Kurogane's Anime Blog

Wind-up Bird Chronicles, Kafka on the Shore, After Dark, Dance Dance Dance and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. All five for less than RM 150. Also Six Suspects, Tale of Two Cities and Sherlock Holmes.

Excuse me if I don’t blog as much in the next 2 months or so. Too bad Norwegian Wood sold out. Should’ve bought them all on the first day of the Popular Bookfest. But still, awesome discounts are awesome…..

Just as I thought Senjougahara won’t be making any more appearances in the arc…

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I finally took time to watch the live action 20th Century Boys movies. Man, those movies really are damn long, clocking at 2 hours plus each.

So… well. How were they? Pretty good actually considering the amount of source material they had to work with. I’ve already finished reading the whole manga so I’m aware that a lot of stuff was cut out to fit in to the confines of a movie but the production team kept the intensity and the psychological mindfuck of the story well enough. In fact, I would say they did a great job condensing it, it feels more coherent in the movie than the manga.

Also the climax scenes were very well done, such as the explosion in the end of the first movie to destroy the robot and the funeral ceremony in the second movie. They weren’t kidding when wiki said that this was one of the biggest projects of the Japanese movie industry. Looking at all the extras in the crowd scenes of the second movie as well as the international news reports really makes you go “oh wow”.

On the negative side of things, character development was sacrificed, most notably in the second movie, but the important points were kept well enough for me to like it.

Overall, the first two movies are a pretty good adaptation of the manga, despite some drawbacks such as the sheer length and the missing character development. Too bad movies like this won’t be coming to Malaysia. Can’t wait for the final part of the trilogy to come out too.

P.S. Takako Tokiwa looks too ‘cool’ to be Yukiji :P.

Really, this arc is all about abusing poor Mikuru. :3

What’s worse is that I’m actually enjoying it! orz

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Well, Kotaro’s looking quite manly here.

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Okay…. just as I thought the show would be all SERIOUS BUSINESS, stuff like this pops out.

I’m not gonna take this show seriously anymore. Seriously.

If you’d thought last night’s Happy Material duet was disappointing surprising, guess what happened today….

1 『DISCOTHEQUE』～『MonStAR』/水樹奈々+平野綾 (Nana Mizuki + Hirano Aya)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RAGE (╬ ಠ益ಠ)
RAGE (╬ ಠ益ಠ)
RAGE (╬ ಠ益ಠ)
RAGE (╬ ಠ益ಠ)
RAGE (╬ ಠ益ಠ)

8 『霊喰い (Tamakui)』/妖精帝國 (Yousei Teikoku)
9 『last Moment』/妖精帝國 (Yousei Teikoku)

Woot! Yousei Teikoku~! And Tamakui performed live!

23 『魂のルフラン (Tamashii no Refrain)』/飛蘭+奥井雅美 (Faylan + Masami Okui)

Weird choice for a duet, but this sounds interesting.

27 『DANZEN!ふたりはプリキュア （ver.Max Heart）』/田村ゆかり+新谷良子 (Tamura Yukari + Shintani Ryoko)

Woah! Shintani Ryoko + Yukarin duet!

… and the main highlight:

40 『Gimmick Game』/水樹奈々+ m.o.v.e
41 『深愛』/水樹奈々+Suara
42 『悦楽カメリア』/水樹奈々
43 『Orchestral Fantasia』/水樹奈々

Awesome song choices by Nana this year and I can’t wait to hear the duet between her and Suara of Shin’ai. I daresay that would be a real awesome combo. Also Etsuraku Camelia and Orchestral Fantasia combo really hit me, because those are two of my favourite Nana songs from ULTIMATE DIAMOND and GREAT ACTIVITY respectively.

Anyways, full song list for Day 2 can be found here: http://pc.animelo.jp/rebridge/whatsnew/?p=090823_set

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

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１曲目　残酷な天使のテーゼ　石川智晶　angela

HOLY SHIT WHAT IS THIS I DON’T EVEN.

８曲目：マイペース大王/桃井はるこ+manzo

Oh lol Momoi singing this song in a duet?

１６曲目：みっくみくにしてあげる♪【してやんよ】/初音ミク
１７曲目：ブラック★ロックシューター/初音ミク

I really want to know how did ‘Miku’ appear on stage. But BLACK ROCK SHOOTER? Holy shit, it’s a bloody official now.

２４曲目：ハッピー☆マテリアル/堀江由衣+茅原実里 みのりんｷﾀ━━━━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━━━━ !!!!

Hocchan + Minorin duet but HAPPY MATERIAL?

ヽ( >∀< )ﾉ AHAHA AHAHA AHAHAHAHA
ヽ( >∀< )ﾉ AHAHA AHAHA AHAHAHAHA
ヽ( >∀< )ﾉ AHAHA AHAHA AHAHAHAHA
ヽ( >∀< )ﾉ AHAHA AHAHA AHAHAHAHA
ヽ( >∀< )ﾉ AHAHA AHAHA AHAHAHAHA
ヽ( >∀< )ﾉ AHAHA AHAHA AHAHAHAHA
ヽ( >∀< )ﾉ AHAHA AHAHA AHAHAHAHA
ヽ( >∀< )ﾉ AHAHA AHAHA AHAHAHAHA
ヽ( >∀< )ﾉ AHAHA AHAHA AHAHAHAHA
ヽ( >∀< )ﾉ AHAHA AHAHA AHAHAHAHA
ヽ( >∀<)ﾉ AHAHA AHAHA AHAHAHAHA

Oh dear now I can’t wait for the DVD/BD.

P.S. No, I did not go for Animelo 09 in person. Just getting second hand reports from 2ch and friends who are there :P

P.P.S Official song list for Day 1 has been uploaded: http://pc.animelo.jp/rebridge/whatsnew/?p=090822_set
WTF so fast! But FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF I WANT TO WATCH THE CRUEL ANGEL THESIS DUET.

Y’know, if Pixar continues with this, I might really need to stop going to the cinemas to watch their movies because crying in public is kinda embarrassing.

But yeah, I just watched Up and this is the second Pixar movie since The Incredibles that I am really liking. Last year’s WALL-E was a tour-de-force in raising awareness of environmental issues and really giving a good addition to the really small sci-fi animation movie genre. Up really continues the Pixar ball rolling and tells of a touching tale without being too sappy yet in a very much escapist fantasy manner. Really, it’s not everyday you see a whole house floating on balloons.

The part I really like about the movie is the first fifteen minutes with the long exposition of Carl’s life from his childhood to marrying his wife, Ellie and their trials and tribulations ending with her untimely death. It expertly grounds the movie in the reality and gives Carl a much more human side to him as we get to know from the start of the movie of why he becomes a ‘grumpy old man’. It also serves to really connect the audience instantly to Carl and makes them more forgiving for the actions he takes later on.

The rest of the movie then goes on to the present ‘grumpy’ Carl and the introduction to Russell, the active, slighly overweight but enthusiastic Wilderness Explorer. Russell’s character provides a very good foil to the wizened and cynical Carl with his energy, which can seem to be annoying in the beginning. But despite that, Russell’s intentions are all well-meant which is a realistic, albeit slightly over-optimistic view of kids nowadays, made even more poignant when framed against the revelation later on that Russell only just wants to see his father, who is divorced already, again.

The main antagonist of the movie is Charles Muntz, Carl’s childhood hero, and it’s where some of the realism of the movie escapes. It’s quite hard to believe that there’s a 92 year old man surviving in the jungles of South America for 70 years, even more so when its shown that he’s managed to train a whole army of dogs that do everything for him, from cooking to piloting fighter planes. Undeniably, it does provide a level of excitement to the movie with the battles between our heroes and his dogs.

I guess I won’t spoil it anymore for readers who haven’t watched it yet, but suffice to say, this a movie well-worth your ticket price. Definite shoo-in for best animated feature of the year.