was good enough. =P

So I introduce my first python script that crawls OneManga -where I get my manga fixes- saving selected manga series on one’s hdd while preserving the chapter structure. Also it generates html files to group scanned images into 20 images per html page, just nice for viewing in a PSP without running into memory trouble.

Limitations:

Slow – Saves only one image at a time >_<

Need to have python installed – Tried to make it into a standalone script… Failed miserably

Bugs with manga series with abnormal naming structure – E.g. normally OneManga tags a running number as the manga series’ chapter but some series have special chapter names which might wreak havoc on the script’s saving algorithm.

I did my best xD… Here is the actual script and this is the GUI script. Put both into the same directory as the python program. Fire up Python IDLE and enter the commands as below:

Go for lunch or something while it works <damn slow>

After its finished one should be able to find a ‘OneManga’ directory inside the chosen directory to save in. Manga series are saved in subfolders with an ‘Index.html’ as an easy access to all the chapters. Drop them into PSP, point the PSP browser accordingly and it should work perfectly. Else one can simply view it on the computer.

Phew… Before I forgot, I have to saw that python is a very accessible language as it’s well documented online. I’ve used Google-tan intensively during the coding process as i learn. Google-tan is awesome =P

Kareshi Kanojo

Feeling perkier than usual this Sunday since tomorrow is a public holiday, which explains this update. Holidays in this country are few and far between making it not a really ideal place for the average unmotivated salaryman. Orz

Ok, done with loser-ish whining.

Yesterday I managed to visit one of the stores I googled up that carries anime related figures and such. The store front is called The Anime House and as far as I can tell they do have all the works, manga, anime, magazines and of course figures. They even had a cute name for their figurine sales corner named Kareshi Kanojo no Mise (His and her Store) at least thats what I guess how It works? Not too sure if they are separate business entities or not. Well, to stick to the point, I was slightly overwhelmed by the atmosphere of the place ^^;

Didn’t manage to get what I wanted but I guess it’s fine since it was really an eye-opener for me. It seems that they are doing pretty well judging by the amount of orders being filled, no wonder some say the otaku business is worth quite a bit. =3

Oh and by the way this is what I was looking for:

I think I was way too late to order it, and being the noob I was; not too sure about how the “pre-order” system works. Perhaps another day then, Saber is not going anywhere =P

Art

Just realized I forgot to post this…

I colored the drawing from imouto which doesn’t have the credits for the original line art, was deliberately colored brightly in contrast to the anime which was rather desaturated. =P

Flat colors only which is the limit of my photoshop capabilities.