Kurogane's Anime Blog

Okay, that was a rather looooooooong post title.

First off, to all my Chinese diaspora readers, I wish you a Happy Chinese New Year 2010! May this year bring about continued prosperity and happiness to everyone!

Continue ->

<insert-christmas-themed-random-piece-of-art-taken-from-imageboards-here>

Wishing a Merry Christmas to all my readers celebrating it today!

Going off for a trip to Langkawi for the next 3 days, so there won’t be any posts about. Haven’t really been there before, so hopefully it’ll be a nice trip.

And hopefully, I won’t break any banks buying duty-free stuff there, although from the feedback I’ve read, there really isn’t anything worth it for me except for chocolates :P.

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…..

After a year of preparation, with much hard work, blood, sweat and tears, DaiCon’s finally over. I’ve just about only finished with the hall clean-up and woke up after getting a real night’s sleep after 5 days.

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.

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!

I guess this is somewhat related since it IS an anime adaptation.

*Ahem*, anyways, my friend got some invitations for the event so I tagged along to watch it despite having zero interest and expectations in it. Quite normal after the Chun-Li and Dragonball movie, but I am kinda glad to say that the movie actually exceeded my expectations and provided me with about one and a half hours of hilarity and comedy. Of course of the unintentional kind.

The movie actually got off to a pretty good start since they did keep to the story pretty well in the first 45 mins or so where they faithfully adapted the original material, up to the B-52 takeoff scene. Saya was actually… Saya and the action scenes were pretty acceptable for the B-Grade level-ness they exuded. It was kinda marred by horrible censorship, random afro brothers, random explosions, Assasin Creed roof jumping and the final clincher of Saya taking a shortcut of the cut-through-the-damn-walls kind.

Then they ran out of the original material and the REAL hilarity ensued. There was this whole “main plot-ish” thing about Saya hunting for the leader of the “Oni”, called Onigen (seriously, OniGEN?) and the scriptwriters went on a walk in the park with their own original storyline. And we all know how Hollywood scriptwriters are when it comes to original writing. Seriously, Hollywood, don’t you guys have any decent scriptwriters? And are you guys even paying these people properly? Sigh….

So how hillarious was it? Remember Onigen? Supposedly the leader of the Oni, oldest, cruelest and vilest of them all? It’s actually a woman. And she’s Saya’s mother. Which they revealed in a Star Wars-esque moment in the climax of the movie which would’ve been an incredible twist EXCEPT FOR THE FACT WE ALL SAW IT COMING FROM MINUTE 46:00:00?

And the dialogue was gawdawful horrible. There’s one part where token blonde… well, actually the smartest character of the show, Alice says to Saya… “There’s more to life than just Onigen.” I kinda replied, “For everything else, there’s always Mastercard.” which earned the wrath of my friends, ha ha ha. Not to mention Onigen, played by Japanese actress Koyuki, is speaking in ENGRISH ALL THE TIME. So yeah, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO TAKE HER SERIOUSLY WHEN SHE SPOUTS LINES LIKE “Your power I gave you. Your long life I gave you too.” Should’ve just fucking made her speak in Japanese instead of forcing her to speak English.

Saya’s character also got totally turned 180 degrees after the middle of the movie and she turned from the cold, no hesitation Saya to the brooding emo driven-by-revenge type of character. Who I must mention was so fucking useless that when she and Alice was getting attacked by an Oni on the highway she didn’t respond to it at all, leaving poor human Alice to fend it off by herself until the truck they were on fell in to a ravine. What the shit was that?

And there was also random shit like Weekly Shounen Magazine appearing in the movie (I swear I saw either Negima or Tsubasa in it), the aforementioned afro brothers, SuperSaya-n flying scene and a lot, and I really mean A LOT, of tsukkomi chances for this movie. Only good part of it was when Saya’s guardian, an old guy named Kato, squared off against a whole team of ninjas by himself. Pretty GAR and doomed too. He said like 3-4 deathflag-confirmed lines before going to fight them, LOL.

But overall, this is a B-Grade movie that really knows it’s a B-Grade movie and revels in the B-Grade-ness of it. Highly recommended to go watch if you kinda want to laugh yourself off with cheesy action scenes, cheesy dialogue and cheesy storylines that end abruptly without explaining anything.

Is apparently moot. Yes, moot. No I am not fucking kidding you. It’s 4chan’s moot. And in second place is Anwar Ibrahim LOL! That’s even more unbelievable than moot! Hell, Obama’s 37th on the list, ROFL.

Seriously what?! Next time, stick to pen-and-paper, dear TIME Magazine. Article can be found here: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1894028,00.html

Update: Details of the hack can be read here, well played /b/. mARBLECAKE ALSO THE GAME for sure.

Bah, Kinokuniya really has a spell on me. Went there and ordered Negima OAD 3 and bought The Record of a Fallen Vampire Vol.4 and The Gentlemen’s Alliance Cross (my guilty shoujo pleasure). Did I mention I also blew RM 100 on lunch earlier at Traders Hotel nearby? Well, the Hokkaido scallops were worth it…. :D

I have got to say though, Record of a Fallen Vampire is shaping up to be one of the best vampire manga I’ve read. Starting from vampire vs human vs dhampir, it sprung a huge twist involving foreign invaders, making it one of the best pageturners I’ve had in a while. I already can’t wait for the next volume even as soon as I’ve finished the one I just bought.

I’m also quite liking the complicated and mysterious backstory revolving around RotFV’s “hero”, Akabara Strauss and his relationships with his Queen, Adelheid, and Bridget, who used to look up to him as a father-figure. The story just keeps throwing surprising revelations around it making another important plot line to follow alongside the main one in the present. The presentation of both plotlines also intertwine very well, with neither affecting each other too much.

The next volume seems to finally focus on that backstory as well, as the main plot in the present takes a bit of a break from the action that was continuously going on since the beginning. I do really want to know what happened that lead to Akabara to betray his people and go on a 1000-year quest for revenge.

Right, I’ll end the promotional blurb for RotFV here (which was actually the point of this post anyways). I can hear my wallet lamenting now on how I am gonna explain this dire financial situation I’m facing right now…

Happy Chinese New Year to all my fellow Chinese readers! Hope everyone gets the wordplay!

As with the usual CNY celebrations, going off for a few days to visit relatives, etc etc. so there probably won’t be any posts for the next few days, though I might sneak in one or two if I can.

The Year of the Ox looks set to be a rather tumultuous year ahead (100 yen = RM 4.1 щ(ﾟДﾟщ) ＿|￣|O) but let’s hope for the best, eh.