Hajimaru yo! Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight!

(tags anime, season 2007/01, DVD region 2, Japan, telephone card)

Manabi shouts, "Hajimaru yo!" (Start it up! lol)

Gakuen Utopia Manbi Straight! (がくえんゆーとぴあ まなびストレート!)

What a totally positive anime. I saw the first three episodes back in January and decided to get/watch the DVDs instead. Then again I already got the 5 character songs set last Autumn.

Yui Horie (堀江由衣) headlining this anime, with babyface Ai Nonaka (野中藍), I-don't-know-her-yet Marina Inoue (井上麻里奈), no-talent Aya Hirano (平野綾), and I-just-saw-her-on-Tokimeki Saki Fujita (藤田咲).

In another way, it's "starting up" for me too:

Another 6 DVDs and I'll have another telephone card, heh.

Am I going to mention the CD character song set with pencil box? The PlayStation 2 game with telephone card? The magazine telephone card? The character goods? Links to the future posts here.

piyo pi pi: Tokimeki Memorial Only Love

(tags anime, season 2006/10, seiyuu, figure)

I finished marthoning the Tokimeki Memorial Only Love (ときめきメモリアルOnlyLove). Wow. 4 out of 5 stars. Story was predictable and less than completely satisfying, because this is another harem-can't-decide-guy anime. The visual quality never stopped for one second though, nice.

This was the first time I heard Hekiru Shiina (椎名へきる) as a voice actor, though it seems that this 1990's seiyuu-idol is making a comeback.

Also heavyweight voice actors Yukari Tamura (田村ゆかり) and Kikuko Inoue (井上喜久子) make their one-shot appearances, ho hum. Even Masumi "Masumin" Asano (浅野真澄) is in this one but in an unforgetable role, ugh. And main guy Mamoru Miyano (宮野真守) was partly on the annoying side but still servicable.

I hated when the changed the ED to a different song. The OP song "Yokan" (予感) is brilliant. In fact I had a devil of a time trying to find this song's single, but I nabbed it at Sofmap Nipponbashi Saurus. The first half ED song "Kiseki no kakera" (奇跡のかけら) is wonderful. I suppose I want to get the character singles now. I don't want to buy the DVDs, though.

And I can't let go of hiyokko-kun (ひよこっこ). A little chickadee voiced by Mai Kadowaki (門脇舞), nevertheless with a bad attitude (shown by the anime-styled angry mark). It is so funny to see it eat, like a jackhammering woodpecker. Ha. "piyo pi pi pi pi pi pi"

I even went to the official home page and scoped out the official "Sayuri Amamiya" (天宮小百合) figure, w00t zettai ryouiki. There's just something about the sound of "amamiya", which sounds lovely because its all vowels and soft consonants. The previous time I recalled an "amamiya" was from Nanaka 6/17 (ななか６／１７).

edit: Added the Hekiru Shiina poster from HM3 Special 45 and expanded Shiina comment. Grammar fix on Masumin comment.

Good and bad luck is with me: Ichigo Masimaro Voice Actor Event

(tags anime, games-of-chance, Ichigo Masimaro, live, voice actor, seiyuu, Tokyo, failure)

Yesterday was a good day. This whole week has been a good week actually, but let's concentrated on specifics.

One contributing factor was that I won the chance to see the Ichigo Masimaro voice actor event (帰ってきた「苺ましまろでショー」in豊島公会堂イベント) in person. I had all but given up hope of going to this event.

But unfortunately, it's on a Sunday (2007/05/06). Furthermore, the event starts at 19:00. I have to be at work on the following day! Did I mention it's near Ikebukuro? Which means Tokyo, which means returning to Kobe via overnight bus is not an option, and neither is Shinkansen or a plane flight. I can't help but think that the Shinkansen will be packed on the Monday morning...

I'm elated and depressed at the same time. This is one of those times where I wished I lived in Tokyo for my hobbies. Oh I'll definately be there, but I'm going to face hell at work, but that's fine.

Moetan the animation?!?!

(tags anime, season 2007/07, Moetan, POP, illustrator)

Yes, Moetan the animation! (もえたん) I can't wait! Then again, I was not much into the story part, just the illustrations and figures (1, 2). Thanks to Mr. Alvin for the email.

POP is the character designer and illustrator for the original English-by-otaku book series (萌える英単語もえたん). Though prolific in the doujinshi scene as part of the Electromagnetic Wave group, POP is expanding into the mainstream. Recently I recall the push for illustrations aimed for kids, for example the calendar and fairy tale redux (POP WONDERLAND series ふしぎの国のアリス, 赤ずきん) books. Also POP is the sole reason I'm buying the mainstream anime Otogi Juushi Akazukin Fairy Musketeers (おとぎ銃士赤ずきん Fairy Musketeers). Yes the limited edition 12 page illustration and postcard tokuten makes all the difference.

The animation character designer will be Kohaku (?) Nishio (西尾公伯). He was involved in a number of recent animes such as To Heart 2 and Tokimeki Memorial Only Love, so I expect the same level of moe service here. Though there is a picture on the official animation site which is high quality, I can't help but think that the quality of the Moetan animation will drop. It just will, m'kay. I need to lower my expectations.

The voice actors are the same as from the doujin "Listening CD" cast, with Yukari "Yukarin" Tamura (田村ゆかり) headlining. I am actually getting tired of Yukarin. She needs to reprise her role as Sakura from Da Capo or Tomari from Kasimasi to get me to get excited about her again.

On a related tip, when is that Moetan the shooting game coming out? Its been 7 months now since I put in my pre-order.

(This IE 7.0 crashed eating my first post. Curse you IE! Then again using Firefox with this blogger makes italic tags look like <span style="italic"...> which is ugly in my opinion.)

Now all I need is bronze: PlayStation Portable Silver

(tags game, hardware, PlayStation Portable)

I woke up today and said to myself, "I'm going to downgrade a PlayStation Portable". Here's the first part of the puzzle:

Firmware version 3.01, oh boy. All pixels ok, an imperceptible scratch right in the middle. The filter/film I attached doesn't cover the whole screen, so I'm going to have to buy another. I actually scoped it out last night, but I decided to get it after canvassing Tennoji and Nipponbashi/Den-Den Town. This will be the second PSP I bought at Sofmap Osaka, hm.

I suppose tomorrow morning I'm going to say to myself the same thing, because I'm too tired to do the grueling downgrade tonight.

The word is shunsatsu

(tags game, hardware, ECsite, Final Fantasy)

I swear that anybody that wanted a Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings Sky Pirates Edition could have gotten one, if they were around the Kobe area. Senaka: OtaRoad blog mentions that FFXIIRW:SPE was already sold out. "Shunsatsu" (瞬殺) Yes, I keep forgetting this word, but this is what I meant with that 'virtual "theft"' post.

There are limited edition PlayStation Portables

(tags game, hardware, PlayStation Portable, ECsite)

My new favorite RSS feed, PSP GadgetZ, had an article (Japanese) on the PlayStation Portables available from the PLAYSTATION Signature site. I was ignorant of the special edition PSPs "TSUKIMI" and "KACHOFUGETSU", but they are sold out. Personally I like the TSUKIMI design, because it is black and gold.

Save a princess: Comic Party's Asahi Sakurai (completed)

(tags anime, doujin, gal-game, game, PlayStation Portable)

I did complete the "Asahi" scenario on Wednesday.

Spoiler mode.

I was pretty satisfied with this ending. But it was pretty unrealistic that a seiyuu idol on firing on all cylinders would forget that she's an image machine. She could have both. Nevertheless it was a good ending.

So who is next? I already made a portable cheat sheet for clearing Eimi Ooba and Tachikawa on my iPod's Notes (4KB means 2000 kanji characters) but I'm already taken with the Minna no Chizu 2 + GPS. The other scenarios such as Minami Makimura and cos-player and art-store girl just don't seem interesting enough.

Not this week: Snow Portable

(tags game, PlayStation Portable, gal game, purchase)

I also decided to get the Snow Portable game (thanks Famitsu) today. Unfortunately it was delayed till 2007/05/31. I commented at PSPFanboy:

"Snow Portable seems to be delayed to 2007/05/31 according to the shop I visited. The original PC game was delayed by 3 years... so delays are the norm(?)."

Purchase quest: Final Fantasy 12 Revenant Wings Sky Pirates Edition

(tags game, hardware, Final Fantasy, DualScreen, purchase)

I took half a day off to buy the Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings "Sky Pirates" edition (ファイナルファンタジーXII レヴァナント・ウイング スカイパイレーツエディション), which is just the game and yet another DS Lite with some custom imprint.

I woke up at around 4:30 AM, but didn't get moving until 6:15. I was first in line at the Sofmap Kobe at 7:15. There was a sign saying line up here, but it was still vague because there are two escalators. No one else showed up from 7:30 to 8:45, so I read the last week's Famitsu magazine. (What a good issue: Final Fantasy 1 for PSP guide, Toki wo Kakeru Shojo review, editorial student Takamare! Takamaru comic and other various infos).

Luckily a Sofmap guy showed up at around 8:45 and took my name and Sofmap member number. He said I didn't have to wait in "line" no more, ha ha. And the store opened at 10:00 instead of the normal 11:00 so I did some other things like take pictures of Kobe in the morning. The weather was spectacular.

I got back to the store, and was first at the register. The game wasn't exactly flying off the shelves, no lines, no crazy FF peeps. I noticed the register gal took my copy from a stack of 5 with Post-Its of customer names. Could it be 5 other people showed up early? If they did I didn't see them.

It got me kinda of thinking, Is this game any good? It got 9, 8, 7, 9 from Famitsu (yeash I invoke the Famitsu scores). And its says it's RTS for beginners so I'm there.

Let's stop the blog and play!

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the official homepage is hosting time-limited downloads of backgrounds. I already missed the first two days' sets, aww.

Mix two great tastes together: Sweet and Salty

(tags food, snack, Japan)

I like Japanese salty snacks. It comes from living near an asian store and sucking on Mafran. But here's something I've never imagined:

Strawberry flavored Japanese soy sauce crackers. Um, yummy.

Spooky: Tokimeki Memorial Only Love CD singles

(tags anime, season 2006/10, CD)

I really like the opening and ending songs from the anime series Tokimeki Memorial Only Love but I was unable to find the opening ones so... Here are the two ending songs:

Actually I picked up the left CD ("from January" it says) at Animate but I didn't know it was the only for the latter half of the series. The right CD is the ending theme for the first half of the show.

The girl with the dark blue hair, pale skin, and red eyes looks really spooky to me. What is it with Konami/Tokimeki Memorial and the crazy hair colors? Still I like watching this series.

Asahi power: Comic Party's Asahi Sakurai (in progress)

(tags game, PlayStation Portable, gal-game, anime, doujin)

Asahi power! (桜井あさひ)

Two great genres mixed together, idols and figures.

Worship the goddess, my doushi (マイ同志).

I need this voice sample.

And evidently when it comes to images: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Asahi, can you work my doujinshi booth again as an seller (売りっ子)? I need to make a killing on otaku with my high price (price stat: 0) and bad story (story stat: 1).

Downbeat girl: Comic Party's Mizuki (completed)

(tags game, PlayStation Portable, gal-game, anime, doujin)

I finally slogged through the "Mizuki" scenario in Comic Party Portable. Unfortunately she becomes really insecure in the end game. By the time she receives assurances from the guy she's back to her happy chipper self. I didn't like this scenario because she was insecure so long. But that doesn't detract from the fact that she has the best cosplay costume: Peach. Rawr.

When I tried to complete the scenario, I used the artist cap item to boost my doujin drawing speed, but unfortunately that gave me a bad end. I was like WTF. I only had to restart the last month's save and forgo the artist cap and I got the proper ending. Still I only have 95% complete CG but its good enough.

Lightweight people prefer Ruby and Haruhi

(tags presentation, Ruby, Japanese, English, China, criticism, anime)

Here's a "lightning talk" called "Diligent People. Lightweight people." done by Masayoshi Takahashi, chairman of the Nihon Ruby-no Kai, the Ruby programming language core and libraries developers (and support) group. (Thanks to _why's post "Chairman Takahashi in Taiwan") This is a rare English sample from the mainly Japanese presentation group.

Basically a lightning talk a short 3 minute speech with big kanji Powerpoint-like (or is it Evangalion-type?) visuals, usually on programming topics. Try it out here: "About Nihon Ruby no Kai" (日本Rubyの会について), but don't forget to maximize your browser.

So Takahashi makes an argument for lightweight ("lazy"!) people and processes instead of "diligent" people, but rather than spoil the humor I urge you to watch the video.

I realize when says "lightweight people prefer scripting languages like Ruby" he is expounding the strengths of unit-testing, dynamism, and less documentation, as much as a 3 minute talk can allow.

But his "lightweight people prefer Haruhi (light novel)" is just icing on the cake. He's definately not saying that Ruby is so like last year's anime, ie. old news. Still any programming language that can be associated with making people dance in the streets is novel.

Winter Garden DVD: Charmingly cute

(tags anime, DVD region 2, kawaii, seiyuu, Koge-Donbo, Sugar, omake, telephone card)

Winter Garden aired at the end of 2006, but I knew this would be my type of anime to purchase, so I didn't watch it live. Instead, I waited for the DVD to come out. It's been 4 months people! I've been waiting to open this Christmas Box for some time now.

It has the lively Di Ji Charat sisters banter coupled with the cute character design originally by Koge-Donbo. Shinya Hasegawa (長谷川眞也) refined the character design for animation, and this refinement looks so very familiar to me because he's the same person who took care of the A Little Snow Fairy Sugar series.

Greatest! I'm pretty happy just watching this anime because so charming. Then again, I'm not very well versed in the Di ji charat universe, so I didn't figure out the in-jokes. I only know about the in-jokes because of the booklet and the audio commentary, which was very entertaining and informative. Other works' audio commentary tracks left something to be desired (ugh: Kasimasi) because they lacked focus. This anime's audio commentary was blessed with the director, Hiroaki Sakurai (桜井弘明), adding the necessary backbone to the talk. For example, I totally forgot that Dijiko is a Akihabara gal, because this anime forgos the otaku atmosphere, but Sakurai explains this point.

Since I'm not a hardcore Di ji charat fan, I welcomed the change of pace of this anime. It's more homely and down-to-earth, with a little bit of romance to lighten it up. Gone are the "cat ears". I did have to question the connection of this series to the previous outings, because it seemed so out of character. Asami Sanada (真田アサミ) and Miyuki Sawashiro (沢城みゆき) reprised their roles. I didn't expect Sanada to have a normal girl voice but I'm not an expert. Sawashiro's definately has range and variation to her voice based on the different series I've seen with her, but I kept superimposing her "Shinku" persona onto "Puchiko".

I do have to admit the animation is a little rough in places, but there are plenty of high quality scenes. There are not much gags in this run, so the director emphasized the little body movements that make a character seem alive. There are references to other series. Even the live band scene took on Haruhi-like parody atmosphere.

For this photo-expose shootout, I didn't open that Christmas Box, which evidently contains a micro-fiber towel, a telephone card, and pocket watch with serial number. But instead, I bring the picture of the Gamers' tokuten mug cup and Comi-Deji magazine's special telephone card for Winter Garden. Isn't it just so kawaii? I do have a gripe with that mug cup picture. It just doesn't seem cute enough. This is blasphemy because Koge-Donbo herself drew it.

Thumbs up. 5 out of 5 stars. Only 2 episodes but this is very special.

Dream fight

(tags video, fan-made, doujin, game, Nintendo, Microsoft, CG)

I can't use the videos on PSP Fanboy Theatre on my PSP, but I couldn't ignore this picture:

because it reminds me of that Metroid Mission Zero GBA commercial. Rawr.

The video where this picture is from is way better: Haloid by Monty Oum, Monty Oum, Monty Oum... There's CG, impossible fighting movements that will leave you wondering which video games it came from (do I detect Soul Calibur-chanelling?), crazy weapons, Matrix-reused slow-mo and music, and of course, nice player models. Rawr.

Final Fantasy presentation, gaming later

(tags game, PlayStation Portable, RPG, Final Fantasy)

So I did go out and buy Final Fantasy for the PSP. So much for never playing another menu-fighter RPG without the Gambit system.

I checked up on the language selection and sure enough there was "hiragana", "kanji" and "english", so I passed on the message to GameLife.

The characters are redrawn and the text font looks absolutely beautiful for reading, in both English and Japanese. The FMV looks like it's from another remake, though. It doesn't quite fit the 16:9 screen. The map is flat, doh! I don't expect much from the music and sound. There's the catch-em-all "Bestiary" list that is quick-binded to the square button. And I did quickly try to customize the window colors to match my "champagne gold" (R, G, B order):

Top left: 31, 30, 25 -- Top right: 23, 18, 0
Bottom left: 23, 18, 2 -- Bottom right: 12, 7, 0

I gotta get this started... A whole game post without even playing the game!

But then again I gotta finish Comic Party. And I want to finish reading that bite-sized snack of a book The Indian in the Cupboard. And I watch my premium DVD set of The Girl Who Leap Through Time (時をかける少女). And there's FF12RW for DS next week. It never ends.

Slap a "Made in China" sticker on anime

(tags anime, China, Japan, criticism, kawaii, season 2005/04)

One of my favorite English-based anime bloggers, Matthew, had an interesting report on how Futago Hime is being shown in the Chinese TV prime-time despite being a Japanese-made anime, because it is restamped as "made in China". This anime has all the audio parts in Chinese, voices, OP and ED songs, but the visuals are the same as the Japanese version.

He in turn links to a Japanese speaker who is conversant in the Chinese anime otaku scene with 3 posts (「ゴールデンタイムに日本のアニメを「中国で制作した」として放映？」:1, 2, 3) on this very issue.

Summarizing (hopefully not too crudely), the company that made the 2005 TV anime Fushigi Hoshi no Futago Hime (ふしぎ星の☆ふたご姫) is the HAL Film Maker Co,. Ltd, which is one company in the TYO Group. TYO Group also has a 31% stake in the Chinese company Da Lian Eastern Dragon Cartoon Development Co., Ltd, who is responsible for this "made in China" anime.

So the transfer of assets seems legitimate. It sounds like a business strategy to repurpose a successful product towards a different market. I'm sure that the "made in China" stamp is so that the show garners more eyeballs, which in turn will feed the toy purchasing.

But it's the same situtation as when any U.S. based (or elsewhere) dubbing company releases a Japanese anime. Do you call that product "made in the U.S.A"? I didn't think so.

Final Fantasy in Japanese?

(tags PlayStation Portable, game, RPG, remake, Japanese)

Games blog at Wired has the screenshot scoop on the Final Fantasy 1 remake coming out for the PSP, uh, tomorrow. The photo shows, for the US version, language options "English", "Japanese Kana" and "Japanese". Dood that's like with kanji for those too slow to read kana. Win is me.

I've played Final Fantasy 1 almost 20 years ago, but I haven't replayed it since then. I skipped the various remakes. Since I've been very satisfied with the whole PSP gaming experience, I had the mind to take up Kohler on the offer to buy the Japanese game to see if it had the English, but I'm sure I can handle the four elements in Japanese, right?

Adding labels to my blogger posts?

(tags blog, tagging)

I dragged kicking and screaming from the old Blogger to the new "Google Account" Blogger, but as you can see from the previous posts, I'm trying out the "Labels for this post", but I suppose I still have to work out the difference between tags and labels.

I have about 350+ posts on this blog so I suppose am very satisfied with Blogger. I do have the wierd "(tags xyz, abc, 123)" structure at the top which I thought I would use later. Anyways, it's now good blog sense to catagorize your blog posts by labels or tags, not by time archive, according to this blog.

Beginning the closing thoughts on Otome-boku

(tags anime, game, bishoujo, DVD region 2)

In that previous post, 'Amber-orange twin-tail goddess... "So Lovely"', I totally forgot about Takako-sama. So much for blogging as a memory guide.

I want to go over Otome Wa Boku Ni Koishiteru since I finally finished watching it on DVD, but right now I need to get over the shock of losing that online order "theft".

Virtual "theft": Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu - Yuki white bunny exclusive figure by Chara-Ani

(tags figure, order, anime, ECsite, failure)

This figure went on sale at 2007/04/18 21:00:00 +0900. (Picture is from after sale)

This is what my shopping cart showed at 2007/04/18 21:00:25 +0900.

The item sold out. In 25 seconds (or less).

Obviously I need to hit the refresh button faster than say 3 times a second? Or open multiple browsers? Or have multiple Internet connections? Or move to Tokyo and leach their broadband? Give me a hint here please. orz

Well, I already missed the opportunity to match my "Mikuru" white bunny girl figure with the "Haruhi" white bunny girl figure and this "Yuki" white bunny girl figure during the normal ordering period. So I can't mimic blog Kansaitei at all. Would you bet that Kansaitei will be making a trio photo-expose page to go with the "Mikuru" & "Haruhi" and "Mikuru" pages?

Other related thoughts: I saw offline the "Haruhi" black bunny girl figure at a glass box store, but going for 2_2000 yen because it was a convention exclusive. I suppose I could get the "Yuki" red bunny girl figure. Nah, it's important to match the colors.

Sofmap overdose: telephone cards in used packages, figure pre-ordering

(tags store, Japan, used, game, telephone card, collectable, figure, Rozen Maiden)

I am a Sofmap addict, plain and simple. It is more convenient for me to just pop in the stores, canvas and gawk, and put stuff in my basket, than it is to do online auctioning. Also I am a collectable telephone card freak (or is it dilettante compared to this freak (NSFW))?

My Kobe Sofmap gets the interesting goods despite being in... Kobe. Kobe's otaku area is not as defined as Kyoto, it's not Osaka's Den-Den Town, and it certainly not Tokyo's Akihabara. It's all spread out like a multi-station-hop constellation, and I'm not even sure I know all the right places.

Even so, Sofmap attracts fellow otaku (「同志！」), even if there aren't any communication notes or blogs. I find some cool things (at least to me): A used copy of the Kasimasi Girl Meets Girl PS2 game with the Gamers's tokuten telephone card. I even check the DVD cases and they are mint unopened!? Must have been another otaku unloading his "perfect save" copy (永久保存版). Perhaps he was disappointed with the way the manga ended?

Consider that when I bought my copy of the original game, I only got the Sofmap tokuten telephone card.

Last post's Comic Party Portable is the same situation as well. I bought the game used but it still came with a telephone card.

I mentioned that Beavis and Butthead DVD, which is another Sofmap find. (It stomps on my feeling of nostalgia, but still).

Switching gears but not stores: I pre-ordered that Rozen Maiden Hina Ichigo figure at Sofmap as well. I was worried that it was sold out, because at the figure specialty shop Yellow Submarine in Kobe, the pre-orders were already filled. Not to worry though, Sofmap was just late to the game. They even had a pre-order for another Rozen Maiden Hina Ichigo figure, this time as part of the SRDX series. I suppose I have to get that, since I have the other ones (There will be a photo-expose post for this some day, but just in case, it's the real reason I went to BFC 2006.).

Slowness contempt: Comic Party's Mizuki

(tags game, PlayStation Portable, gal-game, anime, doujin)

I must capture my feeling of contempt for this Comic Party Portable. It is taking forever to go through a scenario, all because of loading and backtracking, yes restarting from a save spot. Perhaps before when I didn't have a strategy guide in hand and a sense of where to go, I swallowed the time as anticipation for the story payoff. Now I can't wait to divest myself of this port. I even have delusions of buying the PC version ("DCE" consumer version over the original adult) to be done with it. (Can I confess? I admit I already own the Dreamcast version, but yes, it is stacked.)

Since my "Chisa" scenario ended in a "bad end", and my save point files were too far gone to salvage, I've restarted the game afresh. This time I'm tackling the "Mizuki Takase" scenario (高瀬瑞希). She's your gal-friend that insists that doujinshi is a waste of time and that you are becoming an otaku. Excellent zettai ryouiki here, but you can't see it because the PSP is wide screen. You can see some on the cover, as shown above.

Edit: originally written 2007/04/15 15:36

Printing angel: Comic Party's Chisa Tsukamoto

(tags game, gal-game, PlayStation Portable, anime, doujin, failure)

Since I finished the "Yuu" scenario easily with 100% CG complete, I decided to try my hand again at Comic Party Portable. I couldn't unlock the cosplayer scenario. I suspect that she's only unlockable after you finish with the main characters. So instead I went with the "printing angel" "Chisa Tsukamoto" (塚本千紗) scenario. Chisa is your friendly printer who takes your doujinshi and makes copies. She's also the one who says "desu" like Rozen Maiden character Suiseiseki, but there's no tsundere here. Anyway, it took about six hours to get through. I thought I completed it correctly but I got a bad end. I said to myself, okay, now it's time to quit game-binging.

I then chanted the magic search words that makes mince meat of gal-games: "攻略" (strategy). There doesn't seem to be a one-true-database like GameFaqs for Japanese only games so I take what I can. But the first hit seems promising, an unofficial strategy guide for the PC game, made in 1999. Reading up on what I missed it seems that I need to win friends and influence people, which has nothing to do with the doujin making stat grinding at all! Ugh. Another 6 hours of boring menu-fighting maybe just the turn off I've been looking for.

Edit: originally written 2007/04/14 14:17

Girl next door: Comic Party's Yuu Inagawa

(tags game, gal-game, PlayStation Portable, anime, doujin)

I've been playing Comic Party Portable for the PSP since last week and I finally finished the Yuu Inagawa scenario (猪名川由宇). I must say I should have done Comic Party a lot soon, like when I was actively going to the Comic Market events, since this game celebrates the doujinshi and cosplay scene.

Yuu is a Kobe girl. (And I'm a foreigner in Kobe, hah!) Unfortunately none of Kobe's charm shows up in the game. In fact the whole Kansai area is lumped up, broken stereotypes and all. Still, Yuu's Kansai dialect is the most interesting part. It certainly breaks up the monotony of listening to standard Japanese. She also comes over to your place to make sure you're spending all your time on creating doujinshi. You have to suspend your disbelief on how often she comes to Tokyo though, like 5 times a week! Consider that the Shinkansen round-way ticket is 3_0000 yen... But no, this game mentions the overnight bus, which I've personally taken many times to go to Tokyo. That only costs 5000 to 9000 yen, depending on how cozy you want to get with a complete stranger.

Unfortunately, this is a bad port, technically speaking, because of the slow delays in disc access, voice sample loading, visual fade-ins. It makes for slow progress. I'm going to turn on the "skip scene" option to see if it speeds up. Otherwise I'm going to go bat crazy waiting for stat-up cut scenes to load.

Otherwise I like it. I even play on the bus and train, but it's kinda embarassing whenever a girl character comes on, what with the lusciously vibrant PSP screen viewable from many angles. I keep checking my earphones to make sure that audio goes to my ears and not to anyone else. Yabai yo, kore.

This reminds me that I have to watch the Comic Party DVDs that I have. Maybe after I complete another scenario. Which one should I do though? That Asahi Sakurai one is high on my list, but then again I want to figure out who that "Tachikawa patron" is.

Edit: originally written 2007/04/13 13:01

Chance upon a chance: Ichigo Masimaro Voice Actor Event

(tags anime, games-of-chance, Ichigo Masimaro, live, voice actor, seiyuu)

Yet again Animate with the killer promotion. They are hosting an invite-only Ichigo Masimaro live talk show with all the voice actresses. (帰ってきた「苺ましまろでショー」in豊島公会堂イベント)

So here's the deal. You buy the first two OVA DVDs (1, 2) and pre-order the third at the same Animate shop. They give you a raffle ticket which you must send in by mail to the designated address. This ticket is stamped with each ordered/purchased item. They call this a "stamp rally".

(As an aside, I pre-ordered the third DVD after buying the second, but the gal at the register was confused and didn't stamp my card until I brought up the issue. Perhaps I was too early and she forgot about this promotion? In any case I lucked out, because I didn't pay anything for the pre-order, which means I can silently drop it? Animate is full-priced anime, all the time.)

So you have to send in the ticket, but you're not guaranteed an invite because it's a raffle. And unfortunately I did a dumb thing yesterday of trying to send it through the one day before it's supposed to be there, hoping, nay, believing that Japan Post is very timely. You know, Japan has on-time trains. That must extend to the mail, right? Right? So I won't know if I failed to send it on time or I failed to win the raffle.

If I don't get a ticket, I'll be bummed but not majorly. It comes with living so far away from Tokyo/Akihabara. But if I had a chance to see the voice actresses in person, many of whom have parts in many animes that I like, I'd take that chance.

No videos, this sucks: Beavis and Butt-Head Do America

(tags movie, DVD region 2, humor, failure)

I picked up Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, and it was bad. There wasn't any funny material.

It took me two sittings to get through. At least I didn't go see it in the theatres, back in 1996.

Oh, I was going to take a picture of the DVD case with a Beavis and Butthead clear trading card that I have been keeping for sentimental reasons (cue the Cole song, take your pick). But it's at work (I keep crap on my desk so that I know its my desk). Maybe next time. Anyways, I used the Animedia magazine 2007/05 because it's Nanoha time! Hi-teens!

BTW, you're going to see a lot more of those "Sofmap" red stickers.

Edit: originally written 2007/04/13 08:52

Amber-orange twin-tail goddess... "So Lovely"

(tags anime, photo-expose, harem, Nanoha)

In the background you hear "Who's That Girl" by Madonna.

"So Lovely" indeed. Why am I so crazy that I buy two copies of the same magazine (めがみマガジン 2007/04)? Why isn't this cover a damn telephone card for all buyers (全員テレフォンカードサービス)? I would, like, purchase two (like last time).

I should have known they would have included it again as an insert poster in the following month. This is a great "up"!

No, I haven't watched this Magi Master Negi (did I even get the name of the anime right?) so I didn't know that this is Asuna. I learned though that Asuna is suppose to have a different color iris in each eye, blue on the right and green on the left (wrong?), but this current anime remake did away with that. Personally I like this one, but the legs just don't fit well.

I think I know what it is. I'm crazy for amber-orange anime chicks. I mean, check out Hazumu (oh wait stop stop Hazumu is a guy in a girls body eww gross). Wait, let's add the twin-tail attribute.

Everyone is commenting on Nanoha, back in high-teens version. You're either a lolicon or not. Well I haven't finished watching season two (Nanoha A's, DVDs are still waiting for me) so it doesn't make any sense for me to watch this version in real-time. So this maybe the last you'll hear of Nanoha StrikerS from me this season. But we can't let it go without another picture:

Oh my gosh another amber-orange twin-tail goddess!!! Maybe. Hahahaha.

This free paper is an 8 page spread about Nanoha StrikerS. Better pull out all the stops, this is a guaranteed cash cow.

No more emacs-snapshot on Debian sarge-backport? (answer: No)

(tags Emacs, Debian, linux distribution, document, license, failure)

(I wrote this before figuring out how easy it is to roll my own emacs-snapshot. Duh.)

This is news more than a month old, but it seems that the Debian binary package of Emacs "22-pretest" (more correctly known as the CVS Head "pretest") called "emacs-snapshot", is no longer available for Debian Sarge. Romain Francoise, the previous maintainer for emacs-snapshot in both Debian Unstable and Debian Sarge cites differences in opinion on the "GFDL problem" which is shockingly summarized as "GNU manuals are now considered non-free in Debian".

This leaves one back to compiling emacs CVS from the source. From a user perspective, it's harder to compile Emacs 22-pretest than it is to add a few lines to /etc/apt/source.list and aptitude install emacs-snapshot. I will miss this convenience. Should I be kicking myself for not saving the .deb packages? Why bother when it really not too difficult to compile it myself.

But let's get back to the "GFDL problem". This is a deeper issue than the quote above implies. According to "Draft Debian Position Statement about the GNU Free Documentation License(GFDL)", the GFDL is an unacceptable license for Debian documentation. According to this interpretation, the GFDL is incompatible with the GPL. For Debian to live up to its Social Contract, it is necessary to disallow any GFDL documents, which means stripping many documents from their software packages. Of course they are still available from the original sources, but not maintained by Debian. Here is the issue impacting KDE developers back in 2007/01.

However, on a practical level it inconveniences Debian users from learning about their software such as Emacs, unless they are knowledgable enough to select the "non-free" or "non-dfsg" documentation packages. Such is the price of being "free". That is assuming that the upstream package makers do not change their documentation licensing.

Remember that Debian's distribution of Firefox is now official maintained as "Ice Weasel"? It is for similar reasons.

Well, this is not really an informative post, because I haven't seen that the documentation is or is not lacking with Emacs on Debian Etch, despite the fact that I already installed it. VMware w00t. Sorry. It's just that I have to unload this crap post out of my queue.

How to install GNU Emacs pretest "emacs-snapshot" on Debian 4.0 Stable Etch

(tags emacs, Linux, Unix, Debian, install)

Let's get right down to installing emacs-snapshot on the Linux distribution Debian 4.0 Stable "Etch":

You have Debian "pinned" to stable ("etch"), right? But you also reference testing and unstable. See Apt-Pinning by Roderick and Jaqque.

In essence, they tell you to modify /etc/apt/preferences and /etc/apt/sources.list, then to run aptitude update to get the new repositories.

Then you can install emacs-snapshot:
sudo aptitude install emacs-snapshot-nox

Then make it the default emacs (/etc/alternative):
sudo update-alternatives --set emacs /usr/bin/emacs-snapshot.

Done!

But is it enough? emacs-snapshot is currently orphaned, and stuck at 22.0.92. The latest is Emacs 22.0.97.

For that you can compile Emacs from CVS yourself with the helpful information from Jorgen Schäfer. It's not that hard at all. Really.

Make sure to reference the Debian 4.0 "Etch" release notes, because gcc is not installed in minimal configuration. Do aptitude install build-essential to pull it in. Also you probably need libncurses5-dev and libncursesw5-dev to get rid of the "emacs: Cannot open termcap database file" error. Strange error. You can actually remove these development libraries and build-essential after the install is successful.

I should reference apt-build as well, but that's for another post.

Wipeout Pulse, please come to Japan

(tags game, racing, PlayStation Portable, rumor)

PSP is still alive, see. Look at that, the Wipeout Pure sequel is coming late 2007 as Wipeout Pulse. No word yet on Japan, but hey, Sony pushed Wipeout Pure as a system seller, had some killer exclusive game expansion packs in Japan. It even came with that UMD movie-plus-game combo Stealth. Crazy.

Yes I know, finish your games, there are game-hungry people in... no that joke won't cut it.

PSP and One-Seg?

(tags video, PlayStation Portable, digital broadcast, Japan)

You know what would be great is if the PlayStation Portable could act as a One-Seg digital television tuner. Sorry if this isn't an original thought, yeah, people have been thinking about that since One-seg launched last year. Here's the latest rumor, 2006/12.

Anyway, I wonder if it is technically possible. Right now there's no hardware. Is the PSP fast enough (has dedicated chips or software emulation) for the digital broadcast? According to the specs, yes it can decode the MPEG-4 AVC streams that One-Seg mandates. Let's see, 320 x 240 video on a 480 x 272 screen. Ugly?

Perhaps with Sony's release of the 3.30 firmware which allows full-screen user converted video, Sony seems to be giving up on the UMD format push. Perhaps this will lead to development on One-Seg hardware? Then again, they are still forcing PS1 games for PSP downloads through the PS3, and there's also LocationFree. To add a final blow, why would you need it for the PSP when you can buy mobile phones that show One-seg Digital TV?

Should have took second place: Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories

(tags game, PlayStation Portable, hacking, emulation)

I'm not bored with my Champagne Gold PSP yet. But nevertheless there are some things that need to be acquired. Last friday was my lucky day, because I found an early U.S. English version of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (GTA:LCS), at my Kobe Sofmap.

The back cover showed promise. Hey, what's a 3480 yen bet on fun these days? BTW, the "070405" means the shelving date, and I nabbed it after only one day on the shelves. (Check the meta-info on the picture.)

The upgrader version shows "2.0". Looks like I'm "golden". woot, I mean, sorry for the pun.

There's only one reason to obtain this game, that is, it is a software "trojan" vector for downgrading the firmware of your PSP. What can you do after you downgrade? Hm. Hm. Heh hehehehehehe.

But I lie. This is not the only reason to buy this game. I played a little bit of it, instead of trying to finish Comic Party. Wow, is it great! This is another A-list game for the PSP. I could even try my hand at that taxi game I was raving about. No load times driving around. What was I thinking when I claimed that Simple 2500 My Taxi game was fun? I had to forcibly put it away in order to concentrate on Comic Party (which I will discuss when I finish a scenario). Definately I am going to spend some more time with this game, though it reminds me that I haven't finished GTA:LC, and I haven't started GTA:VC and GTA:SA for the PC (yes I have them).

So yeah, this GTA:LCS may be the key, but my current PSP can't be downgraded. Luckily again most stores that I canvas advertise the firmware version of the PSP and the scratch conditions. I've decided to get a silver PSP, because it sparkles just like my Champagne Gold one. The other colors, Blue, Pink, White, Black, look icky to me.

There is a window between the release of the Silver PSP (2006/12?) and the release of the 3.10 firmware (2007/01/30), which is about less than two month. There are some stupid dumbasses who upgraded their Silver's firmware to 3.10 or higher and sold it off, so I gotta avoid those, but I already saw 3 units that fit the bill.

I don't need a second PSP now, and if I get one now I will be distracted. But the longer I wait, the less likely I will run into a Silver PSP that I want.

Edit: I forgot to mention. I want to get a second PSP so that I can use it as:

1. A battery charger
2. Lend it to Mr. Alvin so he can test it for user-converted videos.
3. PS1 gaming. (pinky to mouth)

"In other words: Famitsu articles aren't worth the money"

(tags blog, magazine, criticism, Famitsu, Japan)

Akiba Blog comes up with a sensationalist blog, that would make the Video Game Ombudsman proud, entitled "In other words: Famitsu articles aren't worth the money" (my trans, original 「意訳：『ファミ通の記事に、お金を払う価値はない』」). According to their own review post, it received the most accesses that week.

Usually Akiba Blog takes pictures of in-store displays of otaku-oriented merchandise. This time, one big Akihabara store Asobit Game City had an in-store expose on the Weekly Famitsu 2007/04/20 issue (no. 957)'s gravure photo spread of the busty idol-talent Yuuri Morishita (森下悠里). The caption at the store read (my trans) "Our staff finds 350 yen worth in these two pages!!" (「アソビットスタッフは今週のファミツのこの見開き2頁に350円の価値を見出したっ！！」) For reference, Weekly Famitsu usually sells for 350 yen.

But Akiba Blog takes the negative connotation, pushing the view that Famitsu is the "TBS of the game industry". TBS is the Tokyo Broadcasting System media company, which has been accused of tainting their news reporting with heavy bias or even story creation. Akiba Blog backs up their comparison with an example of Famitsu hyping the launch of Sakura Taisen 5 (PS2) and the launch of Bullet Witch (Xbox 360), when Akiba Blog's "grass roots" reporting showed muted response. There was also a link critical of the fantastic reporting by Famitsu parent company Enterbrain which erroneously reported that the PS3 pulled ahead of the Wii penetration with the release of Gundam Musou (original article already corrected).

In an effort to be even-handed, the end of the original article passes off another reading of the in-store catch copy as "this week's Famitsu is worth 350 yen for the articles and 350 yen for the gravure". Yeah right.

As for my buying habits, I still haven't missed a week of Famitsu since the year 2001, except for those time when I had to go out of the country. There's no doubt in my mind that Famitsu is an advertising rag, and I read it like I read a Playboy, for the pictures. I mean they can't fake video game pictures, right? (Not yet anyway.) The idea that Famitsu could fabricate news isn't shocking to me, but with a lock-in into the (Japan) game journalism industry comparable to Microsoft's dominance in the PC area, who can you turn to for decent reporting?

Even I have, on previous blogs, taken their 40-point/4 person rating system as the "gold standard", and the Internet credibility on this rating system is still positive. Yeah well, I'm not as insightful as they come.

EDIT: Too bad Kotaku misses the point.

(thanks to Mr. Alvin for the clarifications)

So behind on my blog posts

(tags blog)

I have so many things I should jot down. Well I mean they are already recorded in a text file but I just need to add the flashy pictures and expand my thoughts. Ugh, typing from my Project Rabi is a pain and a half. Hahaha. Gotta use RDP or VNC to the fullest.

Did I really stop Sudoku?

(tags Sudoku, game, DualScreen)

I wasn't playing Sudoku since Thursday. It was the PSP, with the many games like Comic Party. I was thinking maybe I could do more blogging on the train/bus. Alas I started it again today, so there goes my free time again.

Well I'm 75% done, actually. Maybe another 20 hours? Then you will see stats, like last time.

Colinux/Gentoo dusted off, OpenBSD and Debian

(tags linux, Colinux, Gentoo, Debian, OpenBSD)

I've had some problems with my old Project Asobi computer, but now it's back up and running, so I turned on the Colinux and started to update my Gentoo on that thing. And then I also ran my Colinux/Gentoo instance on my Project Sugar. Both were out of the "emerge --rsync" loop for a while, maybe about 6 months. I was surprised when I only saved about 3 times the data on rsync.

I'm still using Colinux 0.6.1, which means the Linux 2.4.x kernel, but I had to update some user-land packages that now do double duty between Linux 2.4.x and 2.6.x. And then also I decided to use GCC 3.4.x instead of GCC 3.3 for no good reason (well I would have gone for 4.1, but 4.1 can't compile stuff for Linux 2.4 kernel so...). Lucky for me there was a guide. As always, the Gentoo documentation is straightforward, once you find it.

In the end it took a long weekend to compile everything to the new GCC. Something like 80 packages were touched. I suppose I'm just playing with Gentoo because it's fun to fiddle with knobs (USE flags), but my computer was out of action for the weekend because of the compile grind. Dumb dumb dumb, I could have used the CPU cycles to do defragging, ha.

I recently tried OpenBSD in a VMWare session, using the 5MB installer ISO image. It felt good to be in a new environment, looking at my dependancies that I take for granted. Like for example, GNU userland tools. "date -Is" (print date in ISO format down to the Seconds) doesn't work. I wanted to play around with the stable workhorse pf (packet filter). I still didn't get a good configuration done but its coming along, I think. This is very educational. OpenBSD docs are very informative as well.

And then I see Debian just release a major stable version, 4.0 "Etch". W00t. I participated in the download ISO image Torrent already, but I also tried to download a ISO image using HTTP about half a day ago. Unfortunately the official mirrors don't yet have a copy so I cancelled the download from the cdimage.debian.org. I actually use Debian 3.1 "Sarge" at work, but it would be nice to not use Debian backports so much.

Want to get a laptop for gaming

(tags game, hardware, Windows)

No, I don't mean a gaming laptop, I mean a laptop for gaming, video, and other stuff. I was looking at Sofmap and they had some used Dell laptops. In particular, the Dell Latitude D620 caught my eye at about 8_0000 yen. It has the RAM expandability and DVD-ROM player. But unfortunately the built-in video chip set was wack. I tried "build-to-order" Dell page and all the nice stuff I want will come out to 15_0000 yen or so.

I think its that PlayStation Portable making me think this. Or is it my clunky Project Rabi (Toshiba Libretto L1) that is too slow to even be a browser. Yes, I even use Emacs + w3m to try to get a speed boost but the delays in seconds are annoying.

Jak 3 story finished, not (yet) going to complete

(tags game, Jak, PlayStation 2, spoiler)

17 in-game hours and I've completed the Jak 3 story mode. I enjoyed the twists and turns but unfortunately on the whole it just doesn't feel satisfying. The last boss battle was epic, very cool.

SPOILERS

I was disappointed that the voice actor for Keira was gone and that the voice actor for Seem filled in Keira role. Then again, Keira's role in Jak 3 was reduced in favor of that other girl.

I only found 283 out of 600 Precursor orbs. I suspect most of it is locked up in the challenge quests. One thing I was surprised to see was that unlocking and starting Hero mode resets the Precursor orbs but not the secrets. So you could get all the secrets doing the same things over and over again. Good for lamers like me.

I love playing that scene with Seem and Jak and Daxter. Seem says "This is not a game." and the look of shock on Jak and Daxter was priceless.

You could see the Jak and his father story arc coming from a mile away, but the nature of the Precursors was totally off the wall.

END SPOILERS

I've decided to not complete Jak 3's secrets right now in favor of playing my other games. Actually some of the challenge quests are aggravatingly difficult, like the time challenges.

I've also decided that I'm not going to take a look at Jak X: Racing because I don't like Jak-style racing that much. I was more into the platforming aspect of the game. I did find some info on a digital-only soundtrack related release, though.

A fine repetitive wine

(tags Jak, game, PlayStation 2, obsessive)

I'm about 11 hours into Jak 3, which I think is pretty far along in story mode, probably 70% through. However, I'm clearing the low-hanging Challenge Quests at the same time. There was a point when the game hanged while saving, so I lost an hour repeating the same Challenge Quests ("Remember the city, Jak?..." "Here's another go-to challenge..." "Not the finest driving Daxter. Get back on that puppy..."). Now I diligently save after each success. I have spent those Precursor orbs too soon though, there are some secret options that I should have saved up for instead of paying out for "Jak's Goatee (on/off)", LOL.

I have noticed that the elevators don't have that seamless loading sequence, unlike in Jak 1. Instead, there are elevator cut scenes.

This game is beautiful. There's an Autumn colored nature level. I have pondered the sunrise at the desert's beach. I have spent some time overlooking the city seeing if it matches up with Jak 2. That metal head level glows fantastically yellow and green.

Gotta get back to playing.