All Thanks to Fernando Torres...

... i'm 100 bucks richer. Euro 08 final goes 1-0 to Spain.

That's just Rierie in some crazy pig mask.

兰花闪亮BEAM 萌死人不赔命

What the hell is Mikuru Beam when you’ve got “キラッ!”? I’m seriously tempted to switch camps from Sheryl to Ranka. Let’s try to score the both of them based on the songs they’ve been steadily churning out in the past 12 episodes. Songs are scored out of 5; those that got played during battle get a +1 pseudo Minmay Defence bonus.

What ‘bout My Star
Sheryl’s version made a stronger impression on first listen because of the pumping beats, but Ranka’s slower version won it in the end. I liked the bit where she sang without accompaniment at the beginning, the guitar bits were a nice touch too.

Sheryl - 3 points
Ranka - 4 points
+ 1 impromptu street performance

Nyan Nyan CM Jingle
I can’t stop laughing every time I hear “你好娘”. I’ll have to score it low since this is a 20 second joke track, though I enjoyed it plenty.

Ranka – 1 point
+ 1 Nyan Nyan dance

Ninjin Loves you Yeah!
Another catchy joke track. Go eat your veggies.

Ranka – 1 point
+ 1 carrot suit

Iteza Gogo Kyuji Don’t Be Late
Motteke!!!! Sailor fuku dakara desu ← ketsuron

Sheryl – 5 points
+ 1 私の歌を聞け！
+ 1 cleavage-baring bondage suit
+ 1 instant recovery from near-death fall
+ 1 pseudo Minmay Defence
+ 1 for weekly “Motteke!!!!” during sponsors screen

Watashi no Kare wa Pilot
Preferred this version to the original. I’m a Minmay hater.

Ranka – 4 points
+1 pseudo Minmay Defence
+1 cute choreography

Ai wo Oboeteimasuka
Shimokawa Mikuni’s cover was better.

Ranka – 2 points

Welcome to My Fanclub’s Night
Did this song appear in the show? Didn’t leave much of an impression.

Sheryl – 2 points

Eyemo / Eyemo ~ Tori no Hito
癒される…

Ranka – 5 points
+1 Rierie endorsement

Neko Nikki
Nice and lazy song, currently one of my favourites. I was a bit disappointed when it displaced Diamond Crab Ace as the ED though. The show’s focus is shifting away from Sheryl to Ranka and the people in charge are making sure it’s reflected in the CD sales as well.

Ranka – 5 points

Infinity
i think it might have appeared during Sheryl’s farewell concert around Ep 7. Since I don’t remember, it doesn’t qualify for the pseudo Minmay Defence bonus.

Sheryl – 3 points

Seikan Hikou
Go watch Episode 12. Then go stream the dance steps. Start dancing! キラッ!

Ranka – 5 points
+ 5 TRUE Minmay Defence
+ 1 キラッ!

Diamond Crab Ace
My pick for best of Spring 2008. Absolute favourite of the bunch.

Sheryl – 6 points
+1 pseudo Minmay Defence
+1 special service a capella version
+1 for reminding me of some Cantonese song which I can’t remember

Ranka – 1 point (for the 2 lines she sang)

Ecchi Fanservice Bonus
Sheryl gets +5 for going commando, +5 for the wardrobe malfunction and +5 for telling the Princess to go fap to it.

Tally:
Sheryl – 42
Ranka – 40

So Ms. Sheryl Nome barely wins the contest on account of her shamelessness. Sick and dying Sheryl is no fun though, so get well soon, Ms Sheryl! I hope to hear the song she penned on that pair of Zentradi XXXXXL bikini bottoms soon.

Anyway, the biggest winners are May’n and Nakajima Megumi. Who’s heard of May Nakabayashi before this? And Ranka’s a dream debut role. Both of them seriously lucked out.

Loli News Network

I had actually thought Karen Girls referred to the Children's seiyuu and was wondering why Hirano & Co. sounded so loli. Imagine my shock on seeing the CD cover for the OP single.

In other news, here's a look at CG R2's resident loli. (with a Yukarin cameo at the end.) She's nine if you're interested. So please back off before you land yourself in trouble. (Kagamisumi, i'm looking at you. Kurenai's loli is possibly quite legal though.)

My thoughts on this real life loli invasion of my hard disk?

二次元万歳！

3D lolis are mostly pesky brats. I'd take micro Klan Klan anyday. Of course, Rie is still first choice. Come to think of it, Rierie hasn't done any loli roles, has she?

The 1000th Summer (Cue 鳥の詩)

Summer's here (i think). The only seasons relevant to me are the NE and SW monsoons so i'm not entirely sure. Anyway, many of my favourites from Spring 2008 have ended or are ending, which means more reinforcements are on the way!

Strike Witches

i like mecha and i like cute girls. i think that's enough reason for me to want to watch this show. Rierie and miyukichi having supporting roles is just icing on the cake. I have no idea what the plot is about, but if it turns out to be pseudo slice-of-life like Skygirls i'll be happy enough. Both shows have the same character designer, which is a plus for me. Isn't it delightful, the way those girls zip around at mach 2 without even a layer of plastic wrap between their smooth loli skin and the atmosphere? Imagining them slamming into pigeons at 600 m/s is entertainment in itself.

Zero no Tsukaima 3

Siesta single-handedly, or rather double-boob-edly, tipped the balance in favour of this show. NotoMami's boob fairy joining the cast is a good thing (i hope). And of course i'm dying to find out what happens to the Reiji Maigo. Oops, wrong Hino Rie show. The plot so far has been rather blah, so zero expectations there.

Hidamari Sketch x 365

Loved the first season, so this is a no brainer. It's SHAFT, so i'll be be prepared for, uh, random stuff. Actually, i enjoyed SHAFT's recent offerings - Hidamari, ef, SZS - though i suspect the source material were strong enough to succeed regardless.

Slayers Revolution

This is for old time's sake, me having watched the first season on TV almost 10 years ago. The middle two seasons never made it to local TV, so i guess i'll go read some plot summaries. But i'm wary though: the other sequel that i watched out of nostalgia, YUA Full Throttle, showed that reviving an ancient franchise isn't a good idea all the time.

Nogozaka Haruka no Himitsu

Mamimami as an otaku girl. Sounds fun.

Telepathy Girl Ran

Just watched the first episode and my mind is blank.

These are the few that have caught my attention so far, though i know as usual i'll end up following at least thrice that number of shows 2 weeks from now. Not to forget the Lucky Star and School Rumble OVAs, and the finale to Mnemosyne.

Lastly, re-live the memories of that summer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9QupMCvTlM&feature=related

ルーレーイ... ルレーイーアー

My computer crashed on me. Rest in Peace, Buddy.

Ok, it didn't die permenantly, i managed to get it working again after reformatting but who knows when it's going to die for real. Reformat is my remedy for 90% of all computer-related problems. Like the item Remedy in the FF franchise, it cures all status ailments besides "KO".

Of course, having reformatted the drive all my stuff is gone. Stuff like 30 gb of music, 30+ hours of FF tactics save games and, worse of all, my secret Rierie picture folder. Should have seen it coming since the drive's been acting cranky for the past six months or so. i should be surprised it's held out that long, shouldn't i?

Oh well, time to rebuild my secret Rierie folder.

Shisaa yaibin! Reminded me of Azumanga Daiou again. Rierie has too little starring roles this season, quite a few ninja cameos though. i'm missing her voice badly.

She was on a working trip to Okinawa. Btw, Shakugan no Shana is taking over Azumanga's Arts Central timeslot on thursday nights.

Rierie and the Suigintou doll she had just bought. All the ladies in Rie's family love dolls and, apparently, "Gin-chan" was in grave danger of being kidnapped to Hokkaido by her mother. Haha, poor Rie. These dolls aren't cheap. She said she'll be working harder to get her hands on all the other tiny accesories like dresses and furniture for the doll, which is good for us all, i think.

Nekomimi meido. Not really my thing, but as the saying goes, no fish prawn also good. I lost the Sniper Rie pics from a while back and now the original link is dead. Should have uploaded them instead of posting the link, dammit.

Oh, and she's been crazy over Eyemo. No, not the eyedrop, the song from Macross F. Bought the OST even.

ルーレーイ・・・ルレーイーアー

无题

刚刚在看《爱莉森与莉莉亚》时，脑子里老是有件事放不下 ： 堂堂公主殿下和鼎鼎大名的救世大英雄在火车上幽会应该是头条八卦大新闻吧！那两个家伙搞在一起这么久还没传绯闻实在是有点不可思议。连盗摄用的袖珍型相机都有了，狗仔队还在跟他们客气什么？难不成在等人发明印刷机？

话说回来，阿Fi 拖着相机到火车上和帅哥开房用意何在？（她是陈冠希fan?） “思い出を残す為に持って来たの。”到底想留下什么样的回忆实在是让人非常期待。 Fiona 小妹妹，做事太冲动的话，长大了可要后悔哦！（话是这么说，不过要是出DVD特典的话我应该会立刻上Amazon 预购吧。）

只看到第九话，接下来似乎又会有什么政治阴谋之类的情节，说实在并不太感兴趣。还是想尽办法要把Will 给XX掉的Allison最可爱。

翠星石です。

Did you notice the Ms. Shinigami in Kyouran Kazoku Nikki says a lot of "desu"s? While listening to her scream "Desu!" on the roller coaster, a few of my neurons made the connection between "desu" and "デス" (Death). Now I know what that two-faced heterochromatic doll from the other anime was saying all along.

Chickens Are Plants

Because they have roots.

Here's another joke.

Truly Asian Mountaintop Retreat

As promised, though no one give a damn, here are the pictures from my mountaintop retreat in Truly Asia.

This is the view from my backdoor. Believe it or not, the house is just 10 metres away from an equatorial rainforest. There were monkeys in those trees, I was too lazy too wait for a clear shot. Snakes show up occasionally too, but I wasn’t brave enough to go looking for one.

Another view from between 2 laundry poles. See that fallen tree trunk in the foreground? That’s probably the remains of the stupid tree that punched a hole through the roof on that Dark and Stormy Night 2 years ago. I spent half that night bailing rainwater from the storeroom. Funny it hasn’t rotted away though. Maybe it’s a different tree.

Tarzan the dog.

The very last bottle of that bootleg rice wine I was talking about. There’s no more left in the entire world. I drank the last drop.

Random phantom fish. The fish don’t have names but the dog does. Probably because they keep dying every other week. Had to dig out half a dozen carcasses that got sucked into the filter pump.

Cute Care Bear bed sheets, ya? My old trusty Super Soaker 100, which ceased to function maybe about 10 years ago. Wonder why they’re still keeping it around. I used to shoot marauding monkeys with it, when we had fruit trees in the yard. (banana, jambu, buah ceri etc). Chopped the whole lot down years ago so that the damn primates would stop invading the property.

What colourful students we have nowadays. This is a girl’s essay, btw. Another boy wrote some horrendous Deathnote rip-off which I would have scanned if I could. Felt like penalizing his plagiarism but decided to think of it as a fanfic in the end. The bugger chose the wrong manga to copy from actually; if he had written a story on the Dango Daikazoku I would have awarded full marks. Anyway, I changed his protagonist’s name to Light Yagami just to let him know the examiners might not be as ill-informed about pop culture as he had thought.

Both regular readers of this blog (Nikuman, I know you’re lurking) would probably be wondering what business I have correcting others' grammar when my own written English sucks like a vacuum cleaner. I have no idea either.

“Screencap” from NHK’s overseas satellite broadcast. The guy there is Saotome Taichi, a 16 year-old Kabuki trap. Forgot to take a pic of his trap form, but trust me, he’s quite trapalicious. Sounds like the real-life inspiration for our dear Saotome Alto “Hime” .

Loot: 9-in-1 “Deluxe” edition Haruhi novels. Obviously not-very-original, since I don’t think Kadokawa would give away to some Inner Mongolian publishing house the rights to one of their best selling series. Let’s just pretend I got fleeced unknowingly by unscrupulous pirates. I got this book at a Truly Asian branch of the most Popular local bookstore though. Tsk tsk. =p

Back cover. Price tag at the upper left corner says RMB 45. =)

Here’s what the not-so-very original DVDs look like. The Shana 2 DVDs aren’t even fully released in Japan, are they? The video quality is sharp, probably HD source. Chinese subs are fine. No Shana-tan though. This is the kind of competition that our dear local anime distributor is up against in Truly Asia. A full season of episodes bundled together, available within 2 months of the TV run’s end. I’ve seen Odex’s silver-lined products on the shelves in a few specialist anime retailers up in KL, but based on my observation this is the kind of stuff most video stores are stocking. And I’m not talking about guerilla street vendors; those stores are brick and mortar retailers in shopping malls.

I wasn’t attracted by the quality of the product (No Shana-tan. Boo…). I bought it because it was available. Now if only the “official” distributors can match the speed of the not-so-official ones, the industry wouldn’t be “bleeding to death”, would it?

Inside cover art. I kind of like this picture of Shana. Fiercely determined.

There are no pictures of me peeling mangoes because my hands were occupied you see.

Faint

I just passed out in euphoria seeing Hayate and Nagi in Ep 9 of Zettai Karen Children. As you can see, i'm quite easily amused.

Planning to upload some pics from my "retreat", but i'm too busy now catching up on 2 week's backlog of anime. Maybe tomorrow... =p

I am boardz...

I have not watched an episode of anime since 26 May. Did manage to stream the first 27 seconds of Macross Frontier 9 though - after one whole night. I must be suffering from some withdrawal symptoms, because i thought of Kugimi for no apparent reason during a steamboat dinner. Must have been the tray of raw pig liver sitting on the neighbour's table.

This is what i've been up to the past week:

1) Eat
2) Sleep
3) Read a real book for once. The biography of Pu Yi, last Qing emperor.
4) Indulge in alcoholic tendencies with bootleg rice wine
5) Type some worksheets
6) Perform various meido guy-like activities. i actually got offered a meido guy job.
9) Feed mosquitoes
10) Turn on the computer
12) Go for a walk
13) Try to log onto the internet
14) Go for another walk
15) Read about Akesaka Satomi's skirt falling off during a concert
16) Cut up 4,000 pieces of paper which are suppose to be order forms
17) Buy Flag DVD which is suppose to contain the "OVA". Yet to watch.
18) Curse the guy who bought the last copy of Mushishi just hours before i got to the store.
19）Watch Astro 欢喜台. 《神机妙算刘伯温》 uses bgm from Inuyasha.
20) Hope against all odds to find Allison & Lillia on NHK. The international satellite broadcast seems to have different programming. Shit.
21) Sing ani-songs all the way from Batu Pahat to KL.
22) Peel my own weight in mangoes.
23) Grow fat on milk pudding.
24) Mark English compositions.
25) Throw up blood marking English compositions.
26) Splurge RM120 on Shana 2, Mushishi, and half of Nana. Yet to watch, maybe i'll start now.
27) Play Super TextTwist. I've been stuck at 279,930 points for the past 2 hours. Help me form a 6-letter word with the letters A, C, E, L, L, O. I think the answer should be OLACLE but the game doesn't seem to speak Singlish. The game refuses to recognise ERO as a word too.

i'll be back latest by this Saturday. Hopefully.