jessybxx

( Several pages of mindless (but somewhat organized) gushing )

Sorry for going on about this forever but considering this is what you might call the temporary climax of a 35-year old franchise which happens to be one of my favourite things in the entire world, I can't really help it.

Claymore INTIMATE PERSONA ~Character Song Shuu~ [VPCG-84863]

01 Kioku - KUWASHIMA Houko (Clare)

Boring much? *yawn* Also, who the hell had the glorious idea to put the rap on there?! This is a medieval-styled fantasy show, not some urban skating shit! Gah, I can't believe it >:O

02 Henbou - HISAKAWA Aya (Priscilla)

Weird intro but turns out to be somewhat interesting, music-wise. Still, it doesn't manage to blow me away, even though I like HISAKAWA-san's voice a lot. I guess it's just too... strange.

03 Hangyaku - ORIKASA Ai (Galatea)

God, I wish they'd stop doing that rap thingy all the time. How does it fit to a ballad like this? Exactly, it doesn't. Bleh. The track itself is slow with nice guitars. Too bad it's barely catchy enough to strike a chord. Next.

04 Kakusei - TAKEDA Hana (Deneve)

Finally, something with a little substance. A Rock-ish song with a halfway decent riff but unfortunately, a rather bad chorus. Aw man.

05 Zouo - SHINOHARA Emi (Ophelia)

The first song that somehow manages not to bore me to tears. Okay chorus, good guitar work. And then, it's SHINOHARA-san, making this thing look more and more like a Sailormoon class reunion *lol*

06 Shippu - TAKAYAMA Minami (Irene)

Yep, that TAKAYAMA-san, the singer of Two-Mix. And her track actually sounds a bit like II MIX DELTA do these days. Heh. Needless to say, it's pretty nice.

07 Eien - TOYOGUCHI Megumi (Sophia)

Another Rock ballad. Here, the instrumentation is very convincing, everything sounds really nice and clear, I have to give them that. The song itself is alright at best.

08 Tensei - PAKU Romi (Teresa)

This is probably the second most important song on the CD, but people who watch(ed) the series will know that. Which, of course, makes it even more tragic because they royally fucked up by giving PAKU-san a nondescript and not exactly challenging ballad. Ow. I mean, the basics are there, if only they'd made it a tad more spectacular. What a waste of such a unique voice.

09 Doukoku - NAGASAWA Miki (Helen)

No idea how to call the genre/stlye of this song since it has some Latin elements scattered throughout. This one has some great parts in it, but somewhat fails to string them all together and make an awesome track. Instead, it comes off as okay, albeit a bit confusing.

10 Gen'ei - Inoue Kikuko (Miria)

Starts of very promising but then dissolves into another half-assed effort at a slow ballad that just flows by without being noticed.

Final words: *sigh* I had really been waiting for this. If you consider the masterpiece that Claymore the series is, it would have been cool to back it up with some great image songs. But no. Instead, we get a bunch of boring, uninspiring songs, some of them with totally out of place rap parts thrown in (WTH?!). There's nothing remarkable on there whatsoever. It's a bit sad, really.
If you want some truly good Claymore tunes, check out the OP single (
"Raison d'etre" by Nightmare) and especially the amazing ED (
"Danzai no hana ~Guilty sky~" by KOSAKA Riyu). This character album, however, is mostly a waste of time.

We watched "Corpse Bride" last night. In HDTV. And (to my surprise, yamasagi insisted on that) in English. Which turned out to be the most excellent decision since a lot of the characters rely on the British pronounciation to draw their charm from - or, in many cases, the complete lack thereof. Which is just as amusing.
Anyway. I loved that movie so much it's still hurting. What a crazy, macabre, beautiful, romantic, funny and totally amazing piece of art O____O
The story and the characters were wonderful, the music fit the situations and didn't appear like being too much (this ain't Disney, mind you XD).
Johnny Depp was just fabulous. I love his fake British accent to death <3
Another awesome aspect was how our usual idea about the world of the living and the realm of death was completely turned upside-down. The singing and dancing - but pretty dead - wedding procession "downstairs" celebrating their heads of (literally, of course *lol*) with music and colours that nearly made you blind... and on the opposite the sad, grim, black-and-white, completely silent dining table on the surface - brilliant! ^_^
I think yamasagi still doesn't believe the movies isn't 100% CGI - which it's not. Just because we have that technology doesn't mean that anything else - like, stop-motion animation with puppets, as done in this case - becomes obsolete at once and isn't used anymore. Look at Wallace & Gromit (to which Corpse Bride lost at the 2005 Oscars, BTW). I wouldn't like it if they switched to all-CGI just like that. And it seems filmmakers realize that and act accordingly. Hell, even the Simpsons movie has been hand-drawn!
Have I mentioned Johnny Depp yet? *lol*
And I still need to meet someone who didn't cry during the ending ;)

... gosh, I really need to find "Nightmare before Christmas". I haven't seen it in English yet... and no, I don't care about it being the wrong season ^_~

On Saturday night, we started watching "Heroes". mirmingi recommended it and since just about everyone else seems to be into it, I decided we should join the frenzy.
So we watched
And watched.
And watched.
And... you get the picture ^^;;;
Yesterday, we started after lunch and only paused for dinner. Our projector had a long workday XD
We're up to episode thriteen (which will be next).
And if that's not an indication of whether we like it or not, lemme say this:
Holy CRAP.
I don't think I've ever watched something this intense and gripping. The storyline is totally unpredictable - unless you're yamasagi, but he is hopeless anyway. I wouldn't have thought that something as generic as "story about people with super powers" could be translated into something this memorable. Characters? Brilliant. Plot? Exciting as hell and makes you curse the human need for sleep ;)
So... yes, we love it. Hard.
Thanks to mirmingi for talking about it and making me wanna try it out. I won't forget ^_^

Why didn't anyone tell me that HAYASHIBARA Megumi has had a new single avaliable since last summer? I missed her so much and didn't even notice she's been back for so long ;_;
Anyway. Review, review :3

01 Meet again
A completely new song that celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Slayers franchise. It could have very well been written during the days of the Slayers series. It's catching and totally charming. Her vocie didn't change a bit, it's still cute to die for <3

02 Get along (Self-tag version)
Slightly modified re-make of the originals eries' opening. I love the improved backing vocals!

03 Give a reason (Ballade version)
Well, I didn't exactly have doubts about whether my favourite Slayers track (and second-fave anime song of all time) could work in ballad form. But actually haaring it is still... wow. It's simply spectacular. And you have to admit, Megumi's vocie is pretty powerful, despite the chibi edge ;)

04 Don't be discouraged
The original song, nothing new here.

05 Meet again (off vocal)
For anyone who cana ctually sing ;)

All in all, a great single, three wonderful additions to my library of Slayers tunes, and it's a shame that I overlooked when it came out =_=

---

This afternoon, mum came in when I was watching last night's Colbert Report (to be precise, The Wørd - "Second Opinion"). She said she wanted to watch some of it, too, so we did and I translated for her. Seems she liked it =)
I also got to tell her a bit about both shows and their relevance. Not bad!

I started seriously playing that last night. And what an amzing game it is!
Graphics and stuff are not exactly state of the art, but that's more than made up for by the black and dirty humour, weird story, funny characters, great voice acting (and I'm talking about the German dub here!) and absurd quests.
They chose a German comedian named Oliver Kalkofe to play the witty and naughty main character which was a brillaint choice - he's so good at sounding BLOODY ANNOYED *lol*
But the dub in general is really high quality and I keep noticing familiar voices. Seems the project was kinda important even though it's "only" a game.
What didn't get translated were the songs (Yes, there are songs in the game!). Instead, they left them as they are and sicne the whole game is subtitled by default, it should not be a problem even for those who are not THAT good at understanding the English lingo. There even is one of those little jumping karaoke ball thingies. What a weird game O___O
The spoken audio almost scared me. You probably know that in most games, there is some audible dialogue, but most of the stuff that's spoken is just written on the screen. Well, in The Bard's Tale, every damn sentence is voiced. That includes all of the stuff random villagers yell at you when you bump into them. That really impressed me seeing how the main character alone must have had like, three quarters of an hour of speaking time by now, and I'm only four hours into the game!
Another nice aspect is that the whole thing is done using ingame graphics, even the story parts without player interaction. During gameplay, you see the bard from a Zelda 3-like perspective. But when a video sequence starts, the camera zooms in and turns to the side so that you look the characters in the eye. And despite the old-ish graphics engine, they still look pretty good and the lip-synch even in the German version is just fantastic.
Of course, the fights are in real-time (otherwise, I prolly wouldn't even try it) and the whole weapons/magic/leveling system is not too complicated. It's more hack'n'slay than RPG, which is fine with me.
The battling itself is not half as difficult as it seemed at first. I had real problems with the wolves until I found out that instead of killing them with your sword - which is nearly impossible, especially when they come at you in groups - you're supposed to hit them with arrows from a distance *headdesk*
Anyway. The game is an extremely weird and entertaining RPG parody and the internet just barely keeps me away from it right now ^_~

On a stupid note: I have a grapefruit from Israel :D

(I included the labels in brackets after the song names)

01 Neo - Midnight love (A-Beat C)
Not quite as good as other Neo tracks, but still nice.

02 Melissa White - Wanna be with you (SCP)
A somewhat slow-ish, disco-y-trance-y sounding thing. The intro isn't that inpressive, but the rest surely is. This track was co-written by Christian Codenotti (ACE) like a lot of SCP songs are *squee*

03 Mr M - Welcome people (TIME)
It takes aaages for the riff* to start. Which I like cuz long intros are cool. Appealing riff, good chorus and vocals. Decent song!

04 Groove Twins - Dance dance monsteru (A-Beat C)
No, the title is not a typo. They're obviously trying to get some Japanese flavour in again *lol* The song itself is light-headed and not too interesting.

05 Oda - Rainbow (DELTA)
Yay, a particularly stupid into again, how I missed that... not X_X Strange song. The chorus is surprisingly cool, though O_o

06 Annie - DD dance (TIME)
Eh. Weak riff. The guitars don't really help either. Thumbs down *yawn*

07 Rick Castle - You'll never be lonely (Hi-NRG Attack)
The weirdos of Hi-NRG Attack are back with... a somewhat serious song. Which is no exactly their trademark and that shows, no matter how good the vocals are. Too bad.

08 Go2 - Power (SCP)
My heroes are baaaack to old shape after their last song "Music come on" which was more of a ballad. And wow, this feels GREAT. Amazing and powerful song that really shows their different voices and vocal styles. This one might just be the best Go2 song ever. Ready steady go ;)

09 Queen 26 - Popcorns & sex (DELTA)
Sometimes I hate Euobeat intros *headdesk* Luckily, the rest of the song is very bad as well so I prolly won't ever listen to it again *shoves it far away* =_=

10 Cy-ro - Intercooler (Hi-NRG Attack)
Cy-roooo!!!! His first song ("Get the dark side into my brain" on SEB 169) blew me away. Literally. This one... somehow didn't. What's wrong with Hi-NRG Attack these days? HELLO?!

11 Sophie - My world 2006 (TIME)
Typical girls' song. Sloooow. Just don't mention it O_o

12 Cody - Die die (DELTA)
Once again, I hardly believe my ears when listening to the ylrics so I try to overlook them. Same goes for the song, actually.

13 Dana - I'm OK (SCP)
Well, THIS is why I consider SCP my favourite label. They tend to produce a good number of great tracks while keeping the bad ones down. Translation: Thumbs up. Fast, powerful, great. The vocals at the end of the chours are especially thrilling.

14 Annalise - Say you will (A-Beat C)
And yet anohter one of the bad type of girls' song. Eh. Boooring.

15 Powerful T. - Ace of spades (A-Beat C)
Wow, that was unexpected. They dug Roberto Tiranti out again to do another decent track. Unfortunately, his stuff can hardly ever compete against the real big names on A-Beat C (Dave Rodgers, Mega NRG Man...) and it's no different this time.

16 Ai Yamamoto - Wonderful (SCP)
I doubt she's really Japanese. Her pronounciation is too accurate. Anyway, another trance-ish sounding song from SCP. It's OK but I don't care too much for it.

17 Mark Gilan - Honesty (TIME)
Neither really good nor completely bad. Average one, I guess.

18 Nuage - I'm gonna carry on (A-Beat C)
Another nice, trance-y sounding track from Dave Rodger's woman Nuage.

Overall, I'd say #171 is a typical Super Eurobeat volume. Which means that there's a few great tracks, a couple of good ones and a lot of crap. Oh well, I doubt they'll make anohter #167 anytime soon.


A "riff" in Eurobeat doesn't have anything to do with a "gutar riff". It's basically the main melody line of the song (usually made up of two identical parts). Sometimes, it's even more important than the chorus itself. Look here for the typical strucutre of Euobeat songs.

BTW, hope you like my new Go2 icon. The dark haird guy is ACE (Christian Codenotti), the other one is Fastway/Dusty (Ennio Zanini) :D