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ファイト／ステイナイト 
January 16, 2008 | 
10 Comments
In case you're wondering if I'd cover the second episode of Honey and Clover live action, the answer is I would. However, as I've said before, I can't do it until I come back home on the 21st of January. The same can be said about Clannad episode 14. I am currently on a conference and I am stuck with a really lame wireless connection. Speaking of Honey and Clover, apparently the series' ratings is quite low. If you think last week's 12.6 was low, this week's ratings is even lower: 10.0. In contrast, the live-action episodes of Nodame Cantabile generally scored around 18.79 in Kantou region. In that regard and just to play devil's advocate, what would you do if you're responsible for improving the live-action drama? If it were me, I'd replace all the actors except Ikuta Toma (Takemoto) and Mukai Osamu (Mayama), make the story and characterisation a lot closer to the original manga, and improve the sceneries.
September 4, 2007 | 24 Comments
I feel a little bit bad for not posting much lately but I'll try to rectify that tomorrow night. I did, however, manage to update Kongetsu with a new post. In other note, I am really worried about my lack of interest in Anime. I actually went to Akihabara 2 days ago and I was stunned at my own lack of interest in buying any of the merchandise shown in various anime shops. The only thing that I want to buy right now is just this special DVD boxset of live action Nodame Cantabile. I feel a bit weirded out by this latest development because prior to this, I can't remember the time when I don't at least want to buy an anime-related magazine. Maybe it's the knowledge that I can get most of the things that I want in my country or at least get them cheaper online. I also don't feel obsessive enough to buy that Evangelion-branded coffee.
For my long (well, it's been a week since I post anything) absence. It's partially the cough but it's also because I've been a bit lazy. At times I wonder if I am getting bored with anime but that's clearly not the case since I'm still excited to see the upcoming Evangelion movie in Japan. I think it's mostly because none of the series that's been aired in the past few seasons really motivate me to write anything. There's nothing that makes me want to write something as soon as possible like in the past with Honey and Clover, Suzumiya Haruhi, Ouran High School Host Club, and Rozen Maiden: Ouverture. As a result, lately I feel like I have no idea what to talk about. Well, until today that is thanks to the cool screenshots from the upcoming Metal Gear Solid game. If you want more of them and the larger version, check out Kotaku.
Having said that, I am not planning to retire anytime soon. I will cover the upcoming Evangelion movie since I'll be in Japan. I will even update Kongetsu again when I get there. Autumn anime series also look kind of interesting although just like other season this year, the numbers of the interesting series versus the mediocre one are quite imbalanced, with the mediocre winning. Maybe I should try writing more opinion pieces if I don't write episode reviews. That's something which I haven't done in a long time. I look back at my archive and notice that I used to talk a lot about characters and I don't do that much these days except in episode reviews. It's kind of hard to do that though when you're not as invested in the character. Anyway, that's the long drivel and I will come back tomorrow with Darker than Black 20. Yeah, I'm sure everyone is excited since it's been a week old since it was aired. I'm glad there's a one week break though.
October 25, 2006 | 28 Comments
Some of you are probably already aware of this but I thought I should write something about it to make it official. It's probably a good idea to do it now since people tend to bring a bunch of spoilers into Death Note, D.Gray-man, and Kanon entry. Anyway, here's the thing, I've recently managed to implement a spoiler tag for the site. Because of this, if you want to write a spoiler, please put them inside a spoiler tag like in the example I show below:
<spoiler>write your spoiler here</spoiler>
It's basically just a simple opening and closing HTML tag. And please notice that it's just "Spoiler" (singular) and not "Spoilers" (plural). The spoiler tag won't appear when you preview it and it looks like your spoiler is not contained in it. But if you do the tag correctly, then it should be executed once you post the message. Anyway, consider this entry your testing area. Give the tag a try so you'll get used to it.
In other site-related news, this week marks the release of Internet Explorer 7. As much as I prefer Firefox, it can't be denied that there are those who prefers to use IE and will make an upgrade to version 7. I have tested the site myself and there doesn't seem to be any problem since this site was designed to be XHTML 1.0 compliant and IE7 was designed to be the most CSS-compliant IE browser. Having said that, if you notice something that is out of place in that browser, please let me know. I'm just happy that this version is released because hopefully people will stop using previous version of IE.
This is just a post to let you know that yes, the site has been experiencing some mySQL problem and as a result, some comments have gone missing. The 'best' thing, however, was when my webhost deleted my Code Geass entry, forcing me to go back to a backup that is 6 hours old. At least that's better than waiting for response from the webhost. I've done all I can to revert things to the way it was but I couldn't save all of the comments in between. I'm sorry about this. Feel free to re-enter them if you want. Anyway, I've also managed to complete the Code Geass entry whenever Nightmare host is not down but right now I'm too tired to write anything else so the remaining post will have to wait until I wake up tomorrow. It's been one hell of a long day. And oh, I thought of this caption game while I was waiting for the site to be restored from the backup. Here's my contribution: "Is that a lantern or are you just happy to see me?". Put in yours if you want.
September 10, 2006 | 27 Comments
Site News
As some of you probably noticed, the site was down for a couple of hours yesterday because my web host had network failure problem. This is just a string of many problems I've experienced with this host and I'm starting to wonder if I should move to a better host. Does anyone has any recommendation for a good host that offers around 500GB bandwidth?
Anyway, my web host told me that they're going to have a complete shut-down on Monday, so in case something like that happens again, I've created an emergency site. Yeah, I know it's very basic but it is enough to let you know if there is any problem with this site and to probably post little newsbits.
On the positive side, I decided to use the downtime to create a new banner for the site. I was actually thinking of rotating this new one with the old banner (see above) but I'm worried that it'll make the page loading even longer. If you don't know, the image shows Light and L from the upcoming Death Note anime.
January 18, 2006 | 12 Comments
I'm sorry for the lack of content in the past few days. I'm currently on transit in Japan (see Kongetsu for more detail) and I haven't been able to find an internet connection that will allow me to go bittorrent happy. But I'll see what I can do once I settle down. After all, I didn't have that much problem when I first came to Japan. Even if I can't do the usual review, I'll try to do some anime-related writing. I am planning to go to Hachikuro cafe next week. I'll try to snap some pictures if I can. Rest assured that once I go back, I'll catch up with the reviews.
Happy New Year, everyone!! I hope you had a good new year's eve tonight and will have a good new year! I am going to go and get wasted with a few friends and probably wouldn't be able to blog properly tomorrow due to hangover. So I thought I better do the preview for upcoming anime now. I have to say that I am a bit uncertain about what I want to cover next season since there's a likelihood that I'll be overseas again for a few months. In fact, I'll be going to UK and Japan this 18th of January to visit a few friends over there. In addition to this, I usually find Winter shows to be rather bad quality-wise but hopefully I'll be wrong in this regard. Anyway, just bear in mind that these plans are tentative and may change at any time. These are also the series I'm interested to see and not the full list which you can find here.
December 25, 2005 | 30 Comments
Merry Christmas, everyone!! I'm sorry I haven't been able to scan a Christmas-related image like last year but I've been using the time to upgrade the site. Last November was actually Memento 2nd year anniversary but since I was too busy with JLPT, I couldn't do any kind of upgrade. At the moment, the site is not completely integrated to the new look so I'm sorry for the odd bits of inconsistencies you may find here and there. The thing is, unless I force myself to update the site now, I am not going to update it at all since I will always find an excuse to postpone the act of doing it. But now it's out in the open, I have no choice but to actually fix all of the problems that the new look produced. I did, however, manage to ensure that at least the main index and the individual entry pages work the way they meant to be.
The items that I sent to myself from Japan has finally arrived here after 1.5 months. That will teach me not to use SeaMail to send anything from Japan but I was kind of strapped for cash back then. As a side note, this post is probably a lot easier to understand if you read a related post I wrote in Kongetsu. There are few shops reference which I didn't bother to elaborate here but did so in the other post. I realise that I haven't been using that blog for a while but now I think I'll continue writing on that one as well. I'll mostly just going to use that blog to record my experince back in Japan. I realise that the content will not be up to date anymore but if you're interested, feel free to read it.
Well, here I am at Changi airport on a changeover and all I can think about is how I haven't updated the blog for the last few days. Anyway, for those of you who are interested to follow my rambling while I'm in Japan, I've set up a seperate blog from Memento. It still looks basic and all because I haven't had the chance to work on the design but it'll do for now. I have to say I've had a great time so far. The plane that I took was awesome. I had a choice of 50-100 in-flight entertainment inluding an old Super Mario Brothers video game. I also saw this great Japanese film called Ima, Ai ni Yukimasu. It's retitled as Be With You. I have to say that it's one of the better romantic films I've seen in a while. The story is about this woman who got hit by a car and gets to experience her life 9 years later for one rainy season. Anime-wise, the 2nd season of Mai Hime has been confirmed confirmed. Here's hoping that red-haired character is not Shiho. :P
I wrote this for some of you who are waiting for Gakuen Alice recap as well as other series' recap. Please forgive me but starting from this week, the recap will be available a bit more late than usual. The reason is because I'm about to go to Japan for 2.5 months for holiday/study. The plan was already in motion right from last December but I didn't want to say anything yet in case it doesn't become a reality. But right now, baring any unforseen circumstances, everything is set in motion and I'll leave on 8th of April and won't return until 20th of June.
Okay, now that is out of the way, obviously this presents some kind of problem with the recaps. Right now, I'm busy trying to clean up my office, house, as well as arranging a few things before I leave next week. I'll try to churn out the review for Gakuen Alice 21 at least by Monday. However, I'm not sure when I'll be able to do the review for the next few episodes. I'll try to find a way to do it while I'm in Japan since I'm taking my laptop with me. But I hope you'll understand that it'll take me a couple of days to settle down and have a proper internet connection going on.
I also realised that it will be impossible to cover all of the series that I've been covering. With that in mind, I make a decision to drop Bleach. I'm way left behind anyway and I lost whatever interest I had for the series back in episode 20. Unfortunately, I also have to make entries for older series shorter, as in more-impression and less recap. Again, I'm sorry for doing this but I don't see any other way around it. Having said that, I'll try to do my best to continue blogging unless of course, I can't access the internet or anything like that. But I hope that won't be the case.
Anyway, once again I'm sorry for not writing about this sooner but I want to be sure before I announced anything. And oh, in case you're wondering, this is not April's Fool. I intentionally wait until the 2nd of April before writing this. ^_^
February 16, 2005 | 0 Comments
By now most of you are probably aware that David has decided to close down his blog. I wish he'll reconsider the decision but it seems he really is serious about this.
Well, David, I will miss your well-written an comprehensive comments on Naruto and other anime series. I wish you the best in your future endeavour and hope that you'll still involved with the fandom from time to time.
February 14, 2005 | 2 Comments
Wow. The domain transfer went faster than I thought it'll be. I thought it'll take at least 2 days. But it seems it only took around 2 hours. So this blog is now running on a new server. I think it went pretty well except for some mangled comments here and there and one weird effect that happens everytime I create a new entry. So far things seem to be okay though. You can comment again if you wish to do so.
Major thanks goes to David for giving me a lot of help with the whole process. Without him, who knows what will happen with this attempt. I'll also recommend everyone else who is planning to move server to check out this site if you want bit by bit instructions.
I'm sorry if you find the sidebar navigation only works in limited capacity. There is nothing wrong with the code or anything like that. I simply have to limit access to the blog until next month because the blog's bandwidth has decreased rapidly due to an increase in the number of visitors this month. The other solution is to pay for additional bandwidth but I already pay for an additional of 10GB bandwidth as it is now. So unfortunately, this is the only best solution that I can think of at the moment.
In the future, I'm thinking of switching to Dreamhost since they seem to provide more bandwidth (120GB as opposed to my measly 20GB/month) and I think I may do that. The problem, however, is that I don't know how to transfer this blog to another server. Do I export? Or do I just copy the entire blog using FTP and then dump it into the new server? I would love suggestions from those of you who have done this in the past. Thank you for any suggestion and I'm sorry for this inconvenience.
I thought I'll just let everyone know that there'll be some minor changes to the blog. I've been thinking that it'll be nice to have a guest writer to give the blog more variety and to put me away from distraction whenever a new interesting series come along. Mentar has volunteered to become one such writer, so you'll see him writing some Mai Hime reviews/articles and probably one winter series. How does this affect other series such as Gakuen Alice, Monster, or Yakitate!! Japan? Not much really. I'll still do all of them as much as I can. So please give Mentar the same courtesy that you've given me. :)
Happy New Year, everyone!! Anyone got any resolution for the new year? Personally, I don't have any since I tend to blow them out of the water in the next day or two. At any rate, I hope this year will be a much better year than the last one.
December 24, 2004 | 4 Comments
Well, I thought I'll have the time to do another recap but I guess not. I'm off to a party and will stay over at a friend's house afterwards. I'll try to catch up with the shows that I've missed once I come back. Thankfully some of them are on a 1 or 2 week break this month. Anyway, Merry Christmas everyone!!
Dec 27: I hope everyone had a good Christmas! I'll try to do Yakitate!! and Monster after I get a good sleep. BTW, if you're looking for Gakuen Alice, the show is on a break for 2 weeks and won't be back until the 8th of January.
November 24, 2004 | 9 Comments
I'm sorry for the lack of update lately but I'm trying to cram for the upcoming JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test). This means that I'll have to slow down with the blogging until the 5th of December. I probably will try to keep up with Yakitate!! Japan and Gakuen Alice since I've been enjoying these two immensely. But other series will have to be on hold for a while until I finish the exam. I'll probably post Monster ep.30 soon though since it's already halfway done.
On another note, CLAMP has just announced that they're going to create a new manga, Shou Hato (Little Dove). It's about a girl who's been sent to make a boy happy. However, the catch is she can't fall in love with him. It sounds shoujo but I get the impression that Sunday GX is a shounen compilation manga. I don't care much about it except for the fact that this means X will be on hold much longer than I thought.
While we're on CLAMP, I may as well mentioned this other news item. I'm not sure if this is official or not but Moonphase site mentioned that Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle will become an anime after all. Click on that link above and type this word ツバサ・クロニクル and the first hit you get is the blurb you're looking for. The anime will start April 2005, and it'll get 26 episodes. Bee Train will animate the series.
Edited to add: I just found out that my favourite R2 online shop, AMOTokyo, is closing down soon. I'm quite sad about this since they've been the best online shop I've had the pleasure to do business with. Their shipping cost is low in comparison to the likes of Amazon Japan or cdjapan and they always managed to get me some of those hard to get first-pressed items. Thanks to Kira-san, I managed to obtain X and Princess Tutu limited edition boxes despite being a couple of months late in ordering them. Anyway, I just want to say "good luck" to Kira-san on his new job and "thank you" for years of excellent service.
November 5, 2004 | 11 Comments
It may not mean much to anyone else but today is the first anniversary of this blog. I can't believe that it's been a year since I wrote my first post on this blog. Yay! I originally started this because I want to keep a record of things that I like, thus the name of the blog. But somehow the blog transformed into what it is now. Anyway, I just want to say "thank you" to those who have visited this blog so far and hope you'll continue to do so in the future.
When I started this blog, I knew I couldn't possibly keep this up for a very long time because I tend to get bored very quickly and because I knew that real life commitments will catch up quickly. Well, it looks like the time is getting closer. I want to do a 3D animation course and that will be impossible to do on top of my daily 9 to 5 job if I keep this site up. At the same time, I still enjoy doing this and don't want to stop it completely. In the end, I decided that a compromise is in order. I'll still continue the site but it'll be a trimmed down version of what it was. Because of this, I've decided to stop doing full summary for all of the upcoming and continuing shows. This include anime, manga, live action, etc. Examples of this include titles such as Monster and Sensei no Ojikan. The reason is mostly because these summaries often takes hours (or sometimes days in the case of live action films) to write and in most cases end up making it impossible for me to do other things that I want to do.
In other words, from now on, these shows and other upcoming shows I may decide to watch will have a rather short summary, possibly no more than 2-3 paragraphs + some impression. However, I will try to continue writing full summary of things that have completed its run such as Last Exile, Ultra Maniac, and GTO Live Action, just for the sake of completion. The other changes will be the reduction of the number of images and scans. The images, along with the long-winded paragraphs, turned out to be quite a bandwidth eater. With the reduction of the number of paragraphs that I write, it's only natural that the number of images should decrease as well. Otherwise, the whole summary/review will look as if it's just composed of images. It's also a good way to keep down the bandwidth-usage from going overboard especially since I don't have that much money to afford extra bandwidth. Anyway, I'm really sorry for these changes but it's something that needs to be done for myself.
I wrote this just in case the site/blog goes down between today to the 30th of June. For some reason that I have yet to figure out, there have been an increase in the amount of bandwidth-usage this month. I'll probably have to come up with ways to ensure that this does not happen again in the future. But I can deal with that once this is over and done with.
Anyway, the site will resume as usual on the 1st of July in case it does go down between now and the end of this month. But hopefully this is enough to inform you all about it. I'll try to post a recap/review of Monster episode 10 and 11 before the bandwidth is completely depleted but I can't guarantee that most of you will be able to access it before the downtime.
Update: Pheww. I don't have to close the site after all. My web host just told me that they'll up the server space+bandwidth limit for all of their old customers since their new customers already got the new space+bandwidth limit. Having said that, I still intend on reducing the bandwidth-usage on this site so that this kind of thing doesn't happen again.
As you can probably see, this blog has been lacking updates these last couple of days. It's not because I'm bored of it or anything like that but because I'm actually overseas at the moment and finding it hard to find a decent internet connection. Because of this, until I come back on March the 15th, you probably won't find much updates besides one or two episode reviews. Anyway, since I already spent a good amount of money to pay for the internet cafe here, I may as well point a couple of people to things that they were looking for when they stumbled onto this blog.
If you like cool/wacky Japanese game ads, you should check out this site. It has a lot of game ads, including a cool one for the upcoming Ninja Gaiden. But if you're interested in 'Lost in Translation' style Japanese ads (where famous movie stars sell themselves out in Japan), then Gaijin a Go Go and Japander are must see sites for you. Most of these ads are highly amusing.
December 24, 2003 | 0 Comments
In the spirit of giving (and receiving), this is for those of you who've come all the way to this blog looking for:
Siren PS2/Siren official trailer
Well, there is this nice fanpage which contains the trailer, some short clips of the game, as well as scans of the Japanese PS2 covers and the booklet.
Ken Marinaris pictures/Anubis artworks
For those people out there who wants to see more of Ms.Marinaris as well as other Anubis artworks, I'd recommend the Visualworks of Anubis. It may not have many color illustrations. But if you generally like Anubis or Tsubasa Masao's artworks, it's worth checking. There's also this nicely designed Anubis site that you may want to visit.
I think I've wasted 1 hour setting this blog up but it was worth it! Name-wise:
me-men-to n:
an object given or kept as a reminder of or in memory of somebody or something.
