Random Notes

I have a PC, but it's not mine so I haven't gotten comfortable enough in it to write reviews and all that other stuff. So rather than that I'm gonna recommend you stuff that I'm watching.

Gundam 00 Season 2 is around episode 7 or 8(if I'm not mistaken). Double O is Double Win :D

Countdown to Q.E.D. Shomei Shuryo countdown started. It airs January 8 to March 12, which means 10 episodes of Takahashi drama goodness!

Where'd the Blog Go?

Well, life hit me and Rubi pretty hard. I also wanted to write more but my drive crashed and along with it anything I could have written about. right now I'm on a 18gb hard drive, and have about 1GB left after the necessary programs I have installed. I need to write though, because without this blog I have suffered a horrible lapse, I had writer's block. I am possibly getting either a bigger hard drive soon enough, or a a sexy iMac with a 24" display and a 1TB hdd. That way, I will have no excuses. That aside, I am expecting a lot to come soon. First and foremost, the ending of Code Geass R2(which I'm sure will leave me thoroughly emo), and the beginning of Gundam 00 season 2. I think if Season 1 was pretty good, Season 2 will thoroughly own. Although, if the assholes that made the official site gave me any indication, I already know some stuff that will go down. For one, nobody really died that you saw at the end of the last episode. Setsuna is obviously not dead, and is now a 21 year old angry boy. Lockon and Alleluyah are perfectly intact, the Smirnoff guy has a son apparently, in fact almost the entire crew is alive. Saji I am just waiting to get in a Gundam and fight Exia. Otherwise he's kind of a wasted character. Hilarious as it may seem, they apparently think that some people won't know that this "Kamen no Otoko" guy they have in the official site's list of characters is in fact Graham Acre. I guess it might be entirely plausible that some new fans won't get that, but unlikely. Sumeragi seems to have gotten a breast reduction in the four year lapse, perhaps to hide herself because she's known mostly for her humongous boobs. Oh, remember at the end of Season 1 where we saw Tieria with longer hair and he was with Louise Halevy? Well apparently it's Tieria's twin sister. That's right, when you first saw Tieria and thought he was a woman till he grounded you with his manly speech, this was the bitch you were waiting for. Speaking of Louise, apparently now she has a hand. THANK YOU FOR SHARING OFFICIAL SITE! Either way these are slightly minor spoilers for what's to come soon.

In other news, since Dramas take up the most time and disk space to save, I have no idea what's going on in the drama world. I don't know what's upcoming and I don't want to until I get a bigger drive. There is ONE that I am looking forward to. I've been saying(I think even in this blog) that H!P needs to put their girls in PRIME TIME dramas, not these silly 3 part webisodes they put online. They finally did. According to Hello! Online, "It was announced on the Hello Project website that Morning Musume's leader Takahashi Ai will have her first starring role in a serial drama when "Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou" (Q.E.D. Case Closed) begins on NHK in January 2009. It will be the first time a Morning Musume member has starred in a primetime serial drama." Hello! Project, I tip my hat to you and wish you the best of luck. Pepper Keibu sucked, and the last BerryZ single did you no good either. I heard Maki's newest stuff and you let go another million buy hit maker, just because you didn't want to adapt. Perhaps we're going in the right direction this time? I hope so, as much as I criticize H!P, they're still etched in my heart, so i don't wanna see them fold.

That's it for now. I hope to have something more to write about soon!

I'm high on C-ute

Lately, I've been getting back into my wota boots. Hello! Project has some things going on these days that are getting me excited. Let me explain myself. To me, decline happened a long time ago. Back in 04 when Rubi and me were first getting into Momusu, things were going great. Then things started going downhill. The songs weren't that good, Rika left, scandals left and right with Yaguchi and whatnot. W disbanding. Maki not singing as much. Aya Matsuura being her usual Aya self. BerryZ sucking. What really hit the nail in the coffin for me was the 8th Generation auditions. Now, I was really pissed with 7th auditions too. Hello! Morning was doing great, and then they made us wait like 3 weeks to tell us the results, which was Tsunku basically telling us he's made of fail and couldn't pick someone, which was good cause if he felt forced he could've picked that I Love Africa girl. Anyway, it pissed me off more that in the second part of the audition, not only does Tsunku have the audacity to let I Love Africa comeback, but he picks this Koharu Kusumi girl over the girl me and rubi were cheering for. Well, I guess it worked out cause now I LOVE KOHARU. I'll tell you what I don't love though. Mitsui Aika. Miss 8th Gen. I couldn't have been more disappointed. With so many good girls in those auditions, Tsunku picked Aika. This was the single biggest disappointment in anything I've ever been a fan of. She's even pretty wasted imo. Koharu was labled the "Miracle Girl" while not being that good, just they're milking her for all she's worth(and it's working great!). Aika's pretty much just there... Then after that, a really good single came out, Kanashimi Twilight, which featured the Momusu girls dressed all rocker like. Sexay, especially Mikitty and Ai. Mmm...anyway, GAM was also born. Things were looking up. RIGHT after that, Miki had to quit cause she got a bf(double ouch), GAM died, and Ai cut her hair. H!P was now dead to me. Then, all hope came back. I saw the Meguru Koi no Kisetsu PV. I loved C-ute, I got used to Ai's new hair cut, and Maimi is my new lurve.

Meguru koi no Kisetsu, what saved H!P for me.

C-ute to me has been, in some ways, what's now keeping H!P afloat. Don't get me wrong, the other groups aren't without merit. Onna ni Sachi Are debuted at #2 in the oricon charts if I'm not mistaken, and BerryZ along with ViYuDen have been selling moderately well. And if we talk about the girls individually, the Morning Musume girls and Rika are popular enough to sell PBs extremely well. Where it counts to me, though, is in performance ability, songs being good, and song sales. In their first week, C-ute scored a #5 in the Oricon charts, and a #3 with Tokaikko Junjou. Staying power in the charts wouldn't be fair to compare them since no other group in H!P has real staying power in the charts.

Performances count, and perform they can!

What I think is best about C-ute is that the girls seem to all have a good future in the business. The Meguru Koi no Kisetsu PV to me was refresing, because it wasn't general usual H!P PV. It had layers, the song was good, and in general it felt fun. The C-ute girls are also good at performing, from the few live performances I've seen from them, they really shine. It seems to me their popularity is also really growing with the fans, and people in general. This post is meant to be about praises, but they have their defects. Front girls are Airi and Maimi, and while I totally agree with Maimi(lol), they need to make them talk a little more. In the interviews and videos I've seen, Maimi seems to be pretty quiet and shy-ish, which to me is not good. On the last music station I saw, they had Mai speaking, and she did great. Anyway, I see a really bright future ahead for these girls, so people, pay attention!

Pic War by Uska

Oooh a challange. Here we go.

I give you Kitty pic:


Add a Nadleeh Lacus-Type Gundam:


And raise your Code Geass fanservice by 5:

Bigger, stronger and busier than ever

Ironically, Uska has challenged me to post here more often in times were my life has become amazingly busy and complicated, but I'm up for the task. So...

HITOTSU!

New Asian Kung-fu Generation Album World World World

I quickly fell in love with their new album. Favorite song being Night Diving, or is it No.9? I'm still not sure XD I can assure you though that it's much more up beat and in general, more elaborated musically. The melodies that are developed through track three and four and the transition between the two were quite impressive, and surprising. In general, I highly suggest you give it a try.

As for the pic war, I'm not at all sure how to begin it lol But I'm sure my minion can take you down D:

CODE GEASS IS MINE >:O I introduced you to it, I watched it three times, I saw the last episode 5 times, and I've even cosplayed for CG...

Yes that's me...

Plus I dare you to top my "fanserviceness"

Let me see your comeback now! >:D And yaoi won't count cause I have dibs on it >:F

Quick facts

1. Rubi is a vegetarian D:
2. G00 (Gundam 00)'s final episode was fucking awesome T_T; The very last part gave me chills...
3. Code Geass R2 is coming really soon.
4. Rubi studies French, oui c'est vrai...
5. I am hungry right now.
6. Kamei is my favorite member from Morning Musume.
7. I only use Windows for PC games, otherwise I've become a Linux user, more specifically an Ubuntu user.
8. Recently discovered Keroro D: It's amazing! XD
9. Gundam SEED is my favorite Gundam series...
10. Evangelion is already more than 10 years old O_O How old have we become....?

/me is hungry right now... ~__~ /me will have to go now...

I miss the IRC days :3

SEAMO - Fly Away

I was watching a CDTV, and I noticed SEAMO's video for the single Fly Away was shown on it. Immediately I wanted to see it, and I did, and wrote the review but I remembered this when I was watching TNA and saw Tiger Mask wrestling. Here goes:




SEAMO, as usual, released an awesome song. This time it was with Fly Away, which ranked pretty high in the Oricon charts. The song is more or less as usual per SEAMO's style, which made the song rather boring for me. The good thing though, was that I haven't heard SEAMO for awhile and that made it grow on me.



The PV was the real attraction here, and it was sure interesting.



On this PV we have several excellent wrestlers from New Japan, which is three guys who's name and I can't remember and Tiger Mask. Tiger Mask is a really cool wrestler, and I liked the style they wrestled in.

All in all, if you like wrestling, you'll really enjoy this PV. If you don't, it's still fun anyway.

Oh, and for those of you who(if there are any of you) who like and follow Puerto Rico's wrestling scene...


SEAMO SE FUE CALLE! ENCAPUCHADOS PA SIEMPRE! PRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAA!!

RUBUSKA:2 Ep.01 - Rub Uska

Yes, I would like you all to rub me. Cause that's what the title of the blog suggests right? Well, not exactly. For those of you who are just joining us, it means this blog is a combination of two awesome, daring, and sexy bloggers. It's Rubesahl(Rubi) and Uska(Uska) fuzion-hah'ed together.

Now why write a blog you ask? Especially with hatred for most blogs? Well, for me a blog is like a journal. Just shit I write to get my head organized and make my way around things. Except this blog isn't for us to write about our lives. We love Japanese entertainment, and we have a lot to say about it. At least I do. Rubi has fewer words sometimes, especially because I like to go on rants. Pulling that aside, send this blog to your friends. Starting this April, we're campaigning to make RUBUSKA:2 a bigger success than it already is. Spread the word, this blog, in contrast to others, can be a very interesting read.

With that said, there's a few new sections I'm starting soon. So I'll list all the sections first, and the new ones. Here goes:

Random Thoughts- Just as it says, just random thoughts I have on a specific program. Fun to read if you're watching what I am.
PV Review- just at it says, a review of a PV.
PB Review- Same, for photobooks.
Single/Album Review- could be one of either.
DVD Review- yep.
In the News- New regular section. Will come out randomly when I find three or more interesting pieces of news.
Pic War- Will be done every saturday. Me and Rubi, Showdown of pictures.
Interesting Fact of the Day- Interesting fact you may not know, will try to do at least one every day.
Sharan Q- The best of the best of the Visual Kei band that made us sleep uneasy at night.

There will also be one temporary segment. USKA VS RUBI. Yes, Code Geass 2 is starting real soon. We're about to pee our pants from fanboyness. We love Geass, we just don't know who will write about it. Therefore, we will have to have a Pic War and a Blog war. Winnar take all.

I guess now I'll start with one of the new sections, Sharan Q.



Here we have Sharan Q trying to be good role models for the new generation. Way to go, guys!

RUBUSKA:2 - RETURN OF THE BLOG

Just as Rubi said, RUBUSKA is coming back, and now that I saved his hdd, it's gonna be with more reviews, more profiles, more random thoughts, and most of all, more SharanQ.

Oooh yes.

I only got one thing to say...

I know, I know... Me and Uska haven't written anything new in a long while but I'll fix everything by posting this... This April, everything will change D:

What i've seen so far

I've been busy with some stuff, but so far I've seen Honey and Clover, Ashita no Kita Yoshio, and Edison no Haha, which so far have all been excellent. I'll write full reviews(for real) today!

Tech files and more

I was planning on starting the entry with a video I took with my cellphone of an Xbox 360 in Babbage's suffering from the red ring of death error but sadly I lost the vid :P Anyways let's continue.

The main topic today in this entry is the Asus eeepc, possibly the cheapest laptop (or closest thing to a laptop) that you can get. Categorized as an Ultra Portable PC, the Asus eeepc seems to be a strong contender in the mobile computer market. Its strongest points are price and value and its weakest is probably the screen size and keyboard. Though mine has yet to arrive (should probably arrive by 5:00 ) I'm pretty hyped about it. Despite its small disk space (I got the cheapest one due to limited budget ;P so I have to settle with 2gbs till I buy a new SD card) the Asus eeepc manages to take on multiple OSs without much effort like Windows XP and Ubuntu. Still it brings a linux OS which does the job for the things an average user does, aka internet (myspace, facebook, messaging) and word processing. The system is also surprisingly good for some light video games and I've read about people playing World of Warcraft and Counterstrike on it with reasonably good framerates. I'll probably be aiming to test Anarchy Online on it since its a relatively old MMO with very scalable visuals, but generally, I don't think I'll use this PC for anything other than basic internet and media functions, not mentioning the casual retro emulators.


Sadly, to my surprise I thought the models were all the same other than the webcam and disk space quantity but they're actually different. The 2g, which is the cheapest lacks webcam and brings 2gb space, which I didn't mind cause I have a webcam at home and I never use it, plus the difference between 2gbs and 4 gbs didn't seem that big to me seeing that I'd need to buy an SD flash memory card anyways if I want to install other OSs. But the major fault of the 2g is the soldered ram, which leaves upgrading the laptop to bare minimum possibilities. Still, considering that I was never interested in this PC cause of its processing power, it isn't as painful as it would be to others (though it would put a hindrance on any plans that are related to playing 3d games ;P).



From you can see in the video, it also manages the desktop effects suite Compiz Fusion amazingly well for such a modest PC O_o; Also brings basic codecs like divx and xvid, though to play the newer mp4/h264 codecs you need to downgrade the mplayer, which is surprisingly an easy process. Well, stay tuned for pics (and video? ;O) of my new PC later in the week.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

I was surprised this morning upon reading that AKFG was releasing a single in Feb ^^ Not to mention the new album due in March which I'm definitely getting ><; The new single is quite good, and even though its a slow song, its in no way boring. So check out the PV below and see you in the next update :)

It has begun

I look up Tokyotosho today, and I see Honey and Clover is up. And I bought a DVD-R just in time! I have so much to write about so i'm gonna get in a few things before I start writingabout dramas. See you soon!

Ash like Snow, Uska hates teh weaboos!

Let me start this post by apologizing for not covering the Kouhaku or anything else soon enough. I'll get to that soon enough(though you might have already watched it).

Right now I'd like to say a few things about weaboos. Man do I hate em. Especially those who think they know about something because it's in an anime. In this case, it's about stupid fans on Youtube comparing Brilliant Green's new single, Ash like Snow, and Brilliant Green itself to High and Mighty Color, as if Brilliant Green was new to the scene and trying to gain fame by being like High and Mighty Color, only "softer". Sure this song is a bit heavier than what we're used to with Brilliant Green, but come on people. Do a little research. Brilliant Green has been around for about 10 years now, they don't need to capitalize on High and Mighty Color for anything. Not only that, their style, as well as the style for this particular song, is completely different from High and Mighty Color. This of course comes from weaboos who think that L'arc~en~Ciel and Ayumi Hamasaki are THE artists for jpop(and to them the only existing ones), and the ones who think that the best jrock comes from goth lolita cross dressing guy Visual Kei bands that all sound alike. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate L'arc or Ayu(actually I do hate Ayu lol), but I think they're highly overrated. Moreover, I do like my Visual Kei when it comes to a quality band like Psycho le Cemu, but there's a lot more to Japanese music than that, or the music you hear only in anime.




Ok, now that I've done my rant, I'll get on to talking about the PV. It was, for the most part, boring. I mean I've seen worst. I've seen PVs that are basically just hte band standing around singing. In fact that reminds me of L'arc's PV for Ready Steady Go. The song is so win, but whoever directed the PV has managed to make possibly the most boring PV on the planet. But, there is a lot of good to be said about the PV too.

For starters, the set was amazing. Things exploded, lava came bursting out of the ground, and well anything that goes boom is win on my book. The costumes were pretty cool, I liked seeing Tomoko in a soldier outfit, and she looks as beautiful as ever. The bike and Haro are kinda random, but I'm willing to overlook it. Plus there's one factor that makes this PV automatically cool:



KILLER SNIPER PANDAS! hahahahaha

The song itself was nicely paced. I was impressed with how well they came back after a few years hiatus with Stand by Me, Tantei Gakuen Q's ending theme. The song was great, but the pacing was as how I was used to with Brilliant Green. However, even though this song is faster paced, it retains Green's very nice, calm, and mellow feel to it. The song is worth buying, and I might put it up on my shopping list later this month, along with Stand by Me. I also can't wait to hear it on a weekly basis as I watch my Gundam OO!

There's one more thing I'd like to comment on quickly.

There's a new Aria series coming, called Aria the Origination. Seriously, is anyone even watching this? Did anyone even watch the first two series? What were the ratings? I know Aria's nice because it's a good change to have a little pure anime, but nothing ever happens in Aria. I saw a few episodes and I concluded that this series was made for children. And not for them to watch it, it was made for putting those children to sleep. The perfect babysitter! Anyway, Aria fans PLEASE tell me what's good about this series, even though I think it's not exactly my cup of tea.

PSP Firmware update 3.80: Finally something useful...

The PSP (Playstation Portable) Has had its handful of updates to its firmware since its release in 2005 (In NA anyways) yet I'm still amazed of how slow they've been in developing updates to such a versatile machine... O_o; I mean, we had to wait like half a year for the browser, which is probably the biggest and most noticeable update in general .___.;; then after the browser came a sort of standstill with updates like the ability to turn off Auto UMD loading, adding compatibility for an image format each year (lol) or support for window's WMA format (which who in his right mind would use?). 3.0 was somewhat of a relief, as finally we got support for RSS feeds, but like most updates, its so limited. Yes, you can use RSS feeds, but the compatibility is very low -__-; The feed is only useful if it has an attachment like an mp3, video or (now in ver. 3.80) images, but something so fundamental like TEXT seems to have escaped the development process. 3.0 also introduced visualizations, which ok, they're flashy, but I rather have an improved browser than jumping lights to entertain me while I hear music which makes you think who actually hears his music while watching the visualizations? I just hit play and put it in my pocket or turn off the screen to save battery. Now that I mentioned browser, it brings up the topic on how the browser sucks so bad...

#1 It is SLOW
#2 If you go to a site with a reasonable amount of images, you are screwed, the page will simply stop loading.

They tried "fixing" this, but I would compare the "fix" to when you take only one tylenol and you actually have a migraine. This "patch" just reloads the site with lower image quality but the amount of sites you can see now than before doesn't vary much.

On to what I like, since otherwise this is too negative -lol- Well, in update 3.80 I only liked the radio station app. Though app is too big of a word, its web browser based but it really does the job well done. With a WIDE variety of genres, each with its own different stations, you'll always have something to listen to, especially when you're tired of the MP3s you have in the Mem stick. Other than that there's a new visualization which is actually the crappiest... Other than that I read that there's some improvements on the themes system, haven't checked that out completely so I don't know. The themes is probably the coolest feature to be added after the web browser, giving more space to customization, it really looks and works great.

Things I wish they would work on:

1. Instant messenger App. Please, no more web browser based stuff, a good ol' program that simply connects to the major IM networks. There's a ton of open source progs they can use -__-; Its nothing too complicated.
2. More video support PLEASE for the love of god. I hate having to encode each and every video is annoying, which is why I don't.
3. This doesn't really fall in firmware, but I'd wish they'd have more demos. I'm pretty broke and I hate taking risks when buying a game (Tokobot anyone?)
4. More features, even a crappy calculator would be nice, but come on, at least some PDA style stuff.

Well that pretty much covers my rants on the PSP firmware updates. The PSP is already 2 years old, by now it should have a ton of new features while they've only managed to make 3 noticeable features that are worth having and using.