K-On! ED Guitar Cover

Been a while since I last updated my blog! Anyway, here's a little cover of "Don't Say Lazy (TV Size)", the Ending Theme to K-On! . Pardon the horrible playing once again, haven't really touched my guitar in quite some time. Hopefully the anime can inspire me to touch it more often XD

Saber Lily

While I am not really a fan of figurines, an upcoming one did catch my eye. It is none other than an alternate form of Saber, Saber Lily! A pleasant change from the blue outfit that we usually see, this is from Fate/Unlimited Codes and if I'm not wrong, is a limited edition. Enjoy the pics!

DaeJangGeum and the Ninja Diary

The village set for the drama series is an open set built at Yangjoo city Gyunggido, inside the MBC cultural valley. The drama series is based on a real historic character that was borin a lowly untouchable class who rises to the position of court doctor. Let us take a look at the set (Not that I've watched the drama)!



(DaeJangGeum and I)




(Entrance area, Palace doorway and Grand Hall)



(TweSunGan, or kitchen area, attached to the room of court lady Han and young JangGeum)




The drama series is set in the Chosun Dynasty with emphasis on court culture, food depiction, costume, medical practices and games of the period.




(I think this was the Royal Kitchen or SuRaGan)

On this somewhat cold day, I was left with a lot of time to kill and wandered towards the backyard or village, I'm not too sure which. Being part of a film set, it was indeed a fitting location for my ninja diary :)




The whole place gave off a tranquil vibe and coupled with the cold and refreshing air away from traffic pollution, it provided a temporary respite from city life.


The Ninja Diaries
(Do not attempt some of these at home)

Objective : To reach the scenic endpoint without being detected


(Room clear, no sign of any enemy)


(Stealthily breaking and entering the room)


(Out at the corridor, the coast seems clear)


(Approaching Objective, final check to look out for security forces)


(All clear! Time to scale the building! I repeat, do NOT try this at home)



(Mission accomplished!)



(Nice view of the village/backyard from the top isn't it ? Worth the trouble!)




The thing that I am holding, I've no idea what it's called, is something like roti-prata, just that green tea powder or flour of sorts is used for the skin and it has a filling which tastes like cinnammon (it probably is). I think its usually sold during winter. Delicious and warm!

メリークリスマス (Merry Christmas) !

Noise . . . Pure Noise . . .

Here's me starting to try and learn how to play the solo to Sound Horizon's 'Asa to Yoru no Monogatari', when I really should be studying for JLPT instead. It's pretty horrendous playing by any standard and a lot of the notes are wrong, but . . . well . . . everyone has to start somewhere right ? :)

Distant Worlds : Music From FINAL FANTASY Asia Tour

According to the official site, the Distant Worlds concert will be making its asian premiere in Taiwan before staging 2 concerts in Singapore as part of the Singapore Arts Festival 2009. To find out more about the concert and the tracks covered, do visit their site. How nice it would be to hear a live rendition of "Memoro de la Stono ~ Distant Worlds" from FFXI . . . :)

Anime Festival Asia 2008 Mini-Gallery (Day 2)

Picking up from where I ended off in the last post, I shall start with more pictures of the exhibits from the anime booths.



Particularly interesting was the showcase exhibition of Genius Party Beyond from Studio 4°C. Below, you can see some of the stills and pre-renders from what is presumably part of the storyboard used by the various titles. Look at the attention to detail! Koji Morimoto, founder of the studio, was also on stage to talk about his works, the latest being 'Dimension Bomb' (which was visually stunning by the way, albeit a little abstract).

(The train station gives me 5 Centimeters per second vibes)






Following that, we have more figurines! First up, we have chibi Death Note characters, the same Vocaloids (かわいい！） as taken on Day 1 and Chun Li.





Up next is non-chibi Death Note characters and some ecchi thingy based on a certain someone's request. (Thanks for the Lenalee poster by the way!)




Last but not least, Mickey and Minnie! (Sadly, I did not see any Kingdom Hearts versions)




Unfortunately, due to class and lunch, I missed the cosplay competition and only arrived in time to take the last shot of them on stage. Nevertheless, many of them stayed on and hence, I actually have some pictures for show. Would probably have more if I wasn't so darn lazy with the camera XD

In the first picture, you can see Ichirou Mizuki, guest singer and one of the judges for the competition. I was not around for his concert on the first day, but I heard that it went pretty well.




There were characters from popular anime such as Macross Frontier, Bleach, Naruto, Gintama, Code Geass and too many others to name. If I am not mistaken, the obliging Ranka Lee cosplayer in the first picture below is the same one that I will be mentioning later. Interestingly enough, some actually cosplayed as a Menos Grande from Bleach instead of the more humanoid-looking characters :)







Finally, the main event for Day 2 would undoubtedly be May'n 'Live'. If you don't know who she is, she's the one who sang the songs for Sheryl Nome in the popular anime entitled Macross Frontier. If you are still clueless, wiki's yet another good friend. Since photo-taking and recording were technically not allowed, I'm contemplating removing the next few pictures after a while so enjoy them while you can. The quality of the pictures are really horrible though, so I doubt anything can be seen anyway. (I need a new cam!)

Anyway, she did mention that similar to her anime counterpart, she hopes that her voice can reach out to the real world and save it through her music.

Here's the tracklist of songs that she sang at the concert, in the order that she sang :

1. Welcome to My Fanclub's Night! (Sheryl on Stage)
2. What bout' My Star (Sheryl on Stage)
3. Infinity
4. Yousei ('Fairy')
5. Diamond Crevasse
6. Northern Cross
7. Iteza - Gogo 9ji - Don't be late (Sheryl On Stage)

Nakabayashi's voice 'live' was really good, with my only complain being that the backing track was not loud enough at times resulting in her voice drowning it out occasionally. I was hoping so much for a solo rendition of Lion, but alas, it was not to be. There was hardly any time for shouts of 'Encore!' to go around before she disappeared from stage.





[Northern Cross]



[Diamond Crevasse]



Post-concert, it was time for those who had purchased the VIP Diamond Pass to her concert to receive their pre-signed autographs and handshake. It was really amusing when the Ranka Lee cosplayer went on stage for her turn as May'n had this cute, surprised face upon seeing her! (I think there was a Sheryl Nome cosplayer who went up as well, but since I wasn't there at that time, I can't describe May'n's reaction then)




By the way, if anyone's interested, May'n has been blogging about her time here as well as some of her thoughts about the 'Live', so head over to her blog and take a look :)

Anyway, that's all the coverage for AFA08 and hopefully they'll be able to organize it again next year!


             (さよなら！)

Anime Festival Asia 2008 Mini-Gallery (Day 1)

Here are a couple of pictures of the random (or not so random) stuff that I took during the first morning of AFA 08 . . . I apologize if they are too blur to be seen clearly. On a side note, I did not take pictures of any retails booths or the arcade on either day, so they would not be appearing here =p

Greeting everyone near the entrance is the huge figure of Gundam Exia : エクシア、目標を駆逐する！ The next thing that caught my attention was the long line of people queuing up to purchase Gundam Model Kits, presumably the limited editions of Exia ?




Yup, you can feel Bandai's large presence . . . many different Gundam Models were put on display.



Next up, a whole ton of figurines were being displayed, such as Hatsune Miku, EVA, Fate/Stay Night etc. (The Tamagotchi booth banner does not count as a picture of a retail booth!)






Not many of the figurines exhibited were available for sale . . . a pity. Still, I probably can't afford those that were in the retail booths anyway, such as Bunny Suzumiya Haruhi with her guitar, Bunny Nagato Yuki with her guitar, Code Geass Knightmare Frames, Maid Rider from FSN, EVA Asuka, EVA Rei so on and so forth, but I digress.






I am pretty sure most people would recognize the following few figurines from Square Enix. We have Cloud, Tidus, Cloud, Yuffie, Cloud, Sephiroth . . . Ok, I don't exactly favor Cloud, it's just that they had more figures of him on display compared to the rest! (And that's not counting another 2 of him on his motorbike that I did not upload)








Holy utility belt, Batman! I sneaked a glance at someone else taking a picture of this same Batman model using a more professional camera, and it turned out almost like some movie still with a sepia tone added! The wonders of having a better camera -.-



Also on display were several art pieces from individuals and studios, probably from a local competition ? They were all pretty interesting and worth a look. Even pieces from current-season anime, such as Kannagi, were on display. The renders/art from Imaginary Friends Studio were particularly impressive! (The last 3 pics from the set below)







Following that, we have a showcase from Shonen Jump's 40th Anniversary Exhibition. I didn't take all of them though, so stuff like DragonBall is absent.







Last but not least are several images taken from the anime booths, organized by everyone's good friend. *cough*O...EX*cough*. Basically, these anime booths provide information and character profiles from the various anime that they represent. These range from older favorites such as Shakugan no Shana, D.Gray-Man and Code Geass, to current season ones such as Casshern Sins and Toradora. Each booth also has a TV screening clips from their respective DVDs.







Spot the odd one out!






Also, there was an exhibition booth providing information about the anime film, The Sky Crawlers. Although I did not take many shots of it, you can watch it in GV Cinemas from the 27th of November.



I did not stay for long on Day 1, so hopefully there'll be more to write about when Day 2 comes round! Can't wait for the mini-concert, heh.

[Live] Shimokawa Mikuni - Bird

Came across this after listening to the song a long while . . . wow, has she grown! A pretty nice performance in all, especially the expression :)

[PV] AKB48 - 大声ダイヤモンド (ogoe diamond)

Having been a long while since I last listened to/watched a mass-member group (No, Sound Horizon does not count as one), I decided to check out AKB48's latest single and here is the PV for it. Surely they give Morning Musume a run for their money ?