Rupee Shards

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anime, encoding, fansubbing, images, internet, manga, music, video games, youtube

Created By Desbreko

Bits of Des

Contrary to my low posting frequency, I actually think of subjects I could write about somewhat often. I'm just too lazy to bother most of the time. So here's an assortment of the recent ones all at once:

Aria Love +1

Aria the Origination, which aired last season, finally finished getting subbed and with that the Aria series ended. It's a beautiful and wonderful series and, like Dagger, its ending had me alternating between grinning like an idiot and crying tears of joy.

Aria the Animation (the first season) got licensed and is being released in a sub-only set with all thirteen episodes for about $40. This is totally for the freaking win because, like, I can actually afford it since they aren't price gouging with single DVD releases and making me pay for a dub I don't care about. It's being released in September and more of the series is supposed to follow after that. The only reason I haven't pre-ordered it yet is because I'm trying to decide if I should pick up some of the manga at the same time to save on shipping.

Zetsubou Fight!

Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei also finished getting subbed recently. Anon releases had been trickling out for a while but I hadn't bothered watching any since I was still holding out hope that a.f.k. would continue subbing it. My patience finally dissolved when the last episode was released so I got them and picked up at ep5. Amazingly, the anon subs were actually pretty good.

I really missed the insanity of Zetsubou Sensei—it was my second favorite show from last season, after Aria. I'm still hoping a.f.k. will continue their subs at some point but going ahead and watching the others was totally worth it. Here's to hoping for a third season.

Oh, and the Hatsune Miku cameo was amusing.

Miku Miku

Speaking of Hatsune Miku, I've been hunting down a few more songs. This one titled echoes (Nico Nico, YouTube) is my favorite out of the latest ones I've downloaded. Though a torrent popped up on one of the sites I watch for new anime releases with a Miku song titled マケナイワタシノコイノウタ (Makenai Watashi no Koi no Uta) which is also pretty good.

Also, zomg, Miku playing a harp.

【初音ミク】「泉の女神」～月夜の森にて～【3DPV】

Nico Nico version: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm3264508

IMMA CHARGIN MAH LAZER

I've been watching Magic Knight Rayearth in between new releases and catching up on shows from last season and I came across this:

Last time I had to add both the lazer and the caption. This time, only the caption. The prospect of this pattern continuing excites me.

MP: 0/90

I haven't played FFIV any more since my previous post about the Dark Elf. I've been distracted by a free, month-long reactivation of my PlanetSide account and I've also been playing Guild Wars more often again. Apparently PlanetSide is undergoing a server merge later this month, which will result in there being only a single US server instead of two, for east and west. (And I think there used to be three US servers in the past, before I started playing.) The game's community always had plenty of doomsday prophets predicting its demise ever since I started playing but now I'm starting to think they might be right.

The Tower of Zot is up next in FFIV which, in my experience, tends to be one of the harder dungeons in the game. It's just barely scraping half way through the game but a sudden jump in monster strength combined with not having a dedicated healer in your party really does a number on you. You've got Tellah who, while he knows pretty much every white magic spell, is capped at 90 MP and thus can only cast thirty Cures or ten Curas before he's out; and you've got Cecil, whose Cure spells are really weak. If I'm really on top of things I can make it between save points without resorting to using Ethers (yay for Tents) but it's very difficult.

Hatsune Miku

I guess this is the next step up from my interest in OS-tans a while ago; I've been browsing around for Hatsune Miku songs. I've known about the Vocaloid software and the Miku voice for quite a while but never looked into it much until Dagger linked to a beautiful rendition of Ishikawa Chiaki's Uninstall (the OP theme for Bokurano) on her myOtaku page a while ago. Yes, I'm blaming her for my little obsession here.

The songs I've found have ranged from good, like Ne Tou ge de Reset! from Lucky Star's Hiiragi Tsukasa character CD, to just plain funny as in the case of this version of the Star Wolf theme. Another couple of good video game ones are the Final Fantasy VI Decisive Battle boss theme and Dancing Mad end boss theme. Miku's imitation of Kefka's laugh in the second one is hilarious. I just wish the people posting these knew how to encode decent mp3 audio because the sound quality on most kind of sucks.

And then there are the memes. Miku seems to have inherited the Ievan Polkka from Bleach's Orihime, of leekspin fame. There are leeks all over in the animations and art I've seen of Miku. Caramelldansen is another one I've come across which is way, way too catchy, and dancing Miku is cute too. Apparently someone wrote a program called MikuMikuDance just for making 3D animations of her.

It's times like these I wish I knew Japanese so I could browse Nico Nico Douga for this stuff. Almost every Hatsune Miku video I've seen on YouTube was ripped from there. I found Mikufan.com, which reposts videos off Nico Nico Douga, but there isn't a whole lot there yet.

Brawl, Music, and Sweet Pikmin Love

I spent a couple hours yesterday in the My Music options just listening to Smash Bros. Brawl's music and tweaking the likeliness that certain songs will play in the background when a level is selected. SSBB has a crazy amount of music—usually at least four tracks per level—and I'm still unlocking new songs. There are some amazing remixes of old themes, some taken straight from the original games, and even vocal tracks like Pikmin's Ai no Uta.

SSBB - Ai no Uta (Pikmin) Japanese Theme

I've loved this song (maybe a little too much) ever since I first heard it a little after Pikmin's release so of course I cranked its likeliness to play all the way up. The lyrics in romaji and translated English can be found on Chudah's Corner. It's a bit sad, a bit funny, and it describes the life of the Pikmin perfectly.

I'm hoping so much that they'll release the game's soundtrack.