Back from Hiatus part 4: More Music Live in Japan! Hatsune Miku Magical Mirai 2013 and Hardcore TANO*C 10th anniversary

I love Music, and one of the thing I like the most about being in Japan is being able to see a lot of live from band/circles I love.
If I didn't go, I'd feel like I would be really wasting my time in Japan. So I try to go to as many as I can, even if it means eating only Gyuudon for a while!

Hatsune Miku Magical Mirai 2013

I am not a big fan of Vocaloid. I like some songs, but I'm not really following it. I usually don't like MMD videos, and compared to the immense number of Vocaloid songs, the number I like is really small.
But I really wanted to go see this event live, especially for the technical aspect of it.

I am a Macross Fan, and in Macross+ there is a virtual Idol named Sharon apple. She is a computer generated image/voice, idolized by everyone. Miku is the real life Sharon Apple. I find thins really interesting.

Before the show there was some shops and art gallery, as well as a corporate exhibition around the event's ground. It was kinda interesting, I really wanted to buy the Miku towel, but it was sold-out when I got there.

The Miku Towel, pretty nice isn't it?

About the show itself now, unfortunately, I was too much out of the loop, and I didn't know any songs.
The music was played by a live band above the stage, with them sometimes going down beside Miku for some songs. They even had someone doing back-vocals, only the main voice was pre-recorded.

The visual was pretty neat, but I was a little far away, and I believe this event is a lot better for those being in the center seats, because if you're elevated, the screen on which the Miku hologram is projected has a lot of reflections in it, which makes it a little harder to see, and make it a little more visible that it's an actual screen and not just a real Miku standing there.
But still the hologram was beautiful. There were some pretty fast moves at some time, and even then the picture was still great.
Add to this the crazy Japanese crowds with their thousands of light-sticks, different colors depending on which Vocaloid is "on stage" and it creates one of the most visually impressive event ever.

They were kinda strict on the "no picture" thing, so I couldn't get any good pictures.

In retrospect, I'm happy I went and witnessed it, but I won't go again, I saw it once, and I'm satisfied!
you can see all my pictures from this event here: Hatsune Miku Magical Mirai 2013

 Hardcore TANO*C 10th anniversary

Hardcore TANO*C were celebrating their 10th anniversary, and this time, all my favourite DJs were there. There was no way I could miss that!

It was a while ago, so I don't remember everything, but it was great!
They used a different setup for artists this time, instead of having a single DJ doing a 20-30 min set, they had the DJ's paired by group of 2, and had them doing ~50min sets. It was really great, especially the part where my two favourite DJs DJ Noriken and P*Light were paired and gave an incredible performance.

Another nice thing was that Yuccako was there and did live singing on a bunch of songs including Let's Sing, Actually I think they played Let's Sing remixed 4 times differently during the night, it was nice!

Actual light saber duel on stage

I'll never get tired of those, and I'll go again if I have the chance!
Go there to see all my pics from the show (not many): HARDCORE TANO*C 10th Anniversary

Bunkasai (Culture festival) and M3

Hello everyone, This post is about current events, and not about things that happened during my Hiatus, I'll actually post more about the hiatus later, but I tough talking about currently happening stuff would be interesting as well.
Especially since that stuff was pretty interesting!

Jinssei Girl High School's Bunkasai

A bunkasai is a culture festival, as far as I know, all schools in Japan host these kind of events. There's two major festivals at schools in Japan, the Sport festival, and the culture festival. The sport festival is usually a school competition in sport events, kinda like school Olympics, and the culture festival is everything else.
We other see this festival in Anime, the classes do either Haunted house, cafe or things like that, the clubs do club related stuff like presentations.
According to the girl who invited me to her festival, it's the second most boring in Japan (which one is the first?) because the teachers won't allow them to use costumes or make haunted houses.
Boring or not, it was my first time seeing one for real, outside of Anime, so I was really curious!

There was a lot of things I only learned about Japanese school through anime and games, like how the change their shoes before entering the school and stuff like that, so I was kinda scared to do something bad while I was there, so my technique was to follow people around, and do like them.

First place I went to see was their Gymnasium, where the kendo club had a presentation.

After watching them for a while I wandered around in the school, entering in random classes to see the expositions. There was flower arrangements, art galleries, a sweet museum. Their English club had little games, and I spoke with them a little.

In the end I was never able to find the girl who invited me at the festival... maybe she was on a floor I didn't visit because I didn't know if I was allowed to go there or not (if nobody walked there, I didn't go either).

The most interesting part of this festival was probably their Light Music Club's live shows. It seems like they have a big club because they had 11 different bands, and while I only saw 3 of them, I saw 13 different members of the club.
Some of them are actually really promising, one girl had a really awesome voice.

The genre were pretty diverse too, the first ones I saw did regular pop, the second one was metal, and the last one was punk/rock.
It was really interesting to watch the crowd of little girls headbanging and slamming to the music... It's not everyday you see a slam of 14-17 year old girls... so I took a video of it!



The festival lasted 2 days. but I couldn't  go on day 2 because I was at...

M3 2013 - Fall

 So it's my 3rd time going to M3, you can see the previous reports under the M3 label here M3
This year when I checked the list of circles I usually go see, I was dissapointed. Most circles released their latest albums for an event in Osaka a couple of weeks ago, and a bunch of circles didn't seem to participate... but I was wrong, it was mostly because all these circle just don't update their stupid websites! I went there thinking I would buy only 6 albums, including 3 albulms released in Osaka a couple of weeks back, but ended up buying 21 and running away without checking the whole event because it was getting just too much.
I really love this event, there's a lot of good music, and it's a good place to discover new circles, but it gets expensive fast because when people ask you to come and listen to their album, it's hard to say no. and if it's good, well I but it, so it really stack up quickly.

One of the biggest difference between this M3 and the previous one was that there was a lot of KanColle arrange albums... KanColle is the new Touhou! I think two of the album I bought are about KanColle, but there was a lot available.
I also asked IRON CHINO about this, and asked him if he planned to do a KanColle arrange album, and he said it's interesting and that he will probably do it.

Once again I also took the time to speak with Miko, she had a weird Wig this time, but she's as Kawaii as ever!
She released 3 albums (well 1 of them seem to be a DVD but I didn't check it yet).

Heres a picture of my M3 loot:

That ends this post, Lots of things coming up in the next week, so I should be posting a lot. Also expect the continuation of the "Hiatus" posts.

Back from Hiatus Part 3: That fucking OreImo ending

WARNING THIS POST WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS

Yes it's my blog so I'm gonna spend a whole fucking post complaining about an anime.
I was pretty sure I had written a post about Toradora in the past, and how I hated the ending, but I can't find it... weird...

So OreImo (Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai) season 2 finished airing it's special ending on august 9th, I stated watching it about 1 week and a half later, and, it's now the anime that made me rage the most, even surpassing Tornadora.

The episode 14 (first of the 3 final episodes) stats by Kyousuke going out of his way to run around on Christmas eve to find his ex girlfriend, just to got and tell her "yo I wont spend Christmas with you bye"

Why the fuck would you do this, it's not like he was dating her, why would go go and run to your ex GF, who still loves you, just to fucking tell her that you don't want her. What a fucking stupid sadistic asshole would do this.

After that he proceeds to tell his sister he loves her, of course as usual she treats him like a piece of shit, since that's all this bitch can do, but she accepts his feelings.

The first part of this made me rage a lot, and I though I didn't give fuck after that. But then in the next episode Kyousuke and Kirino confront Manami, and tell her that they love each other. Manami being the "good" girl that she is, she can't accept their love, mostly because she's jealous of course, and then we learn that Manami was actually another piece of shit forcing her beliefs on a very young Kirino, and pretty much being the reason Kirino became such a bitch. Nonetheless, when Manai stood up and punched Kirino it felt good. but it quickly became awkward. All this whit was pretty useless, just destroying both characters.

So Far Kyousuke has rejected Manami, Kuroneko (well it's pretty much her own fault for dumping him in the first place) and Ayase, which at first looked like the most crazy character, and ended up being one of the only sensible one in the show.
Saori doesn't even try because she knows it's useless.
And he rejects Kanako in the most fucking stupid way ever, I don't remember in which of the 3 episode it was, but he goes to her live event to which he was invited (she's an Idol) and she tells in front of the whole crowd, "Kyousuke be my boyfriend" which is kinda stupid coming from an Idol, but then he rejects her in front of this whole crowd with a big fucking smile. I don't know if you know how Hardcore Idols fan in japan are? but if this thing had happened for real, kyousuke would have been beaten up, and Kanako would have been said to be a slut and other stuff by all her ex-fans.

Last episode, well at least he rejected all those girls because he loved his sister and would live happily ever-after with her.... NOPE
This is the part that take this anime that was already rage worthy, and just put it at the top of the rage-worthy anime... Kirino and Kyousuke fake a wedding, and after 2 months or so of going out, break up and say "well that was fun, we did what we said, so now it's over kthxbai".


WTF IS THAT CRAP... At least go all the way for a real Wincest ending, don't do some half-assed shit like this. This guy goes and break the heart of a bunch of good and not so good girls, just so he went out as a game with his sister for a couple of months? what utter bullshit.

As you can see I am still mad when I remember it, even if it's been like 2 months ago.

Don't watch it.

PS: it's been 2 months so I forgot stuff, and probably mixed some parts of the story up, but I really don't want to watch it ever again, so that's it.
PPS: This is what I wrote when it actually hapenned on G+: https://plus.google.com/109767154943043622747/posts/8xeUrgpgddM

Back from Hiatus Part 2: Pepsi Flavoured Cheetos, KanColle and Akiba

Welcome to the part 2 of "what the heel have you been doing for the last 2+ months", this post will have many small, uneventful events instead of a report on a big event.

Pepsi flavoured Cheetos

It's old news by now of course, but in Japan, Cheetos are testing a Pepsi flavoured version of their popular "chips". Being the ultimate Pepsi lover, I had to taste it of course. I actually had hard time hunting them down, but I was able to find some and test it!

Will it surprise you if I say it's not good?
It pretty much taste like Lemon Cheetos with a slight Pepsi after-taste.

KanColle

KanColle is a browser game not officially available outside Japan, and it's the RAGE over here. It's popularity grew exponentially during my Hiatus, which is why I'm speaking about it here. It's so popular! They are everywhere i  shops, they are starting to rival Touhou in events and stuff in doujin shops. Akihabara is full of it of course, and it's so popular everyone has heard of it... and even my boss played it during one of our meeting to show it up.

I don't know why it's so popular exactly, the game itself is kinda boring, but the character design is really good, and all girls in the game have voice actress.

Random Akihabara trip

Well that was a while ago, so I really don't remember what I was doing that time, but look at the nice Itasha and ItaBike! (and publicity truck)

That's all for this short post, Part 3 is coming soon, and it's gonna be about me being pissed off about something!

Back from Hiatus, part 1 - Comiket 84 report

Why did I stop writing? I don't exactly know, I got fed up with it, and with my life in general I guess, maybe the lack of money hit me mentally and stopped me from writing? I don't know.
It's not like I didn't have anything to talk about, a bunch of stuff happened in the last 2 months.... oh well, I'll do a couple post about what happened ion the last 2 months and start posting again, hopefully regularly...

Comiket 84 report:

So last time I wrote was just after comiket, so here's a very late, and very short report (since I forgot a lot of what happened)

Day 1:

So during day 1, I decided to try and go buy something at the corporate booth. We started with Shaft...
Reaching the Shaft line took 1:45, then we waited in that unmoving line for more than 2 hours, under the burning sun, in the hottest day of this summer, which broke heat records. I tried to stay hydrated, but I failed, I almost fainted, I had to bail out, fortunately my friend, which can handle the heat more than I can, was able to finish the line and get some stuff.
After finishing the Shaft line, my friend came to pick me up where I was resting, and we went around the rest of the corporate booth, everything was pretty much sold out at that point though. And we were so tired we didn't actually look around for real, so we decided to call it a day and leave.
Overall Day 1 was not fun.

Here's some picture of hell:

I can't imagine how you could wear a costume like this in that kind of heat. It's suicide!

Day 2:

Day 2 was pretty fun overall, we went to the cosplay area, took a bunch of pictures, and wandered aimlessly while looking around in the doujin area and the corporate booths. We tried to find the KanColle book everyone wanted, but couldn't find it. I found the 5pb. booth however and got myself some awesome loot!

I remember I bought some stuff in the doujin area as well, but I don't remember what.
I don't know if it's always like this, or if's the first year, last time I came I thuygh the cosplay area changed location depending on the day, but now I think the 3 area are always open at the same time... well it was this way this time. We spent quite a while in there so here's my favourite shots:

This one is pretty awesome because it looks like Cirno is melting from the heat

Simply the best girl of Comiket

This girl had the most beautiful smile I have ever seen

Her again

You can see all the pictures from Day 2 here: Summer Comiket 2013 Day 2

On a side note, there was an Itasha and Itabike on the way from the station to the event, and I took some pictures, the bike looked especially nice!

I want that bike

Day 3:

Day 3 was Touhou day, and Doujin music day, so it was shopping day, the first half of the day was us running around circles and getting CDs. I spoke with IRON CHINO, Miko, DJ Noriken, and maybe others, but I forgot. This is the reason why I love Doujin event so much, you get to actually talk to the people who make the stuff you like. It's awesome.
Miko is still Love.

After the shopping I went to see Raide (a guy I met on G+, who worked on Katawa Shoujo) at the Katawa Shoujo booth, spoke with him a little and then went to the cosplay area for more pictures.

Unfortunatly we were there late, and they were about to close, so I couldn't get as much as I wanted, but here are my favourite shots from day 3:

You can see all Comiket Day 3 pictures here: Summer Comiket 2013 Day 3
And that's it for the Comiket report, I apparently didn't take a picture of my loot.
Hope you enjoyed, stay tuned for the part 2 of my what happened during my hiatus!

Updated (2013/10/19 13:44 JST): added link to day 3 album