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

©2009 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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.

©2009 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Yay, DaiCon gets coverage on NHK’s Music Japan! Also probably the first-ever Malaysian ‘otaku’ event to be given coverage on Japanese national TV too!

And I’m very much impressed with Minorin’s stamina. Her performance of Paradise Lost in the show doesn’t lose any sparkle despite the fact she travelled over 5000 miles and performed a concert the weekend before. Respect +25.

©2009 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve gotta admit, right up til and during the event, I still had my qualms about pulling such a big event off and when the concert started I still had a feeling this is all in a dream. Now that it’s all over, and after I’ve had a good night’s rest, only it is sinking in that we did pull it off.

I’m happy that the Minorin concert went without a hitch and pretty much nearly everyone who went had good things to say about it. Of course I do realise the event wasn’t perfect and there are a great many grumblings about it (I’m not the mineral water guy in case any more retards think I am) but what’s happened has happened.

It was also great that I managed to finally meet up with tj_han and DarkMirage, both of them bloggers that I still do read and respect. Owen_S and Faye also made their way here, as well as finally getting to meet j1mone and danie. Only thing I regret was that I couldn’t actually spend a lot of time with them thanks to me having the handle the event.

Of course there’s still a ton of work to finish off, post mortems, reports and such, but I’m glad to have been part of DaiCon. I can’t really say anything about the future plans for the event now, but I sure wouldn’t mind signing up for it for a second time.

©2009 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Oh god, DaiCon’s only 1 day away. So many stuff left to do! So many tasks to complete! So many things to buy!

And to cap it off, my phone f##$@#g decided to die on me yesterday, OMG OMG OMG ! And Kyo Ani are still trolling us with Endless Eight OMG OMG OMG!

©2009 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

It’s the moment you Minorin fans have been waiting for! Online ticketing preorders for the AWSM(RM 250) and ELITE(RM 150) tickets are now open on http://www.daiconnews.com.

Just go to http://www.daiconnews.com/cm_ticketing.php, grab our Preorder Form and read the instructions there. Fill it up and send it back to us at ticketing@daiconnews.com and we will process your orders ASAP!

For further enquiries,please email info@daiconnews.com with your questions.

The ticket prices are relatively reasonable considering the scale of the event. Hey it’s at least cheaper than AFA was! From what I hear, the AWSM tickets are pretty limited in quantity, so whoever wants them better go and grab them ASAP before it’s sold out.

©2009 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Picture source: Danie’s Shopping Log

The DaiCon event I reported earlier has announced their special guest after some speculation amongst locals and it turns out to be Miss Chihara Minori!

Famed for her role as Nagato Yuki in Suzumiya Haruhi and Minami Chiaki in Minami-ke as well as a really good singer, she will be holding a Q&A Panel and a Mini-Concert at DaiCon!

It’s the first time a personality of this level has come to Malaysia, and I believe it’s also her first ever South East Asia visit as well. It’s a pretty big step forward for local fans here, and after AFA 08 set the ball rolling, I hope to see more events of this caliber being held. Will I be able to get my wish of meeting Noto-sama here granted one day? Who knows….

Anyways, for more information, visit DaiCon’s homepage at http://www.daiconnews.com.

©2009 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Well, basically it’s another Malaysian ACG event (or another anime con as Americans call them) and it’s being held in the Grand Hall of the Multimedia University, Cyberjaya branch on the 11th and 12th of July, which is about 2 and a half months later.

Currently event slated to be held there include the customary cosplay competition, a karaoke competition (this one’s gonna be fun), figurine exhibitions by The Figure Mall and Macross Fans Malaysia and a Go (Shogi) showcase as well. It’s quite a good mix between old and new and it’s clear that DaiCon is set out to be different from the usual ACG events being held quite frequently here nowadays.

As their tagline says, it’s a celebration of Japanese Modern Visual Culture and their organizer has frequently expressed desire to not just include the usual anime and manga, but also J-pop, J-rock, and J-anything fans so they are preparing the event to be one of a kind over here in Malaysia. I’m pretty hooked by it and hope that they’ll live up to their promises.

Other bloggers covering the event have also expressed the possibility of a special guest coming in from Japan as well, with guesses ranging pretty widely from Shiraishi Minoru (HUH?!), Aya Hirano (LOLWUT?) and Chihara Minori. Personally if you ask me, it’s gonna be confirmed when it’s announced and I’m hoping it’d be Noto-sama or Kawasumi Ayako. I’d probably die from happiness if I got to meet them both.

Well, all in all, I’d probably be attending the event, since it’s being held so near me and as well to see if they live up to their promises. Keep an eye out here for further updates regarding the event.

©2009 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Well, first of all, I’m happy to be in a Guinness World Record, at least until it’s broken. The official record is 274 gamers playing for 40 hours, btw. I’m pretty sure Nvidia might try to top it off, considering Cyberfusion was a AMD-ATI event. I managed to get myself a Phenom X4 9150e and an Orange Box (thanks a lot FatCatLim) from the event so I’m even more happier. Disappointed about the certificate we got though. It’s a copy-pasta, fill-up-yer-own-name kinda cert. I really wished we got a proper and named ones instead.

I do have a few nitpicks about the event though, mostly related to the ambience of the event. It apparently seems that the organizers think that gamers are rave pub goers, which might be true overseas, but it sure isn’t over here. Frankly speaking, I am quite surprised I managed to weather 40 hours of disco lights, crappy trance/classical trance/rave music and fake smog (yeah, smog) to set the record. At one point I was suffering from overexposure thanks to that unhealthy combination of lights, sound and smell. Yeah, smell. Because that fake smog they used smells poisonous and STINKS to high heaven. Even my hair smells like it still… eww. Whoever decided on making the whole event like a rave/trance party ought to be shot, whipped and have a glowing hot rod stuck up his back.

Which brings to me to the second nitpick of the event, mainly the committees. Some are pretty clueless, and some are rather rude. But my biggest complaint about them is not setting up their network earlier so that they could diagnose any problems. We were all required to be in the venue by 9pm Friday to be briefed and get ready, but instead they kinda wasted about 2 hours showing some people’s DotA matches and stuff. The LAN was only set up around 11:10pm and a LOT. I repeat. A LOT of problems popped up immediately.

First of all, they used a pretty fucking fail router which couldn’t support nearly 300 machines connecting to it. Hell, at one point, pinging the ROUTER from my PC actually timed out. Yeah, the router couldn’t respond to my pings. I wouldn’t have been surprised to discover a WRT in the router room, trying to slave away at routing 300 PCs. Of course the Internet was a no-go too, since the router kept dying on us.

In the end, we had to go on for about 4-5 hours with no Internet AND LAN too, since the router was so unstable that even LAN games couldn’t work as they kept timing out. Be reminded that this is a LAN party for god’s sake. Thank god as the morning of Saturday arrived, they managed to change the routers and everyone had the Internet back up, although some idiots actually went to torrent stuff after that and earned a well-deserved lashing from the emcee. And as expected, a virus made its rounds around the PC’s too, causing a lot of people to have downtime as they tried to remove it. Thank god I didn’t have the problem. Vista is surprisingly secure at everything on default settings but then I didn’t install any antivirus on it so I might not be so sure. I’ll still have to scan that install first though. Thankfully I used another HDD and Vista install for the event.

After the networking issues were resolved, everything else went on pretty smoothly. The food they provided pretty much sucked though, all throughout the three days, but it’s better that way. Kinda cut off the need to go for long toilet breaks, ahahaha. Eventually though, the need of sleep really became a pressing issue. There was this one guy who was pretty awesome since he was very obviously sleeping, but his car (he was playing a racing game) was actually still moving on screen. More awesomely, as I passed him, the VIP’s of the event went past met and saw him as well. After that, emcee made the mickey out of him, LOLOLOLOL.

Ahh, so now that’s out of the way, expect normal blogging to resume after this. Got a full backlog of anime to watch now. I need my Felli fix.

©2009 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

UPDATE 8: These guys are mad. So yeah, we’re adding in another two hours to the record to make it 40 hours even. Another two hours…. problem now would be finding good enough servers on TF2….

UPDATE 7: Just past 36 hours and we’ve officially kicked the ass of the NVISION LAN party back in August. Another 2 hours or so till we reach our target of 38 hours with over 250 participants.

UPDATE 6: 3 hours and 50 mins to 38 hours. Let’s do this people!

UPDATE 5: Took a short 30 min nap around 30th hour. Feeling much better now. I shall continue my war against Russia by fielding my newly built Tanks against their Crossbowmen. Another 6 hours and 20 mins to go.

UPDATE 4: Oh god, nearly 9 hours left, but I am feeling so sleepy. I have nearly 2 hours worth of rest time stored up but I dare not use them as I’m scared I won’t come back after that. Maybe I’ll just steal a few winks in between turns/loading screens. God I so hope that the promise of free Orange Box for all the record-breakers is true as well.

UPDATE 3: Even Civ IV got boring. Currently completing my game of The Last Remnant. Glad to know that there is so many time sinks that I have. Nearly 40 hours w/o sleep… well discounting some nod-offs I had while playing Civ IV. Another 12 hours to go.

UPDATE 2: 20 hours now. Another 18 left. Oh god, I am so collapsing after this. Even L4D and TF2 get boring after nearly 18 hours of it, so the past two hours has been me playing Civ IV, the ultimate time sink game. I expect it to get me through at least another 6 hours. God bless Sid Meier and Firaxis Games.

UPDATE 1: 14 hours in. It’s lunch time now. L4D and TF2 are the only things keeping my consciousness awake. Whoever wants to try and do a L4D game with me can add me, ‘Kurogane-Cyberfusion’ on Steam. Hopefully the internet holds.

Blogging live from Cyberfusion 2009, the largest (and probably the first of its kind) LAN party in Malaysia with the aim of breaking the Guinness World Record for the longest LAN party recorded.

Lots of teething issues to start with, heck we all couldn’t even get decent Internet connection until now. Four hours in to the party now with another 34 hours to hang on, and I bloody hope they’re giving us Phenom II X4’s at the end of this.

Anyways, no anime probably for the weekend, but I’ll be updating myself throughout the event.

Currently finished a crazy bout of L4D with townberry and FatCatLim, probably gonna do some Steam gaming later on. Man I sure hope I can survive.

©2009 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.