Ani-Culture.net » Review

Mirai Music – Vividblaze

tueac — Sun, 20 May 2012 04:09:16 +0000

Updated: Mirai Music, the physical album, can be found on CDJapan!

Vividblaze’s first album was released on the 11th Of April, it contains their work from the 2009 till now. Including the first song(Tight Rope) I heard from the amazing duo in a timelapse video by mockmoon.

I generally like the album with it’s rather easy going tunes and the upbeat, catchy tunes but majority of this album might not suit those listening to keep awake. Of all the songs I especially liked Tight Rope, Mirai Mechanism, Mirai Cafe, Ivory and Pizziciato Mind.

Vividblaze is a duo consisting of Miho Tezuka on vocals and Yasunari Okano, keyboard. Their style have always been something of a mix between electro-pop and jazz, thus giving them a rather unique sound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK357O9mZPI

They have provided the sound track for the many of Danny Choo’s productions including writing and producing Sukira, Culture Japan season 2 opening, a track not sang by vocalist Miho but by Mirai Suenaga(Danny’s “daughter”).

In fact in one of the songs, Danny Choo even “sang” a bit of Mirai Mechanism during the chorus part.

Vividblaze have also performed overseas like at AFA11 during Danny Choo’s segment, wowing the audiences with their wonderful live. Recently,they went touring around Japan performing their song at many occasions like Danny Choo’s Culture Japan Night and appearing on Radio.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6hCNGIF3Hg

One of my favorites~ Tight Rope

Mirai Music may not be easily found physically on shelf of the your local shops, ~~it might not even be found on online services like CDJapan~~ it’s on sale at CDJapan! ~~but~~ and you can also buy the digital version from Hearjapan.com, where I got mine.

Or you can sample a bit of it on Last.fm.

If you really liked them, do support them by buying the Mirai Music either physically or the digital version. You can also visit their website to know more about them.

Website: http://www.vividblaze.com/

Hey! I’m also on last.fm, you can find my profile using this link~
http://www.last.fm/user/tueac

Katawa Shoujo: Update the Outdates (incl. guide!)

cx3907 — Mon, 14 May 2012 04:00:38 +0000

With the crippled jokes getting old, let’s finish this.

A quick recap:

This thing showed up out of nowhere in 4chan on 4th January 2007, influencing users to generate tons of ideas, from love stories to bad ends… and effectively uniting them to produce an actual (free) game that we hold in our hands today.
The original omake was created by RAITA of Zettai Shoujo in Comiket 61, back in December 2000. No one knew who colored it though.
Four Leaf Studios was formed by amateurs of varying nationalities and backgrounds, and it took them 5 years of painstaking efforts to bring about (some may call it “tear-jerking”) one of the most mature (in the right way) stories in the sub-culture.

The protagonist, Hisao, suffers from arrhythmia which triggered a heart attack during a snowy winter when his crush confessed to him. Well, it sent him to the hospital where he spent months for the sake of being ‘observed’.As the story goes, his rethinking and personality change would depend on the player.
Cue it.

On a side note, Misha's infamous laughter is prominent in my class...

Hard to think of them being at least 18.
To make things easier, I would not disclose any thoughts about the characters for I disabled the adult content.
Just kidding, read on.

First and last impressions are that Emi is a very fun girl. Being an optimistic athlete, she strives to become the best runner… without legs.
Her route portrays typical teenage love relationships, and I’m rather surprised by the number of *censored* FLS has made for her route. Sure made this a tolerably realistic potrayal…Of course, it is without dere-dere moments, plights and seriousness.

Hanako’s route presents probably the best psychological story in this game. Hanako is scarred, both physically and mentally, which brought her to extreme self-consiousness.
FLS made the narration captivating and immerses the player into the story. ’nuff said. However, the eventual relationship between Hanako and Hisao subsequently form under equal terms, rather than the very much predictable protective character than one would lazily depict.

Unfortunately, my say is that Lily’s route feels like a regular love story. The good points about her story are it is easily adaptable, and (almost!) free of friction and conflicts. Here’s a backup if this is too short.

One word to describe: Complex. I had to quote someone else:

Hidden Text	Select Show
I haven’t commented much on Rin’s path. Mostly because… I don’t know what to make of it. I actually like Rin… But at the same time, I understand… The part of me that is an artist, feels it… That disorder, those thoughts that cannot be conveyed through words, and sometimes not even pictures. It’s hard. Very hard. I also remember how the pressure breaks that… How it transforms you. How responsibilities and emotional turmoil can drive you into extremes. It reminds me of the times I tried to jump into traffic, or the times I have, repeatedly and literally, hit my head against the wall because I cannot take the pressure building inside me. Weird, hard to explain emotions. And it’s even harder to find someone who can understand them, even if it’s just a little. You drive the people around you crazy, because they don’t get why are you angry, or sad, or acting just plain weird. The anger, confusion, and sometimes disdain of your loved ones, all because your mind is actually working in another place, a place very different from what they call Reality. It’s tough. You seek to be understood, to not stand alone all the time… But… You cannot. There’s a wall… Between you and the rest of the world. A wall that is made of impossibilities, of contradictions, of disorganized ideas, of pure raw creation, that makes you live at least a part of your life in a place where things don’t actually exist. Nothing can bring that wall down. Absolutely nothing. Because it’s what makes you tick, what makes you work. and the closer they try to get to you, the more it will hurt them because its a wall that is made of broken things of you

Hidden Text

Select Show

I had fun imagining Hisao trying to “talk” to Shizune while Misha was grinning beside them.
Shizune, being the student council president, some may call her cocky, while others call her tsundere, well, later in the story one might feel like Keima. While Misha is being hyper and all, there is no harem involved as the story is supposed to be focused on Shizune herself. Story’s as straightforward as her.

Final thoughts:

This game can be easily compared with any of Key’s visual novels
(eg. Air, Rewrite, Clannad, Kanon)
Although made by a bunch of amateurs, Katawa Shoujo is a very psychological visual novel, which screws with our misleading image of everyday life. It even became a subject of study in Panola College by Professor Don Martinez due to its “redemptive” ability. Impressive, and overwhelming indeed.
Disability aside, Katawa Shoujo is more about dealing with personal problems, making it even more compelling and appealing as a whole. (Even the disabled wish to be able to live independently too!)
…but the M18 made it unappealing to some.

Now, since you have read your way to here…

I don’t know if it’s a bug or not (Mac ver.), but the presplash never showed up…
FLS was kind enough to set up a shimmie, but NSFW:
…While the full version remain untranslated…:
…And FINALLY the entire walkthrough to the game! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Right-click “save as” to download (2MB)
Cypher (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ・。*。✧・゜゜・。✧。*・゜゜・✧。・゜゜・。*。・゜*✧
…signing off.

“神様　ありがとう
運命のいたずらでも
めぐり逢えたことが
しあわせなの ”
“Dear God, thank you
Even if it’s just destiny pulling a prank on me
I’m so glad of the fact that
We both had met”
–Renai Circulation

AFAMY : Cosplayer Miyuko (Spiral Cats)

tama-tan — Sat, 12 May 2012 11:15:41 +0000

The Anime Festival Asia Malaysia just announced that celebrity cosplayer, Miyuko is coming to the coming AFAMY! ((( ;°Д°))))

Miyuko is a member of the cosplayer group, Spiral Cats is based in Korea, consisting of five now, who are Tasha, Miyuko, Hyura, Ren and Tomia, where you can find their official website through here *The website is mostly in Korean, you may need google translate to help you read their updates!

Miyuko’s real name is Yun Jin Kang, a 20 years old cosplayer from South Korea, she has a smile and facial expression that allows her to bring out the essence of the characters.
Here’re some of her cosplay character.

Besides, she did participate in promoting the new X-box KINECT launch.

She still looks gorgeous in her non-cosplay event too.*indeed, a real Hanja!(Korean means beautiful girl)

*maybe you can challenge her to a Starcraft 2 game L(・o・)」 *

Cardfight!! Vanguard TD05/06 review

Xenoedge — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 05:02:29 +0000

It has been quite a while since the release of booster box vol. 2 of Cardfight!! Vanguard. The start of this new season is also the start of the new season of Vanguard the anime.

For this new season, another new effect is also introduced to the game and thus the recent release of the 2 new trial deck from the anime. They are called Slash of the Silver Wolf, used by Aichi, and Resonance of Thunder Dragon, by Kai,. Without any further waiting, let us start on looking at the deck.

For these 2 new decks, 2 new clans and a new effect are introduced. The clans are Gold Paladin and Narukami and the new effect introduced is called Limit Break. Basically for this Limit Break to become active, a certain amount of damage must first be taken. When the condition is met, the player can then pay the cost to activate the effect. An example would be to counter blast or soul blast depending on the requirement cost.

For these 2 decks, players are given the standard 4 different triggers, which are heal, critical, stand and draw. For the deck structure, both decks are similar to each other but there are a few unique cards with awesome abilities that you will rely on a lot. Let us take a look for some of those card now.

For grade 3, players have the choice of these awesome units to ride. For Gold Paladin, it will be the Great Silver Wolf, Garmore and for Narukami, it will be the Thunder Break Dragon.

These are the only 2 units that have the limit break effect, which allow you to increase another 5000 power when attacking, increasing the strength of their attacks greatly. For their second effect, Garmore will be able to call 1 more unit to the rearguard while Thunder Break Dragon allows the player to retire a grade 2 or below rearguard from opponent’s field. Sadly, there is only 1 of each card in each trial deck and they are also trial deck exclusive cards.

With these 2 units as the vanguard, the rearguard used to support them will have to be Charjgal and Dragon Dance, RaiRai. After paying the additional cost when supporting these grade 3, the effect will give another additional 5000 power increasing the grade 3 power to 26000 power. This is pretty much overkill in my opinion.

For the grade 2 and 1 in Gold Paladin, most of their unit effects are quite common and so it doesn’t really have any cards that stand out. Whereas for Narukami, you can try riding Djinn of the Lightning Spark for Grade 1 and Djinn of the Lightning Flare for grade 2. These 2 units are quite special as they are only able to attack the vanguard, and when attacking as the vanguard, they gain additional 4000 power. Therefore these two units would do better called as a vanguard than rear guard.

That is all the tips I have for this review. See you guys next time on my next review for the upcoming new booster box!

Yu, Yu, Yukirin…

ken0601 — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:58:54 +0000

Last Thursday was the release day of AKB48′s Team B captain Kashiwagi Yuki’s 2nd photo book titled “Yu, Yu, Yukirin…”. And thanks to Amazon Japan, I have gotten my own copy the very next day.

ゆ、ゆ、ゆきりん。。。

And let’s proceed with a little look of this book, less words, more pics!

Revealing the paper cover, seems like there's a message from her. "You have seen it!”.

Opening pages.

Preparations for coming of age ceremony.

大人になりました！

Fancy some cooked food from Yukirin?

制服りん！

ゆきりんがいっぱい。

可愛い。Who agrees with me that on the bottom left photo, somehow I felt that I am seeing Hocchan instead.

In Taiwan & Hong Kong.

Need directions?

いっしょに遊びたい？

おはよ！

While there's inception, and in this case, Yukiception! Probably case of photographer and editor had too much good images to share and decided to churn everything up in this manner. Probably.

Anyone care to help her unite the shoes?

That eyes...

The usual irritating to some paper slip on most Japanese books. But there's something to see...

At the back, some random snippets. Like, her palm reading for 2012, being the last in the whole 48 family or other unofficial nickname is 'rainy girl'.

All in all, this seems a decent photo book, though I am thinking at times whatever happened when the shots were taken, probably intentional blur? Nothing to take away this book for about S$35 including the express shipping thanks to DHL, a keepers actually be it you are a Yuki oshi or not.

10年後の君へ and others.

ken0601 — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:06:13 +0000

Finally a post in a while. Just so today, something for me to receive and work on. Previously, I have shared about AKB48′s Itano Tomomi’s 3rd single release and today the single arrived on the flying get day.

10年後の君へ type A.

Total arrival today.

10年後の君へ type A.

10年後の君へ CD.

10年後の君へ type A back.

First impression so far, well, to be honest, it wasn’t what I expected it to be. Perhaps I am spoiled by the arrangements found in her previous work “ふいに” or possibly that I ain’t a fan of such R&B style and will take some time to set in.

ふいに

ふいに CD.

Next catch, is Tomochin’s previous work, “ふいに” which in my own opinion is currently the better singles in her solo releases so far.

Flower

Flower CD

Lastly, Acchan’s single debut “Flower”. Yes, I am nearly a year slow, and there’s no need further for me to explain how good this is.

In case you are interested to get these singles, you can get them off CDJapan.

Sankarea, さんかれあ

tama-tan — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 03:55:03 +0000

This season contains tons of ghost, monster,alien and zombie. These themes do sound scary for spring season anime, but these on-going animes are unexpectedly ka-wa-ii!!!! The anime that we going to review here is the Sankarea.

I happened to read this manga several months ago before the announcement of the anime production, what’s attractive is how the author relates the zombie concept with the moe girl. Eventually the story are developed to a new stage in the manga series. *though the manga are published in a slow pace (；￣Д￣）　遅い～　*

What’s with the story? The protagonist guy, Furuya is a zombie-maniac, as you noticed in the very beginning of the anime. He’s one that can be taken as an otaku, more precisely a zombie-otaku.

Furuya seems to be in love with only zombie girls and not a living human, this does sounds creepy uh…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9kfzVXlbms

The story starts off with how Furuya met with the heroine, a wealthy family ojousama, Sanka Rea, and how they are going about with some forbidden “jutsu” to revive Bābu, Furuya’s cat. Followed by how the heroine turned into a zombie which eat herbs for living….　なに？！∑(O_O；)

In the first three episodes, the anime does brings out quite a number of negative and unhappy scenes but it turns out to be the interesting attractive points of this anime.

Well, as proof, a Revived-Bābu ! (´∀｀)♡ moe~~~~

Babu~~~I just loved how it’s making the “Ba—Bu–” sound and not the “meow~”

There’s quite some guts spilling scene in the anime but well, censor did their jobs there again. *I don’t know are there any other comrades that hate anime censorship like I do, well it doesn’t stop me from thinking those censored stuff are guts* (｡･｀ω´･｡)

Those are certainly guts!!!

Okay, that’s almost the main idea of this story, it’s certainly a must-watch series for this season, if you happens to be a zombie lover like Furuya-kun~

Sankarea airs on TBS every Thursday.
Official site: http://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/sankarea/

Learning Japanese with Moekana can’t be this cute~

avalonexa — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 04:17:04 +0000

As our love of Japanese Culture grows stronger day by day, the urge to learn Japanese (Nihongo) is inevitable. It’s every comrade’s dream to go to Land of Sunrise and become one with the culture itself.

But Learning another language is sometimes boring and takes a lot of time, if you do it wrong. But with this new invention of a learning system, you can’t be wrong. I introduce you, Moekana~

Moekana is a set of 50 illustrated cards to help you learn the basic Japanese syllabary called hiragana.

The cards feature the cute characters of Dannychoo.com and TV show mascots in many themes, which will make you never bored of learning with their cuteness. Below are photos of my copies which arrived yesterday.

Cute illustrations spotted at the side of the box. Love Angel & Demon Mirai XD.

If you open the box from the top, you will find a “> <” symbols which will make an excited emoticon with a smile. Even the box know my feelings right now. Very cute box.

A “fresh from the oven” set of cards.

I bought 3 sets just in case of damages then thought to make it giveaways but my friends knew and placed dips at the 2 other copies.

After the cards arrived, many people asked me why I didn’t tell them that I bought some. I never thought that the cards are so popular in my neck of wood. I should have bought more that day!

Kanata is my favorite Dannychoo.com character, I wonder why. Megane and Tsundere? Yeah, sure…

I know that creating someone’s name is not allowed when playing Moekana but this one is a special case XD. My first created words are Hikari Chiya, one of our site’s mascot, with her illustration drawn by me (not a good one though orz).

There are also character’s profile at the back of the extra cards. These extra cards represent the first word of character’s name which are Mi, Ha, and Ka. I’m so happy that Kanata’s Birthday is on the same month with me lol.

More photos at the Gallery below!

For the product details,

Product Name: Moekana (もえかな)
Series: Culture Japan
Category: Goods
Price: 1,500 yen
Release: Date 2012/04
Specifications: 50 Japanese study cards each 88mm x 63mm. Made in Japan.
Released by: Culture Japan
Distributed by: Good Smile Company
Ages: 6 and up.

Well, I think that’s all for the short review. The first run of Moekana is sold out. From the post in Dannychoo.com, they’re currently in the process of printing a second run. So, if you haven’t got one, mind to check these site before it’s too late XD.

Where to buy

Thanks for reading this post, have fun learning Japanese!

For more information of Moekana series, do mind check the source site below here.

Source: Dannychoo

P.S: Just for info, I also run my own Facebook page at Avalonexa which will cover my photos and portfolio. Do mind check it out if you like. Thanks~

Space Brothers, Uchuu Kyoudai, 宇宙兄弟

tueac — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 07:24:47 +0000

Into the 3rd episode, I find this the best time to review an anime. And today I’m going to review an anime that really attracted me, Space Brothers, Uchuu Kyoudai, 宇宙兄弟.

It first caught my attention when I visited the TAF 2012 this March. At the Dentsu exhibition booth, where is an astronaut suit along with a cutout of the main characters.

Being a great fan of Science Fiction… How can I miss out on this?

Story,

The story is about this pair of brother, one born of the great disappoint of 1993 and the other on the day of great cheers in 1996. They are Mutta(elder) and Hibito(younger) Namba.

But things got exciting for them on the finals of the 2006 World Cup, where they apparently saw an UFO head for the moon. Seeing this phenomenon, they made a promise to each other to head into space.

While Hibito made it into the JAXA and is on course for a NASA Moon colonization experiment, but Mutta got fired from his car designer job because of a head butt given to his boss.

This strongly put his belief that, as an elder brother, he has to be a step in front.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMm725pwSp8

Review,

This story itself is based primary of the viewpoint of Mutta, which in the first 3 episode is struggling to finding himself and maybe fulfilling his promise with Hibito, his brother.

Animation wise, they have actually done a rather good job. A similar style would be something like Nodame Cantabile, or Honey and Clover. So don’t expect very pretty pictures, but in my opinion, this style is perfect for the series, with its many comical parts.

Of cos, the anime is produced by A1 Production, so you can probably expect good standards all the way like it’s previous few animes.

Later on in the episode 2, you will be introduced to Mutta’s new best friend, Kenji… I don’t know if is it me or he looks like that Yaranaika guy… … With his superman hair style and that suit…

Then there’s Mutta’s primary love interest, Serika Itou, a doctor and also a astronaut applicant like himself but for now, the love is yet to be anything… Well it’s still early.

Overall,

This show really an easy going anime to catch with not too much of suspense and very easy to follow with it’s interesting storyline.

With that said, Space Brother will also be made into a Life Action movie, with Shun Oguri, Masaki Okada and Kumiko Asa in the movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPQkdVcCfuI

Closest anime to date that I can grab off the edge of my mind would be the darker, suspense thriller, Moonlight Mile, which is also a very good show~

BTW, this season is really outdoing itself with a lot of good shows ranging from genres like Guns, school life, Gun X School life, ghost, SF, animals and more.

So what are you watching this season?

Cardfight!! Vanguard English Booster Vol 2 Review

Xenoedge — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 06:30:49 +0000

Hi everyone. It has been quite some time since I did a post on Vanguard cards. As you all know, the English version of booster box vol. 2 was released on 7^th March. I was not able to write this sooner due to all my personal matters but at least I got to writing this. Without any delay, let start on checking out what good cards there are in this volume right now.

First off, there are 2 new grade 3 units for Kagero clan player.

Personally I would choose Sealed dragon Blockade as the vanguard between this 2 as the effect is easy for new players to understand compare to Blazing Flare Dragon where players must know how to manage soul charging.

For royal paladin clan players, there will be a new grade 3 for you all that is powerful enough for you to compete with other clan player as compare to using Alfred. The card is none other than Soul Savior Dragon.

This unit gets an additional 3000 power when attacking a vanguard and when it is called down as your Vanguard, you may pay the cost to add 3 rearguards with an additional 5000 power. Good for using as a final turn card.

For Oracle Think Tank players, there is the card Silent Tom which is recommended to be use as your rearguard all the time as it prevents your opponent from using a grade 0 unit as guard.

For Nova Grappler, this volume includes a perfect guard.

To players who are looking for new clan to play, they can try out Granblue and Spike Brothers here as card like their grade 0 starter, powerful grade 3 and also perfect guard are already included in this volume as well. As a teaser, the Granblue grade 0 starter is already found in the booster box volume 1.

These are the advice and tips I have for this volume. As the saying goes “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”, if you try out everything, you can find your own unique playstyle and combos.

Last and finally, the upcoming booster which is BT06 for the Japanese version will be renumbered as BT03 for the English. This will help give English card player a fighting chance against Japanese card players as this volume will include new effects as well.

Note: Clicking on the card image will bring you to the english translation site for the card effect.

Until next time, continue to cardfight vanguard!