Playing catchup

Eventually I'll be compelled to post regularly, but I'm lazy!

First -- if anybody else has a Samsung 550 series TV, these are my latest settings. Yes, I'm picky enough to 1) have a colorimeter and 2) do calibrations every once in awhile.

Second -- I've bought and pre-ordered a lot of stuff from Rightstuf recently. Anime: My Hime, Rozen Maiden, Aria the natural. Manga: Aqua, Aria up to 5, Tsubasa 18-20, Fruits Basket up to 21, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei vol. 1. Light novels: Haruhi (hardcover bitches!) and the Crest of the Stars trilogy. I desperately want the Banner of the Stars novels to come out...

Third -- canceled my Blockbuster subscription. Their anime selection sucked (no vol. 1 of shuffle?!) and I couldn't manage to get more than 1 disc a week from them. I'll probably try netflix after the new year

Fourth -- thinking of entering the Interactive Brokers Olympiad. If I'm lucky (or smart) I could win money for ANIME!

Fifth -- currently watching, in no particular order, Hyakko, Toaru, Chaos Head, Akane-iro, Michiko and Hatchin, and Kyou no go no ni. These are all good except for Akane-iro, which is kind of lame but entertaining enough to keep following. I liked Kyou no go no ni better as a comedy at first (the adult faces are hilarious), but it's starting to become a little dull... and Hyakko, well, I didn't like it very much at the beginning, but now it's pretty good. I think it's because they 1) started introducing more characters, and 2) the dynamics between the characters are more interesting. I'll be getting to Clannad after story after the WS versions come out, and I'll be catching up on ef tale of melodies sooner or later, and at some point I'll watch Mouryou no Hako. Casshern Sins is on my list to watch also, and maybe Skip Beat too.

I borrowed Ouran from a friend, and that is quite the amusing anime. It was so good I plowed through the first 13 episodes in 2 nights. The premise sounds cliched, but the over-the-top randomness and Haruhi just make me come back for more.

That's pretty much it for updates. If you're looking for anime, RightStuf is running a bunch of specials for Christmas. It's also a pretty good time to buy a large LCD TV for anime!

Rightstuf taking all my money

Rightstuf keeps running sales to take away my money! First it was the Tokyopop sale, then the Viz sale, and now Nozumu entertainment stuff is on-sale! This means getting my Aria the Natural part 1 order in, and a hard, hard decision about Maria watches over us season 1, Season 2, and Season 3, and if that wasn't enough, Emma Season 1 and Season 2.

Oh the decisions to make...

Banner of the Stars complete collection $14.99!

Get your credit card ready and buy Banner of the Stars Complete Collection at Best Buy for $14.99. Best deal I've ever seen.

NYAF 2008 in review

Now that I'm back to the daily grind (or perhaps because I'm not in the mood to do work), I'll talk about my experience at New York Anime Festival (NYAF).

Friday:
I got there a bit late on Friday, catching the last 30 minutes of the Bandai panel. You can read about the announcements at ANN, but I was actually kind of disappointed they didn't announce more stuff on Blu-ray (like The Girl Who Lept Through Time). I stayed a bit for Funimation's panel (see the ANN for a review of the announcements). I think there were a couple bloggers in the front row live-blogging the event. The Funimation guy was a lot cooler than the Bandai guys. I wandered around the Dealer's room for a bit, then got tired and went over to the Claymore panel, where they showed the first dubbed episode of the series. I left after that to eat and watch the first presidential debate.

Cosplays from Friday:

From NYAF 2008

From NYAF 2008

From NYAF 2008

Saturday:
The only thing I cared about seeing was Rie Tanaka at the Masquerade. I got there in the mid-afternoon, walked around the dealer's room again, and sat in a few panels to kill time. I started lining up for the Masquerade around 6, an hour before it was to start. This is the line that greeted me:

From NYAF 2008

Anyway, I saw Rie Tanaka sing, and it was awesome. I stayed for the rest of the masquerade, where there was an actual, real marriage proposal! (The cosplayers were dressed up as Rock Lee and his teacher, whoever that was, and Rock Lee started on his lines about the dude, and then got on his knees and busted out the ring.)

Cosplays from Saturday:

From NYAF 2008

From NYAF 2008

From NYAF 2008

From NYAF 2008

From NYAF 2008

From NYAF 2008

From NYAF 2008

From NYAF 2008

Sunday:
I got my ass up at 8am, waited for the damn PATH train for 15 minutes, and got to the convention center at around 10am. I went into the opening line that snaked through the second floor, missed getting an autograph ticket, then went to the Rie Tanka panel. I was probably around the 60th person in line or so, and this was the line behind me:

From NYAF 2008

Around 10:45am they started letting people in, and they had somebody directing people where to sit to make sure there weren't any gaps. It turns out that about the last 4 or 5 rows were empty at the start of the panel, though those mostly filled in as the panel went on. The panel was mostly just Q&A, with the usual assortment of voices and typical seiyu questions. Some random fans gave her toys!

From NYAF 2008

(Random note: that picture was taken from probably about 30 ft away, and I have a regular P&S digital cam! Go Fuji F30!). She did sing about a minute of a song though, without music, and my friends, she is the real deal. I'd buy a CD full of her singing a capella. There was a rock-paper-scissors tournament at the end, and I lost after the second round :(. So somewhat dejected for lack of an autograph ticket, I wandered around for a bit and left shortly after.

Comments on the con itself
I'm a bit bitter at not getting an autograph from Rie -- I'm not too bothered by the VIP pass thing, but I thought NYAF should have had at least 2 sessions for her. In the end, it's only an autograph, I guess... I keep telling myself that at least. I had no problems getting Morio Asaka's or Noto Mamiko's autographs at Otakon 2007, for example, mostly because they had multiple autograph sessions.

Line management could also have been better. The line for the masquarade was ridiculously long, and they let the 2nd line in before the 1st line (worked well for me because I was in the 2nd line, but not very fair nonetheless). I kind of like the idea I saw at Otakon for tape lines on the floor indicating where to queue up; there were no signs for the end of the masquerade line, and they moved parts of the line multiple times.

Programming seemed a bit sparse at times; there were a few times I had nothing to do while waiting between panels I wanted to see, and going through the dealer's room gets boring after the 3rd or 4th time. Otakon had many more options (though they didn't have Rie Tanaka).

Overall, I accomplished my goal of seeing Rie Tanaka. Next time though, I may actually shell out the $$$ for a VIP ticket, even though it rubs me the wrong way...

Anime rentals -- Blockbuster availability

Renting anime is pretty useful for checking out series you're not sure about, or watching series you want to see but don't want to own. There's two big mail rental companies -- Netflix and Blockbuster. My friend already has Netflix, and as they're going to be charging extra for Blu-ray, I figured I'd give Blockbuster a shot.
So let's look at anime availability.

• Mushishi vol. 1 - Available, and I received it. Rather poor condition however, it gives my DVD player problems
• Ghost in the Shell: Solid state society - Very long wait (i.e. months)
• Tekkon Kinkreet (blu-ray) - Available
• Appleseed: Ex Machina (blu-ray) - Short wait (seems to mean a few days wait)
• Utawarerumono vol. 3 - Long wait (weeks)
• Fantastic Children vol. 1 - Very long wait
• Rozen Maiden vol. 1 - Very long wait
• Azumanga Daioh vol. 1 - Long wait
• Shana vol. 1 - Available
• Shuffle vol. 1 - Unavailable (this means they don't have ANY!)
• Zegapain vol. 1 - Unavailable
• Howl's Moving Castle - Available
• Full Moon vol. 1 - Unavailable
• Kaleido Star vol. 1 - Available
• Outlaw Star vol. 2 - Unavailable
• Emma - not even able to add to queue

So far it seems that Blockbuster isn't too great for anime selection. I may keep it around for blu-rays and get the cheap netflix account for the rest of the anime I want...

It's the end of July!

Oh my, it's been a busy month. Let me summarize the goings on first:

Anime

• Started watching Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei again after I gave up on waiting for a.f.k to sub it and switched to anon and volans. They both did a rather good job (volans especially, most of the text was typeset!).
• One new anime this season on my list -- Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora. Very interesting background art, and it looks to be a nice slice of life series. Also on my list to watch: Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu, Natsume Yuujinchou, and Ryoko's Case File.
• Watched the Clannad Tomoyo ep; it was quite delicious -- makes me want to play the game now!

Games Finally got my PS3 back, it was a refurbished 80gb model, but it works and is quieter than my old system, so I'm happy. I picked up GTA4; making my way through it as we speak. I don't quite understand all the hype the game received though; the plot hasn't captured me yet. I also started playing Kingdom Hearts!

Music I just found out about the Love Song album published by Key, by riya and Jun Maeda. If you like riya or eufonius's other stuff, you'll love this album. The new Kalafina single for the Kara no Kyokai ED is nice to listen to as well! And Perfume's new single, love the world, is good if you like their other songs.

Random update!

I'm still alive, here's a summary of what's going on:

• Lots of things to do at work
• Sent my broken PS3 back to Sony, should get a replacement this week!
• Code Geass R2 really knows how to end episodes on cliffhangers!
• I gave up waiting for a.f.k. to sub ZSZS, and instead I switched to anon. The script seems relatively decent, though they don't translate a lot of the text. But that's what you gotta do to watch it, *sigh*. It is full of LOL, especially episode 7

New season of ef announced!

From Kurogane's blog, the second season of ef, ef ~ a tale of melodies was announced! See the PV below. It's a must watch for me.

The end of Kurenai

I just watched the last episode of Kurenai, and right now, I'm a bit disappointed. The animation was nice, I liked the character design, the voice acting, and the basis of the story, but the last episode wasn't too my liking. There wasn't much action, which I was expecting, but the way things turned out was just... it was as if the writers wanted to have some deep philosophical message, but weren't sure how to pull it off.

Despite all that, I still thought it was one of the better series this season, and aside from the last episode, the plot was pretty tight. I think it's worthy of an 8 or 9 out of 10.

Another take on the series from Star Crossed Anime Blog.

Other news: my PS3 still overheats, but despite that, I'm on the last act of MGS4! And I have new calibration settings for my Samsung 46A550.

I got a PS3! But it overheats =(

So yes, I went out and bought the MGS4 bundle last Thursday at Walmart for the $100 gift card offer. While I managed to get the bundle, I was a bit unlucky and got a PS3 that likes to overheat.

I excitedly unpacked the PS3, installed the system update to 2.35, then put in MGS4. I was happily playing away when about 2 hours later, the system beeps, shuts off, and then displays the red blinking light. The manual indicates this means the system is overheating. Originally, I had the PS3 in my entertainment center, which is open in front and in back, but perhaps it was still getting too hot. I moved it outside the entertainment center, stood it vertically, and then played for another hour when the same thing happened.

I'm quite saddened at this point, but when something is overheating, what do you do? Give it more cooling of course. I placed a tower fan directly in front of the PS3 on high, and to my delight, the PS3 stopped overheating!

Called up Sony, they basically said it's got a problem and asked if I wanted to send it in for service. It would have taken 7-10 business days, so I figured I'd try to exchange at Walmart.

Called up the Walmart I bought it from, and the other 3 Walmarts in a 40 mile radius, but none had any in stock or knew when they were getting more in. So at this point, I'm stuck with a PS3 that works only with a fan blowing on it :(.

Samsung 46A550 calibration

I got my i1Display/LT on Friday and spent a good portion of my weekend playing with it and my TV. It's not so easy to calibrate a TV, but I came pretty close. My results are posted over at AVSforum. Why is calibration important? Well, you want to make sure that the colors you see are what the director intended right? It's probably not as critical for anime, because you probably can't tell if the colors are off though =P.

Kaiba OP - Best OP this season

This is perhaps a bit late, but I can't get over the amazing Kaiba OP. The singer does a surprisingly good job of singing in English.

New TV!

I have spent most of my free time these past few weeks researching televisions. I finally decided that 32" was just not big enough to watch anime, and so I went shopping for a new TV.

I was looking for an LCD with a good value/performance ratio. Basically, I just wanted an LCD with really good picture quality for really cheap. I crossed out the typical cheap brands, because while they're good values, they all seem to make some compromises in picture quality. From reading AVS Forum's LCD forum, I narrowed my choices to:

• Toshiba 42XV540
• Sony 40V4100
• Samsung 40A650
• Samsung 46A550
• Sony 40W4100

I was originally planning on getting a Toshiba 42XV540, but it seems to have issues with poor viewing angles and off-colored blacks. Plus, it's not any cheaper than the much better Samsung 40A650. Amazon has a great deal going on the Samsung 40A650, and it has pretty much everything you'd want -- great picture quality, 10-bit display panel, and 120 Hz. However, some of the great picture quality is from the glossy screen, which may be a problem for lots of people with bright rooms. There are also reports that, possibly due to the coating of the screen, blacks have a purplish tinge.

I was all set to get the Samsung 40A650, but the glossy screen and purple haze issues worried me. I ruled the Sony 40W4100 out, because it was a lot more expensive than the Samsung 40A650 (on the order of $250), and didn't seem to be worth the extra price. I would have probably bought the Sony 40V4100, but then I went to Best Buy and looked at the TVs. And then, I saw the 46" TVs... once I saw the size difference, I didn't want to get the 40" anymore!

The TV I ended up buying is the Samsung 46A550. It has a semi-glossy screen, only an 8-bit panel (but 10-bit processing), but oh boy it is big. The picture quality is very close to the A650 series, but without the added kick of the glossy screen. I'm kind of bummed about not having 120 Hz, but I didn't think it was worth losing 6" o screen over. And to top it off, it was about the same price as the 40A650.

So how is it? Well, I'll let pictures speak for themselves:

Picture taken from my couch. My Macbook is shown for comparison

A scene from Vexille

Everything being said, I'm happy with the TV, and I'd totally recommend anybody looking to spend about $1500 on a TV seriously consider it.

Utada's Heart Station album available in the US?!

I never thought it would happen, but Utada Hikaru's latest Japanese album, Heart Station, is available on Amazon and on , both in glorious DRM-free MP3 (Amazon) or AAC (iTunes)! Only $10 too! (50 cents cheaper at Amazon, but AAC is the better format, so it's a wash).

I am quite tempted to buy it on iTunes actually...

If you have Pepsi stuff points, you can buy the songs on Amazon for 5pts/song.

I'm actually surprised by what else is available on iTunes, like Bonnie Pink's Even so, Yuka Funakoshi - Morning Bird, Fujimoto Takako - Feel It, or Namie Amuro - Play. I actually have no excuses now...

Anime watching and "mood"

At one point in life, I was so enthused about anime that I could watch any series, any time. Just bombed a test? No need for happy anime, just go straight into watching Saikano! Yet, I find that as I get older, or perhaps I should say, more jaded, I can only watch certain anime if my mood allows for it. It's something unfathomable, kind of like when you hear people say they're not in the mood for sex. When you're young and hormone-crazed, you think that can never be the case! But here I am, with the following anime options available: Kaiba, Kanokon, Allison to Lillia, and Crystal Blaze. I like Kaiba, but I'm just not in the mood to watch it right now. Same with AtL and Crystal Blaze.

I find that this does not happen to some anime, however. I'm nearly always up for watching a new episode of Code Geass, Macross F, or Kure-nai. Perhaps it's a testament to the quality of those shows, or maybe it's because they span the range of genres, so there's literally something for every mood.

ARIA is here, huzzah!

Yes, that niche anime that people either love or find incredibly lame, Aria, has been licensed by RightStuf. Aria, is at its core, a slice of life anime following three girls. It sounds generic, even dull, and I didn't watch it until bloggers like Jeff kept leaping praise upon it. I watched the first season, and wow. Nothing happens, but it's such a mellow anime! It's hard to recommend blindly to people, because you need to be of a certain mindset to appreciate it, but if you like 5cm/second, you'd probably like Aria

On another note, RightStuf is also having a sale on DelRay manga. I bought the volumes of Tsubasa Chronicle I have yet to collect, and it was a perfect time to get Aria for the free shipping.

Oh yes, the Haruhi novels are licensed

Yes, finally, we get some Haruhi light novel action here.

New season summaries!

I'm still making it through my backlog of shows this season (I've only watched Special A and Code Geass R2), but the bloggers at THAT anime blog have more time than I and have summarized their top 5 shows of the season.

On my personal to watch list: Kurenai, Itazura na kiss, Allison to Lillia, and if they ever get subbed, RD and Library Wars. Maybe Kanokon...

In other news, my dream TV is not as awesome as I was hoping, due to the use of a different panel than the XF550. (This is relevant to anime because, well, that's all I watch on my TV :D).

ef - the latter tale OP

I am impressed again by the quality of the OP for this game (the next game after ef - a fairy tale of the two). It's practically movie quality! I'm still on the fence about the music, but the animation is gorgeous!

What would a banjo sound like in a jpop song?

If you've ever wondered what a banjo in a JPop song would sound (or look) like, I've got the music video for you!
It's strangely almost how I imagined it! Anyway, I'm going to go back to working on my image processing assignment.

On anime and sound

Oh my, I'm drowning in work so don't expect any updates (not like you did anyway, you one person reading my blog). I did read interesting editorial on why people tend to view anime in a positive light, and I agree with the main point that if you're watching anime for entertainment, you're going to try to get as much enjoyment out of it as possible, which usually means liking what you watch :D.

In other news, I upgraded my sound system to the Onkyo HT-SR800. Ghost Hound sounds awesome, and my subwoofer is quite capable of annoying the neighbors. I was previously using a cheap $30 computer speaker system (4.1), and this system is much, much better. However, I wonder if the money was better spent on a better TV since I think for anime, that perhaps the picture is more important than the sound? Or maybe I'm a more discerning viewer than listener.

If you're still with me, I also finished two additional series this weekend. First was Bamboo Blade, which some people liked, some people didn't like, but everybody wants more of. Next up was Hatenkou Yuugi. The show had its problems: there are some issues of pacing, the crew just warps from one place to the next, and the back story for the characters could be developed better (like, why do the three of them have the ability to use magic?), but the witty banter between the characters saved it for me. I think most people have the view on Hatenkou Yuugi, and again, people want more!

A bundle of anime

You don't realize how hard it is to come up with titles until you can't. This is a lame titled post, but nobody reads this anyway so what does it matter. This week, along with the freakishly warm weather for 1 day here (it got my hopes up with its near 60 degree high, then dropped my hopes down with the temperature to below freezing), I got not 1, not 2, but 3 animes I've been anticipating!

First arrival was RahXephon, which was on backorder from RightStuf. This was followed by Noein, which I picked up from Best Buy, and today, the critically acclaimed 5cm per second, also previously on backorder from RightStuf.

All these DVDs have made me realize one thing -- either I'm more discriminating than most people, my computer isn't configured properly, computers suck for watching DVDs, or no anime company encodes their DVDs correctly. What the hell am I talking about? Interlacing. Mplayer, the app with the most debug information, continually detects a switch from progressive to interlaced content, with the result that the pullup filter doesn't work that well. DVD players that use my supposedly awesome video card's deinterlacing hardware, also fail for the same reason (ATI cards, and I expect nVidia as well, have something called vector adaptive deinterlacing). I can get bearable results using bob or blend-type filters, but those just blur the interlacing lines and are generally lame. So at this point, I have to settle for crappy DVD playback from my computer :(.

This week I also finished True Tears, Shigofumi, Dragonaut, and Banner of the Stars. True Tears was epic and surprisingly realistic until the end, but you can read some other blog entries from other people with more interesting writing styles than you'll find here. People just seem to love it. I'd say it's a buy for me if it ever comes out as a DVD boxset or at least cheaper than Bandai Visual's supposed pricing. As for Shigofumi, well, the very end was kind of eh, but I enjoyed it, as did this person and this other person. I'd only get this in a cheap boxset though. Dragonaut was pretty bad, I don't want to waste my time on talking about it. Banner of the Stars is a few years old, but it's an amazing sci-fi story, but works best if you can watch it in one sitting. You can read another opinion.

Anime on sale at Best Buy!

Deals on Anime boxsets at Best Buy this week. In particular, I'd recommend Elfen Lied and Noein.

Week in review

Like many blogs, content is not being updated very often (and when it is, it's kind of lame). This is what happens when you have Rock Band and anime to watch :P.

New this week: March madness ended at Derailed by Darry, with Haruhi winning the title. There was a new weekly vocaloid ranking with a new number 1 song, Soar, by Hatsune Miku. True Tears 12 aired, and was pretty epic according to many people. Spice and Wolf ended this week as well, which was also epic. News is also traveling that there is more Clannad to come.

I'm also shopping for a new LCD TV, and I think the Toshiba 42XV540 is perfect for me, if only I made enough money to afford it :P. According to the AVSforum post, it has a 10-bit LCD, wide color gamut backlight, and a good implementation of 120 Hz.

No more H2O!

Today saw the end of two harem animes - H2O and Clannad. You can read about Clannad from lots of other people; here's a short list:

• Star Crossed Anime Blog - 85/100 for the series
• Anime Blog ga arimasu - thought the end was rushed and a bit anticlimatic
• Xebek's blog - loved it, for the most part

Overall, I was a bit let down by the ending and the fact that Tomoya's beef with his dad never really got sorted out (though there was a bit of a hint at the end), but I still liked it.

However, as much as it surprises me to admit this, I liked the ending of H2O better. The series had a lot of flaws, and this last episode made a lot of logical jumps, but for the last 10 minutes, it had me going "OH NOES, HAYAMI-CHAAAAAAAN!" Even though I guessed that scene was coming, and I thought she wasn't too smart for doing that... in any case, despite all the problems with the episode, I liked it.

And no, I don't think H2O rocked my soul. I probably wouldn't recommend it to anybody either. My rating for it is a 7 -- it had some nice music, and it had some interesting ideas, but it wasn't pulled off that well and the animation quality wasn't too hot.

Rock Band is a time sink

My evenings this past week have been spent either doing homework, or playing Rock Band at my friend's house. Rock Band has this strange ability to make time disappear -- I'll start playing, then BAM next time I look at the clock it's two hours later. I really, really want to get my own PS3 now so that I can play Rock Band in my own apartment instead of lugging all the equipment to my friends' houses.

I would really like some way to have community-made songs; my dream is to have God Knows from Haruhi in Rock Band.

On an unrelated note, DTXmania is not quite the drum game I thought it was going to be. It's pretty complicated (like it has 6 different drums!) and the songs on the easiest level are still pretty darn hard! Also, playing any of these music games on the computer is kind of a pain, as you have to worry about lag (my awesome computer lags every now and then in Frets on Fire).

Frets on fire: be the guitar hero you never were

I bought Rock Band (which is on sale at Target this week for $157, btw) tonight. I spent the last hour playing it on my PC with Frets on Fire, and I can happily report that the PS3 Rock Band guitar works with Frets on Fire just fine. The wireless dongle shows up as a USB HID device in Windows XP, and it shows up as a normal game controller. You can then map the guitar keys to the appropriate controls in Frets on Fire.

So why is this related to anime? Well, much like Stepmania, there's a whole community of people that make files for Frets on Fire, and you can find things like God Knows for it!

And supposedly the Rock Band drums work with DTXMania, though I haven't tried it yet. And yes, there is God Knows for the drums as well, though I haven't tried it yet (too lazy to unpack the drums tonight).

Weekly Vocaloid Ranking #23

I could duplicate all the work of this Weekly vocaloid ranking blog, but they've done such a wonderful job that I think you should just visit that site.

Best song of the week: Kokoro (Kagamine Rin)
Second best song of the week: Koi wa sensou (Hatsune Miku)

Anime and linux

I was going through my Google Analytics data and found I was mentioned in an Ani-nouto blog post. He (she? it?) does, correctly, point out that there is no real relation to linux and anime in my previous post, but it's pretty hard to watch anime when you get distracting video tearing.

But anyway, a few tips for people watching anime in linux:
What video player to use? - MPlayer has the best support for softsubbed anime; it supports embedded fonts and formats the subs correctly, unlike VLC (though this depends on what options it was compiled with, but I just compiled my own). However, VLC is somewhat easier to use, since it has a decent GUI. But it's worth learning how to use mplayer; I like it so much I use it on my mac, thanks to some on the AnimeSuki forums that have made a nice package for OS X.
Screen captures with MPlayer - Just use the x11 video output module (-vo x11 on the command line), and take screenshots with your favorite program, or add -vf screenshot to your command line and hit the s key.
Downloading anime - Use Azureus. You can also download the ScaneRSS plugin and configure it to download anime from the Tokyotosho RSS feed. For example, I use the RSS feed for only anime, and setup a filter with a pattern like:

.*?BakaWolf-m.*?H2O.*?Footprints.+?in.+?the.+?Sand.*?.mkv

I'll probably have a more detailed post once I get the time to take screenshots.

As an aside, let me on why I'm using Windows now. I used Linux for about 7 years; for 4 of those years, I used Linux pretty much exclusively. I liked it because, back then, it was stable and ran faster than XP on my admittedly low-end computer at the time. I also liked the window managers better than Windows and the fact that I could pretty much configure everything how I wanted. So what happened? Simply put, I found that I was actually wasting too much time with in linux, due to its configurability, and the fact that programs were getting updated all the time. I also had some hardware that didn't work in linux (printer, scanner, iPod, at the time, Windows Mobile PDA, etc). So I switched to Windows for 2 years. About 6 months ago, I did a massive computer upgrade, and figured it was a good time to switch back to using linux, which is when I encountered all those problems. I still boot into linux whenever ATI releases a new driver to see if the video tearing is still there, but, as much as I hate to admit it, Vista is running pretty well so I'm not too inclined to switch.

Cheap ADV anime from Rightstuf!

Rightstuf is having another one of their studio sales! This time it's 40% off ADV titles until March 16. I'd suggest the following, if you don't have them already:

Five Centimeters per Second
RahXephon Complete Collection
Elfen Lied Complete Collection
FMP: Fumoffu Complete Collection
Full Metal Panic

Weekly Vocaloid Ranking #22

Other blogs seem to be slacking on updating the weekly rankings, so here they are for you! (Update: The weekly vocaloid ranking site finally made a post! And it has links to each song on Youtube, so check it out.) So a (rhetorical?) question: what do you value in a Vocaloid song? I really like songs where the creator has made the voice sound as natural as possible, but listening to the rankings, there are a lot of songs where the voice still sounds mechanical. Are my expectations too high? Part 2 after the break.

Tsukihime: vampires, oh my!

I spent my weekend and the better part of my evenings this week playing (do you really "play" a visual novel?) Tsukihime. The English patch has been out for quite a while now (over a year), so I'm not sure why I didn't play it sooner, but it's probably because I watched the anime first and wasn't too inspired to play the game. That was quite a mistake, the game is pretty awesome. Like most anime adaptations, the anime didn't do justice to the visual novel. There is a lot more depth to the characters, and their actions make a lot more sense. I've completed the Arcueid and Ciel routes and liked them both, possibly because I'm a poor, lonely guy or because the writing is just awesome :P. In any case, if you can *ahem* get your hands on a copy, I'd suggest going through it. Arcueid's route took me about 5 hours, and Ciel's route took me about 4 (even with skipping scenes I've seen before). There is a good walkthrough if you're too lazy to play the game, but you really should!

Where have I been?

Where have I been? Last week, I was at a conference (SPIE Medical Imaging); I came back late Friday night. I was jetlagged on Saturday, and doing homework most of Sunday, Monday, and today.

The Town&Country hotel in San Diego has horrible internet; the wireless slowed to a crawl after the conference. Perhaps this is to be expected since all of the conference attendees use the Internet, but come on! I ended up using the Internet very sparingly.

So anime I've watched this week that were awesome: True Tears 8 and Shigofumi 7. I share the majority of bloggers' opinions that Shiniichi is getting with Noe for the wrong reasons, and the revelation and ending of Shigofumi 7 were awesome.

In other news, the Vocaloid rankings are still going, even though I haven't been updating them. The 20th ranking is way past; you can look for it on YouTube if you so desire. Apparently they've started doing daily rankings, but I'm not hardcore enough for that. But there is someone who is! In fact, you should catch it there, it has a nice listing of the songs on the list.

Belated vocaloid ranking #19

Sorry I'm very late this week, I've been busy preparing for a presentation in San Diego next week! Without further ado, ranking #19. It's in two parts this time, the second part is after the break.

Weekly anime ranking (2/10/2008)

Again it's time for another self-indulging weekly anime ranking! I don't even know why I do it, but it gives me something to write about.

7. Dragonaut (18)
No picture, because I don't think it's worthy of one :P. For some reason, the setting is now one year later and shit is going to go down in the next episode. This has so many plot holes and loose threads! The animation is nice though.

6. H2O (6)
What a waste
Why would you race to finish a frozen dessert? That's incredibly idiotic! Anyway, looks like Hayami and Yui made up in this episode. The animation quality is pretty mediocre, the plot is still kind of random, but the next episode should have lots of drama. This probably wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't going up against True Tears or Clannad.

5. Bamboo Blade (16)

Bad girls
Kirino is worried about her mom, and the competition at the preliminaries starts. This is mostly a transition episode to setup for the competition in the next episode. Still, the more serious side of Kirino was nice to see, and it's an enjoyable watch. I think Bamboo Blade's place in my ranking is more due to my preference for drama over pure comedy, as production-wise, Bamboo Blade is probably above Hatenkou Yugi and Gunslinger Girl.

4. Hatenkou Yugi (4)
Such a kidder
Another independent episode, this has the trio going on a dubious treasure hunt. The episode is full of witty banter between the three characters, but the treasure hunt was kind of lame. I find the interactions between the characters are the real driving force and the reason I keep watching.

3. Gunslinger Girl (4)

What a messed up world
This episode reintroduces Angelica back as a member of the killer loli squad. This covers chapter 16 of the manga. Overall, it followed closely to the story of the manga, and it was good to see it animated finally, but the low production quality detracts from the story a bit. I think the blush lines were overdone a bit. Anyway, Angelica seems to need a lot of conditioning drugs to maintain her sanity, and it's rather sad to see her break down. Priscilla said it best when she said that Angelica's done nothing wrong and it's all their (the organization's) fault.

2. Clannad (17)

Oh my!
Things heat up on all fronts in this episode, with all girls making progress on Tomoya. Clannad is able to balance drama and comedy pretty much perfectly. I like how KyoAni is able to interweave all the girls' routes together (though the Fuuko appearances are just WTF), and the music during the storeroom scene was just lollerful.

1. True Tears (5)

False hearts
I continue to be impressed by the consistent quality PA Works is putting out. The animation is amazing, but not just because it's aesthetically pleasing; there is attention to detail in body language and facial expressions that you don't see in a lot of anime. This was another awesome episode, with development in all three girls. Noe is still naive and cute, Hiromi is still conflicted, Ai is going to lose, and Shinichiro is a bastard for lying to Noe. I don't know what Shin's mom's problem is with Hiromi's mom, but it's kind of sad :(. Some other opinions on True Tears.

Utada's Heart Station

This is likely to be pulled off Youtube, so apologies if the link is broken. This is the other song to go with "Stay Gold" on her single to be released later this month. The video is a bit plain, but the song is awesome as always.

Vocaloid Ranking #18

Another week, another vocaloid ranking.

My favorite songs:
# 24. 時の回廊
# 21. 歌に形はないけれど
# 15. ほうき星 ユンナ 完成版
# 13. Everwhite
# 6. メルト
# 2. リンで魔理沙は大変なものをごっすん

Weekly anime ranking (2/3/2008)

In a nod to many other anime blogs, I'm going to try my hand at doing weekly anime rankings. These are based on what I watched during the week, which probably won't coincide with when they are aired or when fansubs are released. I'm also only including currently airing shows in this list. This isn't intended as a plot summary, there are lots of better blogs for that :D. (Note: numbers in parentheses after the anime title are the episodes I watched this week.)

10. H2O (4-5)
Hayami and Hinata finally make up, but it was kind of lame and rather sudden, like, "Oh, I've stayed away from you for the past bazillion years, but I'm really sorry now, waaaah". Animation quality is nothing too exciting either, with the level of detail in the characters very variable. I'm only following this because I want to know why the village hates Hayami, but I have a feeling it's mostly because of Hinata's grandfather.

9. Minami-ke Okawari (1)
I'm a bit behind in watching this, but the subs are taking awhile. I don't think this is horrible -- the new character designs still look good, even if they're different than the first season, the animation quality is almost as good, but, at least in the first ep, it wasn't as funny as the first season (more like an anime that'll bring smiles to your face as opposed to LOLing).

8. Bamboo Blade (15)
Training camp FTW! Seems like it was really just to develop Tamaki's character, since she's never been to camp before. Other than that, it was kind of filler.

7. Hayate no Gotoku (41)
Another funny episode. It may not have the best plot or animation, but it does a good job of being consistently funny

6. Ghost Hound (8-9)
Ghost Hound is kind of hard for me to rank, On the one hand, the animation quality is awesome, the story is well-written, it's just an overall good production, but for some reason, I just can't get into it. At this point, they're still developing the background, and there's not much in the way of action. As for conflict points, we still have Taro trying to meet his sister, Masayuki's just tagging along and trying to come to grips with his role the past suicide, and Makoto wants to know if his dad was involved in the kidnapping. I think this may just be one of those animes where you have to be in the right mindset to watch it...

These next series were very hard for me to rank, just letting you know. :D

5. Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (3)
First ep with the real OP! I love Shaft's animation for this, and I have to give mad props to afk for their incredible job of subbing the episode. The beginning of the episode wasn't full of LOL, but it was pretty amusing how the radio show for the anime was playing in the anime, and that there were self-references all over Harumi's room. I had to keep pausing to read the translated text everywhere. The rest of the episode was the typical random stuff that was amusing yet true :).

4. Spice and Wolf (4)
More character development for both Horo and Lawrence, some development of their relationship, some pretty intense action scenes, and a cliffhanger at the end. Awesome episode!

3. Clannad (16)
Mei's appearance was kind of random, and I don't know what role the basketball game played since we still don't know what's going to happen with the theater club, but as always, top-notch animation and movement in the plot (Tomoyo is "interested" now, and I think Tomoya has a clue about Ryou now) make for a good episode this week.

2. Shigofumi (3-4)
Two single-episode arcs. The stories were pretty interesting; the anime doesn't concentrate on the deaths, but the reactions and actions of the people who get the shigofumis. There is also a bit of mystery surrounding Fumika that gets revealed in these episodes.

1. True Tears (3-4)
Things are getting interesting! Lots of conflicted people (Ai and Hiromi), Noe is as cute as ever, and there's a cliff hanger ending. Animation is probably second only to Clannad and Ghost Hound this season. I'm more interested in what happens in the next episode of True Tears than Clannad at this point.

Update on my attempt to install Linux

I've used Debian for several years now, but I figured going to a more mainstream, desktop-oriented distribution like Ubuntu would be worth a shot. On the plus side, it uses Debian's package management system, which I love for the ease of installing new programs, and there are lots of repositories with things like a decent version of mplayer and associated libraries that Debian didn't have. The kernel also has the correct driver for my IDE controller as opposed to Debian which uses the (broken?) jmicron driver instead of pata_jmicron.

Downside - video is still broken in the same manner (ATI driver problems, I guess), network still craps out, and now the machine locks hard whenever I quit X (either to logout or reboot). So bottom line is that Linux is still unusable on my machine. :(

Sayonara Phoenix Wright

Supposedly from the animators of the original Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei OP

Vocaloid ranking #17

Sorry for the lack of updates, school has been keeping me busy :P. Vocaloid Ranking #17 for the week of 1/21-1/28. Thanks again to miraclemilk765 for the upload.

RightStuf ADV sale! 10 for $50!

Right Stuf is having a sale on selected ADV titles!. Things are running out quickly, and a lot of the good stuff is gone. FMP Fumoffu is still around, but not much else...

My attempt to install Linux on an Abit IP35-E motherboard

This is a bit of a deviation from my usual posting material, but seeing as how I spent a lot of (somewhat wasted) time on installing Linux on my machine, it may help others with a similar hardware configuration.

Bottom line, before I go into details: As of today, with the latest kernel (2.6.23) and video card drivers (ATI 8.01), it has some major problems that are stopping me from using Linux. Details after the break.

Strike 1: Video

I need my machine to play videos (anime). The latest ATI drivers, 8.01, for my pretty recent video card (ATI Radeon HD 2600XT), have two problems. First, the hardware video scaling frankly sucks; text (like subtitles) has very noticeable, jaggy edges. This is easily addressed with mplayer's software scaling, but it's a bit of a pain because then the window is stuck at one size. The second problem which doesn't seem to have a fix yet, is bad video tearing. This is noticeable during scenes with pans or fast motion (like what you'd typically see in an anime OP). Video tearing, for those that don't know, is an effect you might see that looks like a scene is rendered from two different frames, resulting in a line where they don't match up. Other people have noted the problem as well, so it's not just me :). Here's some pictures to illustrate my example:

In windows (Vista to be specific):


In Linux: (Note the brightness difference is due to the camera)


Somewhat of a lesser issue is that the ATI driver does not support compiz (or maybe it's compiz not supporting it) on the latest X.Org 7.4. Compiz is what's responsible for all the fancy effects you see in a lot of screenshots.

Strike 2: Networking

The Abit IP35-E has a Marvell Yukon 2 gigabit ethernet controller. This has a linux driver, sky2, which seems to work... but it doesn't. Some people have reported a lot of disconnects and reconnects, while I've personally experienced limited network performance (like 100K/sec, way, way below the limit of both my local network and my cable modem). I've tried different cables and ports in my switch, and the same cable and network card work just fine in Windows.

Strike 3: DVD drive (or lack thereof)

Intel removed IDE controllers from most of their latest chipsets, so motherboard manufacturers are forced to use 3rd party chips, like JMicron. This is all well and good except when the Linux driver is broken. The old JMicron driver, jmicron, is old and pretty much known to be broken; it's been replaced by the newer, hotter, pata_jmicron. Unfortunately, it's not a module in the amd64 kernel in Debian, possibly requiring compilation from scratch.

Vocaloid Ranking #16

Thanks, as always, to miraclemilk765 for uploading these onto Youtube.

Winter 2008 OPs!

Nipponsei has released a whole slew of OPs, including, but not limited to, reflectia by eufonius, Tatta Hitotsu no Omoi by KOKIA, and Spirale by Makino Yui!

Now all I'm waiting for is the Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei OP and the Spice and Wolf OP. Everything is out except for Spice and Wolf, but that isn't due out yet...

Vocaloid ranking #15, better late than never

Vocaloid ranking #15 is up! List of songs can be found at mikumiku blog. Songs for Rin/Len are definitely starting to improve now.

SaiGar 2008 - get your votes in!

I'm a bit late with this, but voting for SaiGar 2008 has already been going on! To put it in words of the creator, "...SaiGAR was created to find the manliest badass in Anime."

To vote, you click the vote link. You check back in an hour to get your code, then use that code and vote during the appropriate time. If you have a favorite character, this would be the time to show it!

Anime sheet music

I can't play an instrument or read music for my life, but for the day I will be able to, I want to remember SODA Sheet Music which has sheet music for Asian songs, and Josh's anime sheet music.

An anonymous commenter pointed out this link to me, but it's also a good one: Ichigo's anime music.

New Hikki song! Stay gold

A new single from Utada Hikaru getting radio play time. It's called "Stay Gold", and I've spent the past hour looping it. It comes out in February. Youtube preview below:

Fansub comparison - Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei 1

Hopefully the first in a series of posts, I plan on "reviewing", in a loose sense, fansubs released by different groups of the same episode. This hopefully helps those people on slow connections that can't afford (or are too lazy to) download several releases and make their own decision. Note that my Japanese is pretty much non-existent (I took a year of it many years ago in college), so I can't really comment on translation accuracy, but I can comment on things like fonts, attention to detail, how well the English flows, and image quality.

First up is Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. Two groups are subbing it at the moment, a.f.k. and SpoonSubs. For the images below, SpoonSubs is on the top, and a.f.k. is on the bottom. a.f.k uses a much more readable font, but it does take up more space. a.f.k. also tends to translate most (if not all) of the text in the background of the scenes, whereas SpoonSubs doesn't. a.f.k.'s raw or encoding is slightly better, but most people probably wouldn't be able to tell.

Release date:
SpoonSubs: Jan. 11, 2007
a.f.k: Jan. 11, 2007

Note that a.f.k (on the bottom) explains how HAMASHO is derived, otherwise they both get the meaning across.

Based on the image of the girl in the seconds that follow, I think nosebleed makes more sense (there is no joke otherwise).



a.f.k. translated the note on the board.



I'm not sure which is "more" correct; it looks like SpoonSubs is more literal, but a.f.k. sounds better in English. Again, note that I don't have any Japanese skill!

Winter 2008 OP Reviews

Now that all the major series for winter have started their runs, it's a good time to rank the OPs of the season! This post was inspired by Epic Win's post on anime OPs.

I'm rating the OPs based on the following, with each on a scale of 1 to 5, with higher being better:

1. Song awesomeness: Even the best animated OP is going to be glossed over if the song sucks
2. Animation quality: This is why we watch anime, isn't it? This also takes into account whether the song is synced with the animation at all.
3. Bonus points: Extra (or negative) points for things that aren't included above.

Note that I've tried to find high-quality versions on Youtube; unless you have an awesome fast connection, you'll probably have to pause it and wait for it to finish loading before you try to play it. Without further ado, here is number 11!

11. Kimi ga Aruji de Shitsuji ga Ore de ~They are my noble masters~, Hizamazuku Made 5 Byo Dake! (Miyuki Hashimoto):

Song: 2
Forgettable j-pop. It's not unpleasing to listen to, but nothing to compel me to recommend it.
Animation Quality: 3
Synced to the music, shows the characters, but that's about the only good things about it.
Bonus Points: 0
Nothing special
TOTAL: 5

10. Spice and Wolf, Tabi no Tochū (Natsumi Kiyoura)

Song: 3
Kind of slow and melancholic, so far it doesn't really match the mood of the series.
Animation Quality: 3
It shows scenes from the series, but it's not really synced to the song.
Bonus Points: 0
Nothing clever about the OP jumps out at me
TOTAL: 6

9. Gunslinger Girl -Il Teatrino-, Tatta Hitotsu no Omoi (KOKIA):

Song: 5
A catchy song with a touch of melancholy. It's actually pretty catchy, and it (might) match the mood of the series.
Animation Quality: 2
Basically lots of still pictures of random scenes and guns done in either water color or using some photoshop filter on real images. It's creative, but 1) isn't specific to Gunslinger Girl, and 2) doesn't give any indication what the series is about. Heck, it could be the opening to a drama.
Bonus Points: -1
I took off a point for not living up to the OP of the first season, which wasn't even that good!
TOTAL: 6

8. H2O ~Footprints in the Sand~, Katayoku no Icarus (Yui Sakakibara):

Song: 3
Typical j-pop, with some interesting instruments. Nothing really special, and I could see it getting annoying with repeated listening.
Animation Quality: 4
Animation is good quality, mostly scenes of the characters in typical harem anime fashion. It's not as good as the True Tears OP though.
Bonus Points: 0
Nothing special
TOTAL: 7

7. Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, kūsō Rumba (Kenji Ohtsuki and Zetsubō Shōjo-tachi):

Song: 5
Catchy song, kūsō Rumba, by the same people that did the OP to the last season.
Animation Quality: 1
If you remember the first season's first episode OP, this is mostly the same, with lots of text and still pictures. I expect this to get better, but right now it's kind of lame.
Bonus points: +1
The text is actually relevant to the series, and this alludes to the previous season as well, so bonus points here.
TOTAL: 7
Since this is really just a "fake" OP, I ranked it above H2O because it was trying to be bad :P.

6. Rosario + Vampire, Cosmic Love (Nana Mizuki):

Song: 3
Pretty generic upbeat j-pop.
Animation Quality: 4
Good quality animation that's synced to the song, shows all the characters I guess.
Bonus Points: +1
Censoring bats ftw!
TOTAL: 8

5. PERSONA -trinity soul-, Breakin' Through (Shūhei Kita):

Song: 3
J-rock music, appropriate for the OP, but not very catchy in my opinion. Reminds me a bit of the OPs for GTO.
Animation Quality: 5
Cool transitions with silhouettes of characters in the beginning, nice color/texture effects, shows some of the characters.
Bonus Points: +1
Nice animation effects.
TOTAL: 9

4. Minami-ke ~Okawari, Kokoro no Tsubasa (Rina Satou, Marina Inoue & Minori Chihara):

Song: 3
J-pop, has a very dramatic feel to it (which is not suited to the series, but appropriate for the OP.
Animation Quality: 5
Great animation, dramatic scenes which make it funny since that's not what the show is about, all the characters are shown, creative backgrounds/situations; I like it a lot!
Bonus Points: +2
Sims/Sim City reference in the beginning! Bear! LULZ if you watched the first season -- it makes the series look so dramatic, but it's not.
TOTAL: 10

3. True Tears, Reflectia (eufonius):

Song: 5
It's eufonius. Upbeat j-pop, if you like any of her other stuff, you'll like this too.
Animation Quality: 5
Animation is good quality, mostly scenes of the characters that are probably taken from the series. It's synced to the song, so full points here.
Bonus Points: 0
Doesn't really do anything special...
TOTAL: 10
This is ranked above Minami-ke Okawari because I like the song better.

2. Hatenkou Yuugi, Heartbreaking Romance (Kanako Itō):

Song: 4
Upbeat techno j-pop, actually sounds a bit like video game synth music in the beginning. Probably would get annoying after a bit.
Animation Quality: 5
Second most interesting OP this season. Shows the major characters, and some crazy stuff going with the backgrounds in the beginning. Synced to the music too.
Bonus Points: +1
It goes together really well.
TOTAL: 10

1. Hakaba Kitarou, Mononoke Dance (Denki Groove):

Song: 4
Unique song in a sea of j-pop. This is probably what I'd call techno; it's Denki Groove!
Animation Quality: 5
Very creative! They animated in the style of an American comic, with bold lines and colors. And it actually flows pretty well! I lack the words to describe its awesomeness, just watch it.
Bonus Points: +1
Incredibly unique style. Most interesting OP this season and that's why it's number 1.
TOTAL: 10

Calibrating your monitor

Many people don't bother to properly adjust the brightness, contrast, and gamma of their monitors. This results in distorted or washed-out colors. I found this site helpful for adjusting my LCD monitor, but it doesn't address color calibration.

Vocaloid Ranking #14

The second Vocaloid Ranking of 2008!

The bold, powerful, and cute robot -- Koharu Biyori OP

The OP for Koharu Biyori (Apron dake wa Toranaide!) is really catchy, and while it has some, uh, questionable scenes in the OP, it was aired on TV so it's not too bad. I've been looking for the lyrics online, but since I can't find them, I just copied them from the Rozen-m.3.3.w sub.



Japanese:
Daitan muteki moe robo! Burabo!
Epuron toccha ikemasen
Me o sametara anata to nikkori
Watashi wa mappa de hakoiri joutai
(help me)
Epuron sashidasu anata ni gakuzen
Kosupure magai no furiru wa kanben
(hentai desu ka)
Doko kara mitatte ichimoku ryouzen
Watashi ga meido de anata wa goshujin
(sou deshou)
Gohoushi suru tame urarete kita no ni
gohoaigan youto ja ganbaremasen
(tatakai wa hajimatteru)

Ai ga aru kara yurusenai
Kore ijou wa dame ikemasen
Yamete hazukashiin desuu
Shiawase wo agetai na
Wakatte hoshii
Shita koto nai koto shimashou
Otto bousou kinshi
Epuron ni kakureteru romanchikku wo
anata dake ni misemasu
Chira chira hora!

Daitan muteki moe robo! Burabo!
Epuron hayaku kaeshinasai


English:
The bold, powerful, and cute robot! Bravo!
Don't take off my apron!
When I opened my eyes, and smiled at you,
I found myself completely naked in a box
(help me)
I'm shocked to see you holding out an apron,
but spare me the cosplay-like fake frills
(Are you a pervert?)
Obvious in every way,
I'm the maid and you are the master!
(Right, aren't we?)
Even though I was sold as a servant,
I'm disappointed to know you bought me as a pet!
(Our fight has already begun!)

I can't allow it because we have love.
You can't go further, no don't!
Please stop, it's so embarrassing!
I want to make you happy,
so please understand me
Let's do something we've never tried.
Oops, going wild is forbidden!
The romance hidden in my apron,
is for your eyes only.
Can you see it? Look!

The bold, powerful, and cute robot! Bravo!
Gimme back my apron now!

An idea for blogging

Taking a page from Ani-nouto's blog, I think I'm going to just start blogging about interesting blog posts that I find, in an attempt to have something new to write about every day.

An interesting post about what makes a good anime OP from Epic Win. You can read the article over there, but I just wanted to point out that my main criteria are 1) awesomeness of the song, 2) epicness of the animation, and 3) bonus points if the OP makes more sense as the series progresses, like in ef.

Vocaloid Rankings galore! Year end rankings, #13

I'm so far behind on these rankings! The latest ranking (#13) is the first with Kagmine Rin/Len on it.

Year end rankings follow!

Part 1, ranking 100 to 51:


Part 2, ranking 50 to 8:


Part 3, ranking 8 to 1: