The Roman Rule

Complete my itinerary for my trip to Japan again this April. I'm taking my mom along with me since she's never been to Japan so my itinerary will avoid some otaku/geeky stuff. Well I say some anyway, but hoping to visit Volk's Tenshi no Sato and Kyoto Toei Theme park. Aside from that a lot of cherry blossom viewing, a trip up to Takayama and Shirakawa-go again and visit the lakes around Mt Fuji.

Can't wait till April.

Blair's Observation

You know, looking back about 10 years from when I got into anime, I've amassed a fair bit of DVDs during that time. I'm rather proud about this hobby of mine, and I'm not ashamed to say that I still enjoy watching cartoons at my age, especially if it's from Japan.

Anyway, with nostalgia out of the way, I decided to start on a project that's been running thru my head for the past year or so. This involves converting a majority of my DVDs to ISO files to be stored on a few 2TB HDD. I figured with technology improving quite a bit where Blu-ray players are starting to become the norm, and the likes of a NAS drive makes accessing files convenient, and media players like the WDTV Live is almost a common word for us geeks, why don't I give life to my DVDs again by having them as ISOs that are accessible for me to watch without having to pull out a disc.

I got my work cut out for me though since my last count, I have about 1171 DVDs of anime, movies and concerts. Don't really know how long this will take, but I plan to have, hopefully, 1/2 of my collection converted to ISOs when I save up enough money for an OPPO BD player. Which should be about June-July if I'm lucky.

Veeck's Law of Baseball

Moving on to the next BD concert discs I got on Saturday, is Nana Mizuki Live Grace Orchestra. One word: WOW. This must have been one huge concert since the orchestra looks like a full one so about 50ish players (take that back, Nana said it was 90!!) and since it's being held in at Yokohama Super Arena, it must have been a sold out concert as well. I see a sea of bodies and light sticks that glow when the lights go out.

Presented on 1 BD disc, presented in 1080i, and comes wit the standard 2ch LPCM, 5.1 dts-HD MA and a 2ch DD commentary track. There's also a second mini concert on the disc as well. The concert is different but I'll get to it later and it only comes in 2ch LPCM.

Well out of all the concert DVDs/BDs I have of Nana-chan, this is probably one of the best concerts I've enjoyed watching and listening. There's something about having an orchestra added to a concert of what's mostly Pop and a bit of Rock somehow makes the whole experience feel grander and the songs coming out sounding more complete.

Real highlights were Justice to Believe, Orgel to Piano, Heart-shaped chant, Sing Forever, Eternal Blaze and Shin Ai.

Then there's a second mini-concert where she sings songs by Hibari Misora. The songs ranges from enka, to 50's jazz/swing music that's hard for me to describe. As you can imagine singing songs that are older than you, it has to be commended that there was a lot of respect put into this concert. While I'm not into the enka style, the songs Nana sings were rather heartwarming, and she certain was able to bring out that sense with her songs.

Love this release, and worth the money I spent on it.

Marshall's First Law of the Legislature

New stuff arrived! Yeah, couldn't resists HMV's buy 3 JP BDs and get a 30% off the total price. Yeah I'm terrible with my money, as I just paid off a preorder for Macross Frontier 2nd movie and next week I got idolM@ster 2 LE, and the Saber Fate/Extra Dollfie as well. I'm broke... so broke... Anyway less grumbling more info! So what did I pick up?

- Sphere ONION Live in Nippon Budokan
- Yukari Tamura Love Live
- Nana Mizuki Live Grace Orchestra

This post would focus on the Sphere Concert. If you do not know who Sphere is, then you need to really watch more anime released in the past 3 years. Anyway to make it brief, it's an idol group made up of 4 seiyuus (Tomatsu Haruka, Toyasaki Aki, Takagaki Ayahi, and Kotobuki Minako) or Japanese voice actress that have voice anime, games and movies (if you can, check out the Japanese dub for Sucker Punch! which has all 4 of them dubbing over the 4 main female heroines). Each of them have their own fanbase, but as a group they popularity has been soaring for the past year or so. Anyway, the concert is held in the most famous Budokan in 2010 of November (2 months after I attended the Animelo 2010 Summer Live Concert), if I'm not mistaken, it was the last concert for Sphere in 2010 so essentially it has all their songs up to date plus their own single release up to the concert.

The concert comes on 2 BD discs, presented in 1080i, has the standard 2.0 LPCM and dts-HD MA and surprisingly underused (or hardly used) of PIP which essentially the picture feed on the monitor of the concert, so in a way you can get different viewing angles depending on how you set up the PIP.

Opening moments of the concert have the group doing a 30 minute skit. It's rather amusing and there's a few seiyuu jokes here and there (the 17 year old joke never gets old) and they play up the range they can do with their voices. Fun to hear them going into a sort of yakuza style of dialect during their crazy moment of getting the Sufere members out on stage.

After that little side-show the concert starts with Moon Signal and then on to Now Loading.. Sky!! Then it's broken down to each of the seiyuu's single songs. You Raise Me Up (yes, the Josh Gorban song) by Ayahi was a bit "eh..". Nice enough English, but yeah, I think I'm now not fond of the song. I think I enjoyed Haruka Tomatsu's anime medley since she's been singing for far longer. Gotta love the end part of the medley, which is a favourite of mine, the Kannagi OP.

After each member's segment, there was a short movie of the girls doing strange things in the dressing room with Onions. Yeah it's a running joke during the concert. Anyway, they then perform various songs from their 2 CDs and that spans itself to the second disc of the concert. Love it all, but I think I dozed off on some songs (it was late, and I was tired is my excuse), and to finish off the show, they sang Future Stream and Sayonara See You was great. Enjoyed the whole package and should hit the next BD concert for another write up.

The Unapplicable Law

After watching 4 episodes of Kamen Rider Fourze, somehow I still can't get over how cheesy it is. Sure it's a bunch of people wearing cool costume fighting guys in stupid costumes and the acting is high cheese, but by god, Fourze is on a different level. I can chalk it up that to it's setting, high school, with all the usual tropes from an anime set in high school. I'll be braving it so that I can see an appearance of the next female Kamen rider, which was already spoiled to me by Yaraon.

Concurrently, I'm also watching Kamen Rider Den-O and gotten past 4 episodes already. I was warned the protagonist boy was is a wimp at the start, so I was ready for that. Can't wait to get to the later episodes and then the tie-up with Decade with all the movies.

Also I have been warned by Alex that Volks may be collaborating with Sega to give me Sakura Taisen Dollfies. Lucky for me, I'm not the rabid fanboy as I was 5 years ago so I'm safe to say I can pass on the release. Still it's humbling to know that it's been 15 years since the first game came out and I can attest that I've played a lot of Sakura Taisen over the years across various systems. Also it got me into checking out concerts and stage shows, so I can enjoy something outside of the usual anime stuff.

Barry's Rule

I've been slack keeping my Blog up to date. I blame Facebook for this as it has allowed me to post random things in short burst.

Well what should I post about in this entry? I could say I'm adding a fourth doll to my collection of Dollfies. I'm rather pathetic, but I can say it is Saber from Fate/EXTRA. Hopefully the NZD doesn't do a sudden nose-dive in the next month or so against the JPY.

Also had a short trip to Queenstown recently and my have the place change since I was last down there. Now parking on the streets are metered. Scenery is as beautiful as ever, but at least I don't have to see it everyday. Enjoyed driving around the Southern Otago region as well as a rental car was provided.

And that's that for this entry. Don't really know what else to add. Oh maybe just to say it sucks that I couldn't get to attend Animelo this year. Next year perhaps?

Ferguson's Precept

It was with short notice that I suggested to the family that we head to Los Angeles during the school holidays as it was freezing here in Auckland. Never would I suggest that again if I want the comfort of knowing I can get on the plane and back.

Anyway, this would be my second time to the States, and this time without me having to do too much in terms of what I should plan to do. On arrival, we were taken from the central city and headed about 40 minutes south of the airport to a nice quite neighbourhood that my dad's friend is situated with a view that is worth millions of dollars by itself. With no jetlag to speak of, we were driven around the area and viewed a few special places. Later on in the evening we were taken to a sort of Chinese restaurant (I say that because it's closer to Cambodian, but you can tell it's run by Chinese), and were given a taste of some of the stuff we can not usually get in NZ. After a short dinner, we were taken to a great place to view the night lights of the city of LA. Seeing all the lights is really a sight to behold.

Next day, our host took us to Venice Beach as well as Santa Monica. To me, the beach wasn't really too interesting, and Venice Beach itself is a place where I kinda felt insecure as cannabis smoking was deemed legal if taken as "medication" and people are smoking it all over the place. Got a whole bunch of black Americans trying to sell me their rap music. You gotta be careful about them, and just kindly decline anything they try to push onto you. Can't say the same for my brother though as he "donated" some money for their CDs. I'm sure he's given it away to his friends, but I didn't ask. Also at the end of the day, went to have dinner at BJ's where the food is as American as it can get, huge steaks, and baby back ribs. The baby back ribs... I don't know how they do it, but the ribs are tender, juicy and just melts in your mouth.

On the third day, which was Sunday if you are wondering, I wanted to visit Volks USA's showroom and arrangement was made so that I was to drive the the place. It's an interesting experience going from driving on the left to driving on your right and learning the road rules of California. After my successful venture to the store, our host took us out to Long Beach for a seafood lunch. It was an amazing time as the seafood is very fresh, with the place akin to a fish market. The crabs, lobster and fish were very much alive before being sent to the skillet to be cooked, not like the Auckland Seafood Market, where majority of the fish and crab are dead on arrival, and the only live fish you can usually get is Blue cod (as they are reserved alive for the Asian restaurants). Such joys to enjoy such great seafood. Almost better than the seafood I had in Japan. After lunch we headed to our first American shopping experience, which is to say a short trip to Costco. Seriously, the stuff Costco has and with the prices being so cheap, it's hard to believe that America is on a financial meltdown. Bought a 1.75ml bottle of Crown Royal, hoping that I would finish it before I left LA, but alas it's sitting in my house at the moment. Guess I should just enjoy it now since I was drinking it like water. In saying that, with Canadian whiskeys that I've tried (which is only Canadian Club and Crown Royal), I prefer Crown Royal and getting a 1.75ml bottle for under NZD50.00 was a great steal.

Monday, we headed to Universal Studios. Great fun running around Universal, even though I've been to another one before. But nothing beats one that's in Hollywood itself. Also despite the fact it was summer holidays the lines weren't that long for a lot of the attractions. The only long line was for the studio tour. Which was worth it anyway as the tour was as long as our wait time.

Tuesday, I was given the wheels and I took the family to Hollywood Boulevard. The fun thing was going to the Wax Museum where if you see the photos you would get the general idea of the fun shit I did in there.

Wednesday was a about a 6 hour bus trip from LA to Las Vegas with a Chinese Tour group. Had like an 1.5 hour stop on the way there. On arrival, we opted to take a quick tour with the Tour Group around Vegas and some of it's interesting casinos. Also this was where my mum caught a heatstroke.

Thursday, we headed towards the Grand Canyon, with a stop at the Hover Dam. Noted that we cross the time line from PST to MST which was interesting. When we got there, we took a helicopter ride from the top to the bottom where there's a river in which we were taken upstream for a bit before floating back to base. Being at the bottom of the Canyon brings you into perspective the incredibly large work of nature and how you feel rather insignificant in contrast to your surroundings. After we got back from the Canyon, we went to watch a show in Vegas, Jubilee at Ballys. It's a decent show if you are on a budget, but I felt that we really should have gone to see Celine Dion at Ceaser's Palace's Colosseum, but I guess we were spending a lot of money on this tour already. Also my brother suffered a heatstroke as well before the end of the day.

Friday was the trip back to LA, and it was for a time for relaxing for most of the day and Saturday. Went to watch Captain America on Saturday, which was a pretty good movie, and the final of the Marvel movies before the Avengers movie that will screen next year. Can't wait to watch the Avengers movie.

Sunday was another hectic day as me and my brother drove north to 6 Flags Magic Mountain. I smartly got myself a Flash pass simply because it was Sunday and it was the Summer holidays. It wasn't cheap to get the pass, but it paid for itself by the end of the day, as we got on lines that could have taken up to 3 hours if we were normal sheep, in like 30 minutes or less. Faster still were some rides where we just walk pass the line got to the front in 2 minutes.

Lastly on Monday, I lazed around the house for the day watching TV, while my dad and brother hit the local golf course.

Tuesday was the day we decided to head back as the chances for getting on a flight was pretty good. Never had to experience clearing US security in under 5 minutes before making a mad dash to the plane that is about to leave in 30 minutes and would never have to do that again.

In the end it was a fun holiday, and I do hope to visit the US again.

Hassinger's First Rule

Watched 3 movies this weekend: