Holy crap! She's on fire!

Tamaki Nami dances around in a hawt amazonian outfit in the middle of a hell fire in her latest PV for the song Brightdown. Now this is interesting, her newest single takes on a brand new image that I hope keeps. She's now a little rocker with a matching outfit, and the song is pretty rock, which offers a great tune. The image change however didn't usher to Tamaki leaving her pop roots, far from it. She still has choreography, and she really proves in this PV that she has moves. I seem to like this fusion a lot.

The song, which is also the second opening for the anime D.Gray-man, shows that she and her production staff can pull off a great rock song, the lyrics are still a bit popish but that doesn't stop the song from being good. I mentioned before, she can move, and man can she move! Not only was it hawt hip swinging dancing, the PV showed what was hands down the best choreography that Tamaki has shown.

The single is available in both a normal edition and a limited edition, which comes with the PV and a card and some other stuff. Usually the limited edition marking is a marketing gimmick, but this single along with Koda Kumi's Freaky and Morning Musume's Onna ni Sachi Are(B Edition) are limited edition singles that are actually worth buying because they bring something nice.

The overall release was quite impressive for me, because the last few things Tamaki has done were pretty unimpressive(I blame her production staff. And Canada.), but it's definitely worth buying.

Weeaboos and stuff that matter more than them

Weeaboos, probably one of the most annoying existences on Earth. Quite honestly I can’t stand them much, they get on my nerves. Most think they know it all and think they have everything figured out, which infuriates me even more since they’re just little kids who haven’t grown up… Weeaboos aside, time to talk about the series I’m currently watching. Uska mainly covers the dramas since he is (and he also acknowledges) a drama-whore. So I’ll cover some of the anime series I’ve been watching in the following entries.

First of all, the superb series “Seirei no moribito” Quite honestly, this series is an instant classic once you see it. It terms of animation quality, it reminded me of the feeling I got when I saw “Le chevalier d’Eon” (another great series). Besides the really good fight scenes and awesome animation what surprises me just as much is the effort that’s put in giving the world so much life through the elaborate backgrounds they make. First of all, the person that’s in charge of the scenery is simply amazing at it. The sky and mountain ranges seem so beautifully drawn that it sucks you into the series leaving you (or maybe just me) with your mouth wide open in awe. The character designs are also noteworthy and they somehow remind me a bit of Blood +’s. The music is also quite nice and the story, though a bit slow for some at first, is really well written. I recommend this series to just about anyone and it’s probably tied in my top favorites of the animes I’m currently watching with Dennou Coil, which I’ll cover on the next entry.

In other news there’s the Red Garden OVA that was released last August. From what I’ve read the story and animation took a drastic change but in a way it seems to be a possible continuation of the excellent series that came before it. Here’s hoping Uska subs it since I don’t think anyone will.

Another thing, I NEED to get Persona 3, the game is totally win D:

I'm in ur school, changin mah gendar

So far I've only seen two episodes of the drama series Hanazakari no Kimitachi e -Ikemen Paradise-, but it's enough to give some good thoughts on the drama. The story is based on a manga in which a girl named Ashiya Mizuki idolizes a jumper named Sano Izumi, and when said jumper stops jumping she disguises herself as a boy to infiltrate the school and make him jump again.

Besides all the plot holes in this initial storyline, it becomes really nice to watch. As a matter of fact, the show itself at the beginning excuses itself for silliness. The all-boys Osaka High is a school that chooses it's boys not based academic achievements but on good looks, which makes you wonder if the mastermind behind it all is Johnny Kitagawa. The story and plot movement is absolutely crazy, but you get used to it quickly cause you know it's nothing too serious, and the drama was made for you to just have fun.

We see a lot of familiar faces in this drama too. To name a few, there's Oguri Shun(Stand Up!, Hana Yori Dango, Densha Otoko...), Horikita Maki(Nobuta wo Produce), Ikuta Toma(Random dude from Hana Yori Dango 2 ep1), and Iwasa Mayuko(I haven't seen any other of her dramas except LIAR GAME, which I haven't gotten to her part yet. I just seen a lot of hawt idol pics). Everyone who acts doesn't act too bad in this drama, I must admit(at least for what it's worth anyway).

The music score is very fitting to the situations and it's surroundings, so that's a plus. The opening song is Ikenai Taiyou from Orange Range, and Peach from Otsuka Ai, which is a great combination.

The drama's not bad so far, it's nothing too serious and made me laugh a few times, so it's worth checking out if you're in between the more serious dramas.

AKB48's concert tour was a big pile of loli fodder...

...and I loved it. I've recently acquired a copy of the AKB48 concert tour, entitled Haru no Chotto Dake Zengoku Tour Mada mada Daze! and let me tell you, I loved it. I started really getting into jpop back in 04 when I discovered Morning Musume and Hello! Project, but I discovered AKB48 some time last year when I got an Oricon pack and they featured the song Seifuku ga Jama wo Suru. The song's name means "My uniform gets in the way", and yes it gets in the way of what you're probably thinking because everyone's thoughts are innately perverted, and yes the song is the most pervy song evar. One thing I will say however is that AKB48 is so idolrific that it's an immediate win on my book. The songs range from adult-ish in Seifuku ga Jama wo Suru, to controversial like Keibetsu Shiteita Aijou, which deals with teen suicide, and upbeat cute songs like Bingo!, Aitakatta, and Today Only.

The Concert tour I must say was quite awesome. I saw all the girls of all teams, and thankfully the ones I like are all legal, which makes me SO not a pedo. Their live performance was pretty high quality, the girls all dance and sing very well for being a live performance, a feat not many idol groups can do. Downside is that the concert didn't feel so well because the crowd was off. They didn't really cheer that much or anything and kept pretty quiet. One thing I love about Hello! Project concerts is that the wota give the concerts so much energy that it complements the on stage performance of the groups. Other than that, they did a really great show that I only wish I could've been there to witness live.

The DVD brought an extra behind the scenes feature that showed them rehearsing for the concert, which was pretty cool because you get to see some of the girl's personality when they're not performing. They seem like your regular run of the mill Japanese girls, giggling and exchanging mail on their cellphones. Then came this evil woman who's name I'm not so sure of yet, but she's their dance instructor. She also is the dance instructor for Morning Musume, and she drives the girls so hard they cry. I always laugh when this happens, and as cruel as it may sound I get a certain satisfaction from seeing them cry because the dance instructor scolded them. xD]

Anyhoo, checking out AKB48 is definitely worth it, and getting the concert DVD is a great buy. I do however suggest that if you can see them live if you happen to be in Japan, they put on a really nice show. Next time I'll review either the drama Hanazakari no Kimitachi e, aka HanaKimi, or the Morning Musume Sexy8 Beat Concert Tour which I haven't had the chance to see yet. See you soon!

Coming Down

I recently found out that the newest (well, almost newest) firmware for the PSP has been hacked and enables the owner to downgrade his PSP to the homebrew haven of firmware 1.5. Taking out all the 'legal' disputes out of the way and obviously taking out the use of such methods to download and play pirated games, what would downgrading really have to offer?
Well, it actually seems like you can do quite a lot of cool stuff. Emulators being one of them. Not to mention other media players in which you can play a variety of formats by just dragging and dropping anywhere in the memory stick. Now let's be honest here, all that sounds nice and cool but really, I'm not out with my PSP THAT often, and quite honestly I'd bring my DS if I wanted to play something 2D-ish so why go through all the hazard of risking bricking your PSP, losing some features(though quite honestly I wouldn't really miss most of them -lol- I mean: the browser sucks and the only 'cool' thing they've added is visualizations which are really not that big a deal either O_o), and then if you want to play more recent games you need to either get custom firmware or use something like devhook to 'emulate' firmware. The ones in the know of PSP and homebrewing don't see this as much of a big deal, and it probably isn't but I'm just not THAT much interested in going through all that to use some homebrew stuff like text editors and emulators (I know I'm cutting a lot of progz out of the equation -lol). Now what does seem interesting ;) is making a backup of your game and putting it in your memory stick. The advantages of such is faster loading times and longer battery life. After all I bought a PSP to play PSP games... Even if it doesn't have such a good library. Plus at least I can import without worrying about compatibility. I've never been the one to pirate. I end up buying the game if I like it. In fact I've bought games BECAUSE I gave it a little test drive. Plus the PSP is so full of cool looking games that scare the shit out of you when you play or read their reviews. Though Tokobot didn't do that to me, it did get boring... While re-browsing the PSP library I did find some interesting games that, from what I read too, seem to be sure bets. One of the older (and hopefully cheaper) ones that got my attention was Infected. J'eanne d'Arc and Monster Hunter also got my attention. If Uska gets a PSP, I'd love to get Monster Hunter since it has multiplayer and is very similar to PSO/PSU XD One that really caught my eye was Brave Story: New traveler. After reading a good review of it and finding out it has the option to switch to the Japanese voices, I'm pretty sure I'm going to get it.

Still in times of financial woes, it's a bit hard to dream and look at new games, so I'll mainly focus on finishing Final Fantasy 3, which I finally took a step forward in this morning. I just love that game, and I can't wait for the FFIV remake for DS which looks really similar to FFIII's style. Pokemon is there... and sadly nothing is motivating me to beat the elite four. I guess the same thing happened again. It first happened with Gold & Silver (which Uska proudly finished) I was really into the game and suddenly I lost interest at one point. It was the version where I less progressed. It didn't help me that I played a bit the import version and the hype kinda went down. Now Ruby was a similar story (and for some strange reason, me and Uska don't know WHY he didn't get it too O_o I mean, he had a GBA before me lol) but I did get to beat it completely somehow, I admit that I liked it a lot, and it seems that since I kinda skipped a generation, it helped the game look fresh. Now Pearl I got just to the part before the elite four, after finishing the ALWAYS annoying Victory Road. Some things happened, but mainly I was discouraged cause I gave3 the Elite Four a try, just to see how hard it was and well, the first one beated me. Then thinking of all the grinding I needed to do kept on discouraging me to the point that I just don't want to play it. And quite honestly the game is great and all, but I expected an actual upgrade from Ruby/Sapphire but I mainly realized and admitted it when the fuss went down. Who knows, maybe I'll need to wait a year to have the urge to finish it. See you around.

THE DRAMAS

Well, I'm gonna use the blog to post my thoughts about stuff of pop culture that i'm involved with. Right now I'm seeing a bunch of Japanese dramas. Man oh man, there's too many to name. Let's start with a review of the one of the ones I'm following regularly right now.

I just finished 14sai no haha. In my myspace not too long back I wrote this:
"This was a drama that actually surprised me. I'm half way through it, and it's been real good so far. It's(as the title suggests) about a 14 year old girl that becomes pregnant, and how her life around her changes quickly. It's really down to earth, even though the circumstances of the two kids having sex was a little unrealistic. The acting also surprised me, since usually Japanese actors don't deliver really impressive performances, I gotta say all the characters in this drama really seemed beleiveable, especially the father."

This till stands. I thought the drama played out the situation really well. Whether you agree with the fact that she gave birth and didn't have an abortion or not, what's important about this drama is that they gave a real importance to life, and that even though it will be hard, living up to the consequences of your actions, at least in my opinion, is the right way to go. But I think apart from that, the actual point of the drama was to show that sex DOES have consequences, at least if you don't use the rubber. This is something that apparently a lot of teens, and teens in Japan(since this is where the drama comes from) apparently aren't so knowledgeable about. They need to give kids more sex ed and we'd probably have a lot less teenage moms. I guess the problem runs a bit deeper than that, because sometimes the teens know but they don't take the precautions anyway. Kudos to 14sai no haha for trying to bring up awareness about this subject matter.
Well that's it for now, ill review a new one tomorow. See you then!

Angelic Layer Heaven

I will dedicate the first entry to... Angelic Layer. Yes it's old, yeah it's clamp, no we aren't gay for watching it -lol- We finished it yesterday and quite honestly, we both greatly enjoyed it. I even became quite attached to it in a strange way without knowing. The weird things that happen when you start watching something with a friend XD We do criticize it due to too many battles with the main character, in other words, we surprisingly wanted more filler episodes which were really quite entertaining ^_^

Wasted all of my writing creativity on an entry on my blog so sorry, it ends here haha. Pray that uska actually gets around to updating this blog hehe.