Haruhi Jigsaw Puzzle

Posted on August 27, 2007 by DarkMirage

Haruhi jigsaw puzzle
See how big the box is—It’s as tall as Haruhi!

Woohoo! My 1000-piece Haruhi jigsaw puzzle has finally arrived! Or rather it arrived ages ago but I missed the delivery and only now found time to move my lazy ass to the post office to collect it! Yay!

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Posted in Anime | Tagged , , | 16 Comments

Odex vs PacNet ruling

Posted on August 26, 2007 by DarkMirage

Odex fine
Image taken from flash movie by NCH85

Mr. Siew Kum Hong, a Nominated Member of Parliament, posted the important parts of the written judgement by District Judge Earnest Lau, along with some of his own opinions on the matter. He was formerly a lawyer at Rajah & Tann, the laws firm which is representing Odex. Pretty interesting read. IANAL, but it seems to me that the main basis for which the judge made his decisions were as follow:

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Posted in Blog | Tagged , , , , , | 42 Comments

Odex Survey

Posted on August 23, 2007 by DarkMirage

Update: Apparently the response was overwhelming and they have already collected enough results. The survey is over! Yay! Thanks for you help.

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Posted in Blog | Tagged , , , | 40 Comments

Japan Manga, Anime & Games Tour

Posted on August 20, 2007 by DarkMirage

Time to take a break from all the gloom and doom. Here’s a more cheerful news brought to you by Mr. Lim, a former teacher of mine. He’s a bona fide gaming enthusiast and frequently takes random trips to Japan for no particular reason other than spending money. He is also the only (former) teacher I know who owns a PS3 and an Xbox 360. After quitting his job at my former school last year, he has been busy organizing various events and what not.

JMAG Tour

Anyway, Mr. Lim is organizing a tour group to Japan…for the Tokyo Game Show! Basically it is a one-week otaku-centric tour package with geeky destinations that include:

The duration is from 18th to 23rd September 2007. The total cost of the tour, excluding airport tax, is S$1,600. You can find out more information from the website and this flyer.

For enquiries and bookings, please call 63983686 or e-mail icp@globaltravel.com.sg. You probably will not get any discount for mentioning my blog. LOL.

Posted in Blog | Tagged , , , , | 26 Comments

Odex — having your cake and eating it too

Posted on August 19, 2007 by DarkMirage

UPDATE 20/11/2007: Note to foreign readers. This article is about Odex’s local copyright enforcement actions that took place in Singapore in mid 2007. This is not directly related to its latest international efforts. Please refer to here for discussions on the latest development.

Here is my summary of what I think of Odex’s grand scheme to dominate the local market in one daring move, and why I think they will fail terribly and spoil it for the rest of us. As some of you may or may not know, I met with Peter Go, director of Odex, twice before and had some discussions with him long before the start of the on-going fiasco (after he read my letter). At that time, I promised him that I would not reveal anything that was said during our private conversations, so I shall honour that promise. Not that I have a need to, now that Odex has shown its hand and everything has been made public. Anyway, just hoping to clear up some FUDs that have been making their rounds in every single forum thread on the topic.

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Posted in Anime, Rant | Tagged , , , | 247 Comments

Hare Hare Yukai International

Posted on August 11, 2007 by DarkMirage

SOS-dan is taking over the world, one Hare Hare Yukai dance at a time! Here’s a YouTube video of a whole bunch of weird people from all over the globe performing the trademark dance.

Singapore’s entry came from the recently-held Cosfest VI at Downtown East. I like Mexico’s dance moves. There are even some folks from “Itary”! Also, I can’t really tell through all the compression artefacts introduced by MPEG’s discrete cosine transform, but I think that Spanish girl looks pretty hawt. The Danish one too. And Australia is pretty sad… :(

One day, everyone will dance Hare Hare Yukai and world peace will finally be achieved.

Posted in Anime, Otaku | Tagged , , | 48 Comments

Shakugan no Shana Itasha

Posted on July 31, 2007 by DarkMirage

Hey everyone. Remember me? Yeah I’m still alive. I shall not bore you with details about why I’ve been so inactive lately (nothing to do with Odex) and instead I bring you an extremely short post with zero actual content (aka a filler) just to let you know that I am not dead yet. But first, a picture!

Shana Itasha
Wait, what?

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Posted in Otaku | Tagged , , , , | 39 Comments

Cosfest VI — Karaoke Competition

Posted on July 22, 2007 by DarkMirage

Wow I finally uploaded these. My internet connection was acting screwy last week and YouTube uploads kept failing. Day 1 of Cosfest VI‘s highlight was an anime karaoke competition. As usual Rika and Mizuki rocked. YouTube videos of their performances embedded after the jump.

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Posted in Anime, Otaku | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

Cosfest VI — tons of cosplay photos

Posted on July 16, 2007 by DarkMirage

Cosfest is finally over. I am so tired from two entire days of photo-taking. It’s been 24 hours and my hands still ache from carrying a camera that weighs at least 24.43 jillion pounds. I’ve been feeling feverish the whole day because of a throat infection. In fact, I was feeling pretty shitty throughout the 2-day event. Anyway, it’s finally over. I took a lot of pictures this time. But before we get to the pictures…

Cosplay
BEST COSPLAY THIS YEAR

Okay, with that out of the way, continue reading for the rest of the cosplay pictures.

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Posted in Otaku | Tagged , , , , | 21 Comments

SOS-Dan does Lucky Star dance at Cosfest VI

Posted on July 8, 2007 by DarkMirage

A group of Haruhi cosplayers performed the Lucky Star OP dance as part of their entry item for the semi-finals of the World Cosplay Summit (Singapore), which is part of Cosfest VI. Here’s a super blur and shaky video of the performance:

Head to the gallery for more cosplay pictures from the event (including the SOS-dan group). Also, a whole bunch of Danny Choos and a red balloon! Weee.

Posted in Anime, Otaku | Tagged , , , , , , | 34 Comments