Note:

This blog is dead.

I've moved to Livejournal ;)

[Current Mood: Disappointed...]
[Currently Listening To: Misfit Love - Queens of the Stone Age]

I don't claim to be completely anti-dub. Sure, I prefer subtitles when watching my anime, but I don't stick by the rule that all dubs automatically suck.

The biggest issue anyone who watches good old-fashioned subs has is, of course, the voices of the dubs. Corporations have a knack to kill a whole character with just a voice. Take Ion of Trinity Blood. Or Akito of Fruit's Basket. Both had less then stellar voices. But I lived.

However, every so often, a dub comes along that completely baffles me. A dub with voices so...bad that it leaves me in stitches. This time it was Angel Sanctuary.

Being a fan of Kaori Yuki (and Godchild) I decided to finally look into her first series. I was going to finish the manga (I got through a few chapters a while ago) but instead I opted to watch the three episode OVA because, well, it's only three episodes. So I did a quick search of Youtube for episode 1 and settled in to watch it. To my surprise, it was in english but "whatever" I figured, "how bad can it be?"
And how I wish that my question went along unanswered. The voices were bad. So bad that the actual concept of the series escaped me because I was too busy laughing at it. So bad that it sounded like Casey & Friends and I wondered if I was actually watching a parody of a 4Kids production. Yeah, Seriously.
But alas, I was not. And that, dear reader, is a sad, sad truth.

I don't mean to be dub bashing, God knows I get enough of the with certain friends of mine, but I really couldn't contain myself after watching a full episode of Setsuna running around narrating his internal conflicts. For the next two episodes, I think I'll stick to the Japanese voices, just so I can get the actual serious nature of the story, as opposed to being too busy laughing my ass off at everyone's voices.

In OTHER fandoms: I finished watching Code Geass a while ago...and I will admit that I enjoyed it. And yes, I noticed the Death Note similarities (or rather, the Light/Lelouch similarities.) [To provide a short checklist with only three main character traits:
Evil Facial Contortions? Check.
Psycho Laughter? Check.
Determination to Take Over the World With a Strong Sense of Justice? CHECK.
...and that's only three.]
But I didn't see CG as just an attempted rip-off. Why? Where Death Note relied solely on Light's gradual moral corruption and his Battle-of-the-Wits with L/Near/Melo, Code Geass throws in mecha action a la Gundam or Neon Genesis Evangelion (sans the whiny protagonist), which adds a nice flare to the story. Plus, the only equivalent to a female protagonist in DN is Misa, who I've declared as a disgrace to her wardrobe and interesting decor. At least CG gives us C.C., Kallen, Cornelia and even Euphemia.
Actually, the only female I can't stand is Shirley, but she's kind of a non-issue after the whole Mao arc. Right? Oh my God she's not going to show up in every episode in R2 is she? The thought is terrifying. 

And getting off anime entirely for a minute (this is old news but bear with me): It figures that when I finally get into watching Las Vegas every friday night after work, NBC goes off and cancels it. And when I actually sit through an hour a week of a CBC show, they decide to cancel that too (but it's the CBC, so that's not too surprising...)
I hope networks aren't just cutting high action/drama shows in favour of ridiculous reality TV that's cheaper to produce and generates the same magnitude of audience. Oh wait, that's already happening. What the hell has our society come to? Is this the dawn of the end of Western civilization? Or am I simply overreacting?
x

PS: Yes, I have added something new to the side. It is (in case you're the type that's too lazy to read,) about the gods and goddesses that span through mythology. Why add such a seemingly pointless box? Simply because I like mythology.

PSS: I finally bought Volume 8 of Godchild (but not from my usual book store because they still don't have it in stock)...so I'll probably be doing a whole entry dedicated to that sometime soon.

[Current Mood: Motivated finally...]
[Currently Listening To: Sayonara - The Operation M.D.]

Seeing as my interest in blogging has been dwindling due to laziness/fatigue/simply not having time/a lack of motivation over the past year, I've decided to change the purpose/tone of this fine site.
Why?
Well, to be honest, I'm actually quite sick at the moment of posting long rants over what I see is wrong in society/humanity/life in general. Does this mean everyone's spared from my rants and I'll never write another one? Of course not! Perish the thought! HOWEVER, the majority of my entries will be of different tone. Yes, that's right, I'm moving into reviews of various things I either:
(a) watch/read/listen/observe of my own free will
(b) are forced to watch/read/listen/observe for whatever purpose

SO, to start my new-found-focus...I'll choose the last anime I watched.



Insane much?

Perhaps, but not nearly as much emo facial contortion as, say...Light in episode 37 of Death Note, or, you know, any of the Higurashi girls (particularly Rena). Then again, this is only the first episode. That's right; I finally gave into the hype and watched the first episode of Code Geass to see if the series is any good.

To my surprise, I didn't enjoy it as much as I had expected. That's not to say that I didn't like it, I just felt that it didn't truly live up to all of the hype. But, as I already stated, this is only episode one, so I'll bank that it'll only get better as the series progresses.

The backdrop of the series is simple enough - Japan's been taken over by the Brittannian Empire, and has thus been renamed "Area 11". Our wonder-protagonist, Lelouch, is a student who is harbouring a desire for revenge against the Empire for their brutal actions and is able to fulfill this after getting accidentally caught up in a terrorist attack and is offered a mysterious power by the green-haired C.C. An ability that allows him to have anyone obey his orders. Lots of bloodshed/slaughter in the first episode, what with the Empire attacking a ghetto, trucks blowing up, C.C. getting shot in the head and Lelouch's scene at the end where he, you know...orders the entire police outfit to kill themselves and then cracks that (^) face.

But plot summary aside, Lelouch comes off as highly intelligent (but lazy), determined, and seems to be already corrupted by this powerful ability. Hm, sound like anyone we know? (Only without the laziness, naturally)

Character wise, in addition to Lelouch and C.C, the first episode introduces us to Suzaku (Lelouch's old, childhood friend who has approx. 2 minutes of screen time), the ambitious Kallen (who's evidently apart of some organization going against the Empire) and a prince (and head of Area 11) who really doesn't seem to care much about what happens to the people he rules over. Yup, they're all definitely back-story worthy, and I detect some sort of that coming out in the next few episodes.

Overall, the first episode of this hyped-up series is certainly intriguing enough that it'll keep me watching at least another few, if not the whole thing.

                                                              x_x_x_x_x_x_x

On a separate note...I'd like to preface this by saying that I generally don't like slow songs. In order for me to listen to/enjoy a slow, melodic song, I have to be in the mood for it. If I'm not (which is most of the time), I'll end up skipping the song on my iPod. This is the reason why all of the songs in my 'Top 25 Most Played' are upbeat, "fast" songs. (Except for one...okay fine, two...But that's all, I swear!)

ANYWAY, the reason I bring this up is because I have once again been floored by the lyrical ability of one, Conor Oberst. Yes, I'm ashamed to say that yet another Bright Eyes song has stricken me. A Perfect Sonnet, to be precise. Never in my life have I been this floored by song lyrics. (And apparently that's a general consensus.) Curse you Conor Oberst, and your insane song writing ability!
x

PS: Since the last time I updated was...OMG, December O_o...there's obviously a new Word of the Month [harlot] AND a new Link of the Month [Red Bus]

[Current Mood: pretty happy]
[Currently Listening To: Hey Love - We Are The Fury]

So I haven't updated in what feels like a really, really long time, seeing as the last time I wrote anything I was just finishing summer school - and that feels like a year ago, nevermind a month. I did end up passing summer school with a pretty decent mark (WooT!) and the rest of the summer passed by without too many issues. The only major annoyance was having to visit (dun-dun-DUNNN) The Curtain.
I don't feel like going into detail about "The Visit" because it happened over a month ago and I forgot most of the gory details. All I will say is that apparently her whole family are under the misguided impression that I'm a lesbian that's into gay porn.

Yeah, I know. How the hell can anyone possibly come up with something so far off?

But I can tell you how they got to that conclusion. The lesbian bit comes from me not complaining to her about any boy issues. Apparently not having a "serious" relationship automatically means you're a lesbian who's trying to keep it a secret from everyone in their minds.
But don't laugh yet, where they got "gay porn" from is even more ludicrous.
Apparently, according to the oh-so-intelligent logic of The Curtain's Family (and make sure you follow properly...)

All Anime and Manga = Gay Porn

Yeah, I am being serious. And oddly enough, it came up at dinner when one of her friends came up as a topic. This is the way the conversation went:
The Curtain: blah, blah, blah...friend, *insert name here* -
Curtain's Mother: Oh, her. *insert name here*... That's that friend of yours who's into all that anime stuff -turns to my mother and talks like she's all-knowing because the Curtain has a friend so that obviously makes her a fucking expert in the topic- It's all gay porn you know. We had to buy her a birthday present for some reason so we went to Indigo because she wanted a manga thing and I was disgusted...etc...etc

The conversation went on, but I won't bore you with the details. Basically after I heard "it's all gay porn, you know" I had had enough of their stupidity and semi-lost it - so I presided to attempt to explain that the only gay porn in anime is the Yaoi genre and Fruit's Basket sure as hell isn't Yaoi.
But I stopped myself, and they all went face like this ---> o_O ...

Dots and all.

Anyway, onto school; my semester isn't that bad. The only subject I foresee giving me problems would be my math course, just because I'm not into math at all.
And as for today, because I wasn't working for once (yay!!!) I went, ironically, shopping at a mall to buy new shoes for school. Which, of course automatically led to me buying more stuff like the The Offspring "Greatest Hits" because it was only $10 and a DVD [box set].

That's about all. I promise I'll update more from now on!
x

[Current Mood: yawn/blah/etc]
[Currently Listening To: Nothing. At all. Because I'm trying to maintain as much knowledge as possible]

I'M ALIVE! ...and I haven't updated for I think exactly 3 weeks. Why you ask? Because as I mentioned, I've been killing myself to get an extra credit in summer school. Ew. But on the up side of things; it's almost over!

Because of my prolonged trip to the dangerous place with molecules that can burn your very soul, life has been mundane for the most part.

I haven't been looking for my button making machine, I may have the WATF CD thanks to a contact of mine (wink, wink), my friend almost got stalked by some guy she met randomly and spastically decided to go out with, my OTHER friend quit her job after the first day of training, I recently discovered the band Gallows who aren't half-bad, I found out I used to go to elementary school with someone who steals from the place I work every Thursday, oh. And I read the final Harry Potter book. Obviously.  And I shall not give any spoilers to the general public for fear of being hunted down by fanatics who haven't read it yet who carry burning torches on their persons daily.
However there is one thing I'd like to point out (okay, a couple) about the book. But, in order to avoid the fate listed about, I shall put this prior to my typing. A SPOLIER will be given here. If you do not wish to have what may be random bits of the seventh spoiled, DO NOT HILIGHT THE WHITE. (I also suggest you stay far away from Uncyclopedia's entry. No really.) Anyway, now that THAT'S over with, let me say that while deaths were inevitably expected. I was pretty pissed that Fred got the axe. To be brutally honest I would have rather Harry died. Why? I don't know, but I was never really fond of him. Strange, but I hardly ever love the main character anyway. Also, there were random things that we were apparently supposed to find out in the seventh that were never mentioned. What's up with that? I shall; however, keep the rant at that for now.  

Anywho, nothing else to document, really. Oh, except that I found out that the Curtain has gotten a new boyfriend (apparently) that I'm going to have to hear about all fucking day next week instead of my original plans (which my parents forced me to fucking cancel) with people I actually like.  Yes, it pisses me off. Hugely.
But hopefully, I can spend the weekend making a t-shirt (well, fabric painting an already-made-black t-shirt) that will own life. I hope it works out because usually, craft projects and me don't go together. I tend to have this really hardcore vision in my head that gets RUINED. Ah well.

Now back to studying I wander!
Hopefully your summer has been better then mine.
x

PS: OMG! Could it be? Have they licensed my top two guilty-pleasure animes? It appears while I was living under my rock, Funimation got Ouran High School Host Club and ADV got Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge (aka The Wallflower or Perfect Girl Evolution.)
In my opinion, even if they brutally fuck up the dub with bad voice actors, it would be worth getting both if just for the original Japanese version with subtitles. (Especially since I have a feeling youtube et al will be useless in trying to find either soon enough.)
Hmmm, seems like I'm going to have to save vast amounts of money until the box sets come out. Or pick up more shifts at work. But I'm lazy so I'll go for the not spending anything until said time. -rushes off to count money-

[Current Mood: blah...]
[Currently Listening To: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Theme Song]
Credit.
As the topic states, I've decided to review the phenomenon that is Battle Royale. Both the novel and the movie, but I'll start with the novel first, which I finished reading sometime last week but was too lazy to type this out until today.
Enjoy.

Battle Royale Novel

Book Stats: Author - Koushun Takami 
                 Published - 1999 in Japan; 2003 in North America (by Viz Media)
                 Page Count - 624; according to Amazon.
                 Controversial? - Yes. Very much so.
                 Popular? - Anything with controversy surrounding it is popular.

The Story: Not to bore you with a bunch of details that you'd be able to find anywhere from Wikipedia to Amazon, I'll make it short.
Basically, The government of a place called Greater Eastern Asia implements something called the "Program."
And what exactly is this "Program"? Each year, a class of 15 year olds is selected, drugged, taken somewhere deserted (an island, in the novel's case,) and given weapons and an instruction forcing them to kill their fellow classmates. Better yet, if one person doesn't die every 24 hours, collars that are placed around each student's neck will explode, thus resulting in everyone's death. Yum.

Moral: When on a school bus going on a class trip, always, A-L-W-A-Y-S open the window. Did I stress the always enough? Even if your trip is in the winter and its -20 C outside, open the damn window. Ignore your classmates' shouts of disapproval. They obviously don't know what you know...
Oh, and if the windows don't open, get the hell out of that bus. Fast.

My Opinion: Personally, I loved it. It was a great read. While the ending (as to which student(s) survive) was predictable, what I felt made it awesome was that the author avoiding making the novel into just a gore-fest where the rest of the 40 students besides the main two (they're on the cover for God's sake) simply die gruesomely for nothing but the reader's sadistic enjoyment.
No, each and every one of the 42 students are given back story. You learn details about everyone, and obviously, this works to make you, the reader, get depressed when a character you've just started to like dies a page or so later. (But I'll get to that in a second.) Sure, there's plenty of blood to go around, and the method of "See narration from character X's point of view / Learn details about character X's life that differs him/her from others / Character X DIES" might get old to some as they read through it, but I enjoyed it. While none of the deaths are overly awkward (most of the students get shot or stabbed) the author still manages to make it an immensely interesting novel.
In addition to the deaths, there's also the point that deals with the corruption of the government (the reason Class B is being forced to play the game in the first place,) which deters the novel even farther from the average teen-slaughter-fest.
But, to sum it up: This is definitely going down as one of my favourite novels.

Comparison to Lord of the Flies: The back of the novel (and various other places on the Web) boasts that Battle Royale is a "modern day version of Lord of the Flies" I disagree with this. Why?
I've read both novels, and while they both have isolated islands and children killing themselves in common - I don't think that's enough to make a strong comparison between the two. Lord of the Flies deals primarily with what happens when you put innocent children on an island with no social structure or rules and force them to fend for themselves. For the most part, the children go psychotic and kill each other.
Battle Royale, on the other hand, deals with what happens when you put slightly older children on an island, give them dangerous weapons and pose the ultimatum, kill everyone else or you'll get killed. For the most part, the teens kill each other because they're afraid they can't trust anyone (Hirokiiiii =[). 
Totally different situations.

However, another thing that both novels have in common is that my favourite character dies and both characters' names starts with the letter S. Shinji in Battle Royale and Simon in Lord of the Flies. Poor bastards.
But that brings me to the next section: Deaths, and its subsections:

Most Depressing/Disappointing Death(s): I've already mentioned two of the names above, but to go into detail about it...
Yes, poor Shinji, the computer hacker genius. So disappointing. The reason I went all "nooooo, Shinjiiii" internally when he died was because I liked his character. He was sarcastic. He was smart. He built a bomb and attempted to crash the government's computer system so that he could escape the island for God's sake. I mean, obviously he was going to die, that's not exactly a spoiler, but I at least wanted him to survive longer then he did. Like after the Lighthouse Girls died or something.
Then there was Hiroki. It wasn't only the fact that I liked his character though, that made his death depressing; it was the way he died. I mean, he spent the whole duration of the game looking for this girl - even getting shot by others (like Kazuo) while searching for her in order to help her escape the island - only to have her be the one who kills him. And still, while he's dying, he tells her how to escape. Sad stuff.
And now for the girls: easily Takako. From right after she kicks Kazushi's ass and gets shot by Mitsuko. The whole Hiroki-showing-up-while-she's-dying-and-them-sharing-a-moment may be cheap to some, but it was sad. It was depressing.
And last, Mitsuko's own death. This one falls more under the disappointing category for me because it seemed that she died too easily. Her and Kazuo were the only two playing "the game" for fun, and yet, she just got shot. From behind. She didn't even know Kazuo was behind her. Poor, poor misunderstood Mitsuko.

Most Graphic Death(s): Kazushi, at the hands of Takako. While he seemed to have deserved it, still. He was stepped on, had his eyes gouged out, stabbed in the throat with an ice pick...
Ew. Just ew.

Battle Royale Movie

Movie Stats: Director - Kinji Fukasku
                   Released - 2000

My Opinion: I'll spare you the plot details, as they're more or less the same as the novel. And, surprise, surprise, I enjoyed the movie as well. The plot progressed rather quickly - it didn't feel like 114 minutes went by - so obviously, not as much attention was given to the back story of every character. However, this doesn't really affect the movie at all because if you were to include character back stories for all 42 of them, the movie would be a lot longer and probably quite boring.
No, instead the movie relies on action and gives back story and flashbacks only when it's needed, which works rather well.
The music is a rather interesting choice, as it's opera-ish. Yet, it works well and fits. Then, of course, there's the cast, who I think were awesome - especially the ones that really needed to be. Kou Shibasaki, for instance, played the role of Mitsuko really well. Taro Yamamoto did well as Shogo, and the rest were also good. Who really owned though, in my opinion, was Masanobu Ando as Kazuo. The dude didn't say a word throughout the whole movie and yet he owned the role.
My favourite line in the whole movie occurred between Tatsumichi and Shuya, RIGHT after Tatsumichi gets the axe in his head, and this dialogue takes place:
Shuya: Oki...are you OK?
Tatsumichi: Yeah...I'm sorry...I'm fine... *falls over*
-caption informs audience of Tatsumichi's death-
Somehow, it was comical.

Overall

I love it. Both the novel and the movie. I also liked how, in the movie, they let Shinji live longer. And let him actually hack into the government's computers with his little animated person named The Third Man. Oh, AND let his bomb actually affect Kazuo, causing him to look even more psycho. Ah, a great scene.

Now that the actual review's done, off to a BR side-topic: The Remake.
Yes, good old US Hollywood got the rights to remake Battle Royale and americanize it. However, production was halted before it even started because of the tragedy that happened at Virginia Tech. Because of this, the producer has apparently said that if the remake does happen now, it'll be "sensitive to the issues."
And a sensitive BR is a watered-down BR.
Now, even if Virginia Tech never happened, it's important to note that all the Christian Fundamentalist groups would be all over it.

So there's one of two options that I see for this remake (well, actually, three, but the percentage of the third one happening is quite slim at this point) these options are:

1) There will be no remake.
2) The remake of BR will be turned into just another run-of-the-mill teen slasher flick, with a cast that includes (if they stick with the characters being teenagers) Lindsay Lohan, Hilary Duff, Chad Michael Murray, and MORE.
Honestly, imagine that scene between Hirono and Mitsuko being acted out by Lindsay Lohan as Mitsuko and Hillary Duff as Hirono. Would anyone take that seriously? At all? Ever? Anyone?
Thought not.

The third is that they get a decent cast (I don't think one that beats the original is possible by my current standards so I won't get my hopes up) stay true to the plot and make it awesome.  

But that's not likely anytime soon...
x

[Current Mood: spiffy...I guess]
[Currently Listening To: Bullets - Augustana]
[Currently Searching For: A store in CANADA that has the WATF CD so that I don't have to order it online]
[Searching Mission Is Currently: sadly unsuccessful. Seems like I'll have to go to Best Buy and harass some employees...]

Seeing as it was made on total impulse, I'm not too crazy about the Word of the Month. Ah well, July's will just be 10000000 times more awesome then I guess. Anyway, I'm making an entry while I take a break from reading the 600 page book I've been denying myself from starting since June started and hear the show Medowlands, or something, in the background. Apparently one of the characters is dying getting killed at the moment. I love it when people are watching something and get actually into and are all like -gasp!1- when something happens.

Now that exams are done, I have a week long break with no work at all (!) before work starts again and I go to summer school for four weeks to get a new credit.
Why yes, I will be suicidal through those long, boring weeks.
But I'll live...hopefully.
This week should be good though: When I'm not reading, I'll be out going random places with friends. WooT!

On a separate note:
Even though this week was the dreaded exam week, I still managed to find humour in life. Amazing, I know.
This was mainly due to my new favourite phrase and process of "having-a-blonde-emo-moment"
Yes.

That's about all I have to say...for now. Actually, one more thing:

The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny by Lemon Demon is AWESOME.
To quote random-dude-#4-from-AN: "BUY DOWNLOAD IT AND WATCH LISTEN TO IT NOOOOOWWWWW!!!"
In all honesty though, it's a cool song. Listen to it here.  

Now back to reading!
x