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ローゼンメイデン 
This episode makes me want to make my own Miso but unfortunately I don't have the resources to do so. Speaking of Miso-making, the story doesn't really give much detail on how to mix the yeast, and what happened between picking the good beans and stomping on the beans. A few years ago, I lived for 3 months in the biggest Hatcho-Miso producing city in Japan and had the opportunity to visit the biggest Miso factory there. If I remember correctly, it takes at least 6 to 12 months (2 years for Hatcho-Miso) of storage before you can get the final product. In this episode, however, it seems it only takes a couple of hours, or at most - days, to produce a Miso paste, which is ridiculous. It was like one day Osen ran out of Miso and the next day, they already made a new one. The truth is, after the beans are crushed and fermented, the Miso mix should have been covered in a container and pressed using large stones. None of these process were shown in the episode.
Tackey and Tsubasa - Koiuta (32MB, PSP/Quicktime format) | YouTube version
Update: The 20 minute drama is included below.
This is one of the pre-scheduled posts that I set up in case I can't post any episodic reviews. If you see this then it means Movable Type did its job as it should. If not, then maybe it's time to change blogging software. Anyway, I first heard about Takki (or "Tackey") and Tsubasa when I went to Japan 3 years ago but never been bothered to look for their songs like I do with Ketsumeishi or Kobukuro's works. The name "Takki and Tsubasa" comes from combination of the two singers' name: Takizawa Hideaki and Tsubasa Imai. They are two of the most popular Japanese idols from Johnny and Associates. This particular company usually raises my alarm bell since some of the company's 'talents' seem to be lacking in singing (or acting) talent. It's a good thing that I heard the song first from Osen without knowing who sing it. This way, I judged the song based on its own merit instead of who sang the song. At any rate, they turn out to be pretty good singers and the song is a perfect fit for their singing style.
OP Theme: 「踊れ」 (Odore) by Micro
Download: AVI version (27.1MB) | PSP version (17.1MB) | YouTube version
My original intention was to actually blog this drama, but since I already picked up Last Friends on top of Zettai Kareshi, I have to put this on the side for a while. I simply can't afford to download more than 20GB worth of stuff per month and 3 one-hour dramas per week means losing around 2.4GB per week. Not good when I have other series to cover. It's especially hard since for some reason anime broadcast goes pseudo-HD, inflating the filesize up to 500MB each. Moreover, 3 dramas in one week would be a bit too much for me. Having said that, I'm still interested to cover this and will find a way to do it somehow. I probably won't be able to keep it up on a week by week basis but I'll catch up somehow every few weeks. Anyway, let's see what happens. I'm more concerned with the bandwidth thing more than anything else. At any rate, this is a pretty good first episode. It brings back good memories of old anime series like Fruits Basket and Yakitate! Japan. It's probably because this show is so entrenched in Japanese culture just like those series I mentioned above.
