New Gundam series next October!… Apparently.

Posted on August 11, 2006 by DarkMirage

Fresh from the rumour mill. According to Moon Phase Zakki sources, a new Gundam series will start airing October next year. Many valorous spies paid the ultimate sacrifice to bring us this information.

Stellar~~~

Quote:

ガンダム新シリーズ、来年10月放送にむけて始動！…らしい。

「天保異聞 妖奇士」の後番、来年の土6は新ガンダム。監督は水島精二氏とのこと。一応、内部リークですが、実際この通り順調に企画が進むかどうかは不明。

Translation:

New Gundam series, starts airing October next year!… Apparently.
Taking over the time slot of Ayakashi Ayashi, a new Gundam series will air during the Saturday 6pm slot next year. The director will be Seiji Mizushima. Although this is, technically, an internal leak, it is not confirmed whether the project is really proceeding as stated.

You can just feel the journalistic confidence oozing out of this little article… On another note, Seiji Mizushima is most well-known as the director of Full Metal Alchemist.

Unlike most people, I still have hopes for the SEED franchise, especially if a new director is being brought in to continue the series. While it is not certain if the new Gundam series will continue the C.E. timeline, or indeed whether it even exists at this moment, I have this to say: BRING STELLAR BACK!!!

P.S. Moon Phase has also confirmed, with information from Comiket 70, that the third Nanoha series will be a full-fledged TV series and not OVAs. I don’t care for Nanoha, but it’s on the same page as this news so might as well….

Posted in Anime | Tagged , , , , | 140 Comments

Comic Market 70

Posted on August 11, 2006 by DarkMirage

Comiket 70 is starting tomorrow. Three days of sinful and possibly moé dealings centered around the Tokyo Big Sight convention area. Shingo from HD looks like he’s all ready to take on the entire otaku population of Japan. Three channel members, zima, sek and nivek (the infamous “nivek-raws” are from him, yup) of SOS-dan @ irc.rizon.net will be there.

C70 catalog cover by Naru Nanao

So why the hell am I stucked in Singapore. ;_; Well, I did pass a 13-page shopping list to zima before he left, though. Items on my list include Tony Taka’s new work, Shuffle! aritst Hiro Suzuhira’s new sketch compilation and this event limited Saber that’s carrying Excalibur instead of the retail version Caliburn.

Still, wish I was there… Gao.

Next year… I swear…

Posted in Otaku | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Maria-sama in Akiba

Posted on August 10, 2006 by DarkMirage

Taken from Akiba-Blog.

Maria-sama ga Kiteru

Typhoon No. 7, also known as Typhoon Maria, is headings towards the Kantou region of Japan. Above is a sign from Akibao~ Store No.1 at Akihabara.

In case you can’t read moonspeak, it says “maria-sama ga kiteru“, or “Maria-sama is coming”…

Posted in Anime, Otaku | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

God knows…

Posted on August 10, 2006 by DarkMirage

I finally translated “God knows…“, the insert song of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu. I feel that the lyrics really suit Haruhi and I am not sure if the feel is still there after my translation. Well, hope you like it.

Haruhi Suzumiya on stage

God knows…
Vocal: Haruhi Suzumiya (Aya Hirano)

I run past others with a parched heart.
Sorry, I can’t do anything else.
You won’t even let me
Share our pain together.

To live on without tarnish,
I face your back and head out without looking back
on the lonely rail

I will follow you.
No matter how agonizing the world is,
You will shine even in its darkest corners.
Cross over the end of the future,
My weakness will not shatter my spirit.
my way is overlapping with yours.
For the two of us, God bless…

This warming affection that reaches me,
It melts my reality and roams my heart.
I don’t need a reason for wanting to meet you,
Just my overflowing feelings, Lovin’ you

For now, let’s paint a beautiful dream
And chase after
for your lonely heart

Stop it, it’s not like you to lie.
Look at my eyes and let’s talk about our future.
I am prepared,
Even if the future is bleak,
I might be able to change destiny if I become stronger.
But for my wish to come true,
Everything is God knows…

You are here, I am here.
Everyone else has disappeared.
While we paint the beauty of this fleeting dream,
We trace out the lines of our scars.

That’s why I will follow you.
No matter how agonizing the world is,
You will shine even in its darkest corners.
Cross over the end of the future,
My weakness will not shatter my spirit.
my way is overlapping with yours.
For the two of us, God bless…

Read on for the transliteration and original:
Continue reading →

Posted in Anime, Music | Tagged , , , | 17 Comments

Flash Anime!?

Posted on August 10, 2006 by DarkMirage

Hanoka

I was just scrolling through Moon Phase’s list of autumn anime and I came across Hanoka. The official site doesn’t have much information, but a single line in the promo video on the homepage caught my attention:

日本初！！
本格フラッシュテレビアニメーション
「HANOKA」

Translation:

Japan’s First!!
True Flash TV Animation
“HANOKA”

“Flash TV Animation”. I think the industry has just hit a new low. I can’t find more details anywhere on the site, but the animation in the promo video certainly looks like it was done in Flash. And it’s going to be aired on TV…

Which begs the question: Why the hell would anyone want to make an anime using Flash!? Anime are all made digitally anyway and I don’t see how using Flash can help lower the production cost. Are the creators aimming for the “new radical idea” angle? Or are they high on crack?

Posted in Anime | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Think your home is safe?

Posted on August 9, 2006 by DarkMirage

Well, maybe not anymore…

We interrupt our regular anime rantage to bring you this public service announcement: you no longer need months of practice or hundreds of dollars worth of equipment to pick a lock. Any lock.

All you need is a specially-cut key that fits the lock and a few taps with a hammer. With a set of 10 keys of varying sizes cut in this manner, you can open 90% of the locks out there in just 10 seconds. Because it opens the lock in the normal way, this method leaves no traces and insurance companies will not pay for any losses in the event of a burglary.

Here is the white paper that contains everything you need to know to make a bump key and use it.

Just take a look at the video.

Posted in Tech | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

Wanted: Image Tagging Software

Posted on August 9, 2006 by DarkMirage

While searching for pictures to be used for the next Japanese lesson chapter, I realized that I really need a new way of organizing my image folders. Sorting pictures by the series they come from is good and all, but it’s a pain when I want to look for, say, a picture of a character riding a bicycle. The worst thing is that since most of my pictures came from image BBS, their filenames are all strings of numbers which aren’t exactly very informative.

What’s more, whenever a nice picture of unknown origin comes along, I would just dump it into the “Unclassified” folder, or as I call it “The Black Hole”. When I eventually find out about a certain series months later, I am too lazy to search through the Black Hole to locate and reclassify everything from that series. So eventually most of the images on my hard drive end up in one huge browsing-unfriendly folder, forcing me to spend a lot of time looking for pictures when I blog… And that’s one of the reasons why the next Beginner’s Japanese chapter is overdue. No, really…

I need an image sorting software. After some half-hearted googling and trying out some freewares, I have yet to find a program that fits my requirements. What I need is a program that can:

  • Display images from multiple folders in a single list
  • Allow me to tag keywords to each picture
  • Batch tagging and renaming
  • Search and sort using associated keywords
  • Rename a file according to its tags (not important)

It doesn’t have to be freeware (*cough*). To put it simply, I need an offline version of danbooru.

Any suggestions?

Posted in Blog | Tagged , , | 20 Comments

The Music Theory

Posted on August 8, 2006 by DarkMirage

So I was listening to my playlist of illegally-downloaded perfectly legitimate songs while on the way home from taking a JLPT mock paper just three hour ago, and I thought about the songs and how I’d rank them.

I should have been thinking about the topic for the next lesson chapter or how I could make billions of dollars by setting up a multi-level marketing scheme targetted at helpless otaku hikikomori, but I spent the time thinking about anime songs instead. Man, I’m wasting my life away…

Music... girl... thingy.

So anyway, after some deep dileberations, I noticed some patterns with regards to my poor music taste…

Continue reading →

Posted in Blog, Music | Tagged , | 9 Comments

Cosplay Quest 2006

Posted on August 5, 2006 by DarkMirage

I attended Cosplay Quest 2006 held at Cineleisure today. Long story short: it was somewhat disappointing. I did get to take a picture with a Haruhi cosplayer, though.

世界を大いに盛り上げるための涼宮ハルヒの団

That’s how I look like IRL. No, really. Yeah, I was the guy walking around in the SOS-dan T-shirt.

Long story long: Continue reading →

Posted in Otaku | Tagged , , , | 23 Comments

Sweet dreams with Shuffle!

Posted on August 4, 2006 by DarkMirage

The upcoming September issue of Dengeki-Hime will feature a Shuffle! bedsheet featuring Asa-senpai and that bitch Kaede for a relatively low price of 2480 yen. Samples of the bedsheet have been spotted today in Melon Books in Akiba.

Asa-senpai!!!
Image source: 萌えよ！アキバ人ブログ

The magazine will go on sale on the 10th. Kinokuniya in Singapore does not stock Dengeki-Hime, so I’m getting a friend to buy it for me. You can also try Amazon JP, which should be able to do international shipping unless they have some crazy policies about magazines too. Visit Moeyo! for the rest of the pictures.

Buying it is the easy part, but will you use it if you have it?

Posted in Anime | Tagged , , , , , | 24 Comments