Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt — Episode 1

Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt

Ladies and gentlemen, I present you the final evolution of Gainax. The transformational journey from Gunbuster to Evangelion to FLCL to Diebuster to Gurren Lagann has finally ended with the release of the first epsiode of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt. With their latest creation, Gainax has worked three times as hard to extract the pristine essence of ridiculous comedy untainted by unnecessarily impurities like plot or character development. Imagine Gurren Lagann without all the preachy manly life lessons or Diebuster without the touching character dynamics, but with way more funk and screen-shattering action. This is it. And, it’s inexplicably incredible.

Continue reading

Posted in Anime | Tagged , , | 14 Comments

The State of PS3 Jailbreak

PS3 Jailbreak

It’s been just over a month since the sudden debut of the world’s first PS3 mod device. The original release was purely commercial and overpriced (around 150 USD for what is essentially a simple USB development board in a casing), and as a result it was quickly made obsolete by cheaper (and free) alternatives). Still, its spirit lives on in the countless clones that have since flooded the market and we owe the original creators for the breakthrough. If only they weren’t such greedy bastards.

Since the breakthrough, a PS3 homebrew community has blossomed overnight and, though it still has a long way to go, significant progress has been made. It’s really like the early days of PSP’s 1.5 firmware. Here’s a quick summary of the current state of PS3 homebrew.

Continue reading

Posted in Tech | Tagged , , , , , , | 21 Comments

Golden Boy (Manga)

Golden Boy

A long time ago, I stumbled upon the Golden Boy OVA series on Nico Nico Douga and thought it was an odd and unique piece of work. It left a bit of an impression but I didn’t think much more of it. Recently, I had the chance to read the 10-volume manga series that it is based on. It blew my mind in a way that words alone fail to describe.

Continue reading

Posted in Manga, Reviews | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

AFA X — Press Conference (The Important Bits)

AFA X

AFA X, the third Anime Festival Asia, will be held on 13 and 14 November at its usual venue at Suntec Convention Centre. As per usual, a small press conference was held this morning to announce some of the details. Here’s the quick low down on the most important bits that I sat through two hours for:

Continue reading

Posted in Otaku | Tagged , , | 14 Comments

Tokyo Vice

Tokyo Vice
The author holding his book in front of a fuuzoku annaijo

Like any modern metropolis, Tokyo’s glittering skylines carefully conceal a more sinister side from the casual observations of an outsider. And like most other things Japan, organized crime in the form of yakuza carries with it cultural quirks that are at times indecipherable for those of us who live outside the Galápagos. Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein is a book that sets out to document and interpret a small slice of this enigma, written from a Jewish-American journalist covering crime stories for the Yomiuri Shinbun. The end result is a thought-provoking page-turner.

Continue reading

Posted in Reviews, World | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Natsu no Zenjitsu

Natsu no Zenjitsu

Due to the dearth of anime that interests me, I have been spending more time on manga these days. During a recent frolic in the forest of books that is Kinokuniya, I bought the first volume of Natsu no Zenjitsu (夏の前日) on a whim, as I often do when I don’t want to feel like I wasted a trip there because the new releases I was actually looking for were not yet in stock. Though these impulse buys often, by their very nature, end up disappointing, this time it turned out to be a surprisingly good purchase.

Continue reading

Posted in Manga | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

The Legend of Koizumi

Legend of Koizumi

I was just given YouTube links to what may possibly be the most incredible videos I have ever seen. I realize that this is a claim that I often make, but this time it’s different. Really.

Videos are embedded after the break.

Continue reading

Posted in Otaku | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Final Fantasy XIII – First Impressions

FFXIII

So, I caved and bought a second-hand PS3 Slim for S$300 (about 220 USD), partly because the PS3 has finally been successfully modded with a hacked debugging dongle reminiscent of PSP’s Pandora battery. (I am a cheapskate…) The awesome part is that my ancient Dell monitor has secret HDCP-via-DVI support through a HDMI>DVI converter and displays 1080p perfectly, so I don’t have to wander out of my room into the great unknown that is my living room to forage for a Barvia.

I finally get to play that (second-hand) copy of FFXIII I bought in Japan five months ago for cheap. Having skipped right passed all the Final Fantasies released during the PS2 generation (because I am such a cheapskate that I didn’t buy a PS2 until the PS3 was released), FFXIII comes as quite a huge leap forward from my perspective. I’m a FFVIII guy, so all this tech futuristic stuff is just right up my alley. After all, there’s no real difference between magic and sufficiently advanced technology.

Anyway, some first impressions after sitting through the tutorials.

Continue reading

Posted in Games | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

Maaya Sakamoto 15th Memorial Live “Gift” DVD

Gift

It’s finally here.

A few months ago, I spent 13 hours in an oversized aluminium alloy tube to get to Japan and back so that I could attend Maaya Sakamoto’s 15th anniversary concert at Budokan. A few days ago, the DVD and Blu-ray recordings arrived at my door step. A few hours ago, I finished encoding them into H264 MKV files and went out for ramen.

Continue reading

Posted in Blog, Music | Tagged , , , , , | 19 Comments

Highschool of the Dead

Highschool of the Dead

Highschool of the Dead (HOTD) is a surprising winner once you get pass the campy title reminiscent of last-century B-grade horror movies. Despite a story set-up that is pretty generic in the zombie apocalypse genre, the series manages to mix in enough anime-unique tropes to create an entertaining blend of two vastly different subcultures.

Continue reading

Posted in Anime, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 20 Comments