Apart from Polysics, this is my other favourite band. I listen to Polysics to get my heart pumping, and I listen to Choro Club to calm my nerves, like before the job interview :P

My cousins and I very briefly talked about Aria yesterday, and funnily Daim thought Aria was at the same comedic/moe level as Azumanga Daioh. I mentioned that if Aria was to be equated to a live action genre, it’d be like one of those whimsical and mysterious French films, only less melodramatic. Amidst the beautiful futuristic version of Venice lies many secrets, like a flying train only for invited guests at midnight, a huge alluring cat figure hiding in the shadows, etc. It’s like the magic that exists in the world in Professor Layton.

Choro Club helped bring out the storytelling and the sense of mystery and allure in Aria further with their unique style of instrumental music, inspired by the music roots of Rio de Janeiro. There’s Sawada-san with the contrabass, Akioka-san with the bandolim and Sasago-san with the acoustic guitar. You might not have heard of them, but they’re pretty popular among the underground circles in Brazil and Europe. To date, they have produced around 20 CD albums.

Thanks to their artistic presence, they’ve been performing in classical concert halls, art museums, botanical gardens and jazz fests around the world. Always wanted to attend their performances, but the entrance fees were expensive TT_TT

They recently performed in Shangri-La Osaka last October. Someone managed to capture the moment and put it up on YouTube. Bask in the romance that has wooed fans throughout the world.

Hope the salary of my next job will get me into one of their live performances. One day!

Phew, finally some rest. Am waiting for the results from Squeenix. Also, I sorted out my Sapporo pics (at long last!) but am lazy to post them up for now :P  Meanwhile, enjoy the following two openings and hopefully they will unlock some fun memories for you as they did for me.

A truly underrated anime. Hanbun no Tsuki ga Noboru Sora is a tragic but bittersweet story of two sick teenagers who met in a hospital. What I like about it is that almost the entire show is set in that hospital, so the imagery of being sick within a confined environment with bad news coming to you at any moment is conveyed rather powerfully.

On top of the OP’s great music, there are a lot of symbolic messages hidden in it as well. It may seem so normal, but the very image of the girl wearing a school uniform itself can be meaningful to those who have watched it. To those who prefer live action, there’s also the J-drama version.

One of the best PC game openings for me. My diploma multimedia project involved being in a make-believe company that makes game trailers, called Scream Interactive. The C is in a shape of a Pacman. Creative huh? Thief:The Dark Project was one of the team’s video editing demos.

Since then, I got hooked to the game. This is during the time when hiding-instead-of-attacking games were hot (MGS, anyone?). The game rocks too, both gameplay-wise and graphics-wise. Truly a masterpiece! Though, since my computer didn’t evolve at that time, I didn’t play the graphically-demanding sequels :P

I was thinking this blog gets a little lonely when I get busy. And indeed I’ve been busy these few days. So being the irresponsible blogger that I am, I do what I do best: share YouTube vids!

I came up with this ground-breaking idea with two intentions in mind:

+ To remind you of memorable anime and games that are not in your recent memory. Uh, you get what I mean right?

+ I encourage the whole lot of you who don’t know these anime and games to watch the OPs. It takes less than 5 minutes of your time. Judge them based on animation, pace, music, whatever… or just sit back and enjoy the show.

All in all, I’ll choose the more tasteful ones for everyone to enjoy. They’re not based on priority, just random picks, limited to the ones I actually watched and played.

One anime OP and game OP will be posted at least once a week, but I might do it more often. Who needs rules eh? Anyway, here we go!

Niea_7. A very unique slice-of-life setting of aliens living among humans in a laid-back rural neighbourhood. That’s the reason for its self-proclaimed “domestic poor animation” lol. Man, you gotta love that voice.

In my list of top 10 RPGs of all time. As normal as it may look, the scene at the very end where the 3 characters are overlooking a valley was one of my most memorable gaming moments ever.

Just when I talked about the image of Otaku in Japan, out comes a video I got to know of recently on YouTube.

Channel News Asia goes out to the field of otaku cosplayers and finds out about the difficulties of maintaining their “weird” interest in a conservative Japanese society.

They sang the School Rumble theme song :) Here are the rest of the parts:

Part 2: Click here.
Part 3: Click here.
Part 4: Click here.
Part 5: Click here.

Hey, I thought my cousins and I held exclusive rights to the mustache joke!

I felt sorry for the remaining five, so I’m changing this post to Top 10 OPs of 2009!

More OPs, more fun, amirite?

I said bye bye to all my PSD image files *sob*, so I had to create new headers and whatnot. I think it turned out better than I expected ;) I also changed the previous Best ED post to fit the theme.

Enough of my depressing techno babble, onwards to the opening sequences! As usual, I judged them based on the relevance to the show, artistic prowess, entertainment value, and of course music. So here we go!

+ Well well if it isn’t the OP everyone’s talking about, many parodies were made too.
+ KyoAni = nice animation. That’s all we need to know.

+ There’s never enough of Clamp, Madhouse and Sakamoto Maaya goodness in this world.
+ The keyword here is pleasant. Brings you back to the Card Captor days.

+ Short, sweet and simple. Pleasant song with equally pleasant art direction.
+ Shows Production I.G can do anything right, even romance shows.
+ Ok fine, biggest reason: Sawako’s in there.

+ Reminds me of El-Hazard, at least the second half.
+ Impressed with the usage of colours. Music is excellent.
+ Well-animated, you know, it’s a KyoAni kind of thing.

+ Very close to becoming 5th.
+ Duh, it’s Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. Their OPs are always great.
+ Duh, it’s by Shaft. Their OPs are always great.
+ Once you know it’s a jab at a UFO cult in Japan, it becomes more interesting.

+ Sorry, am a sucker for designer motion graphic :P Visually stunning.
+ Not only is the music sung by Oasis, but it fits the sequence and show itself very well.
+ One of those OPs that you appreciate as you watch more episodes.
+ What can I say, Kamiyama Kenji and Production I.G make for a great team.

+ A top-notch shounen-anime-like OP with cuts in the right places and at the right time.
+ Ended up watching it many times, there should be an anime series about the OP. Wait…
+ Didn’t you know? When YUI picks up her guitar, magic happens.
+ Something you’d expect from Bones, and more. Cheers to them!

+ Shaft OP alert! They have established a style unique to them, which is already a feat in itself.
+ And as I think more about it, I would… Oooh, look at the pretty colours!
+ Not to mention pretty well animated too, on top of it being well art-directed.
+ Deep symbolism of the relationship between a sadist and a masochist.
+ Music is slightly irritating at first, but the more I listen to it, the more it fits.

+ An OP that wastes no time in telling you what the show is about.
+ A splendid representation of pure innocent love between two best friends.
+ Not overly done like many other anime OPs.
+ Soothes the mind, yet resonates the melancholy within you. Ok, I shut up now.
+ Props to J.C. Staff for such a wonderful piece of work.

+ I’m usually not into sci-fi OPs so much, but this was love at first sight. It’s a refreshing change.
+ Simple with no bells and whistles attached. Just a girl and her transforming bike.
+ Yet everything fits so well together, the music and visuals just play in seamless harmony.
+ It’s like saying “Screw characters showing up one-by-one, I’m gonna ride my bike”.
+ Again, Madhouse enters the number one spot in my Top OP this year. Props to them!

My favourite OP for 2008? Here’s something to refresh your memory on Madhouse’s greatness.

After waiting for 4 episodes, the real ED is finally here!

Shaft-san, otsukaresama deshita!

Love the part where things light up and the 4 are in the center of the flying Sakura petals, all this with the chorus kicking in. It shows the 4 characters giving new life to their 2 new junior residents.

I love Hidamari Sketch EDs, and this one’s no different. It’s in Shaft style, yet it’s not as radical as their other works and not too moe-fied either. Though not as good as the previous ED (which won 4th place in AAA’08), it still has the same style and Marble’s music is still great.

God I love this show. Please don’t let it end.

I wasn’t the only one who got worn out after a week of hard work.

Yes, my great luck with computers has finally run out. My hard disk died out on me two days ago, bad sectors and all. It’s been rendered as completely unreadable. Luckily I backed up my work files, but all my photos (AAAAAAARGH) and my blog files are lost in the partition vacuum.

Downloaded all sorts of recovery software but just like the goblin jumper cables they don’t seem to work. Will send it to a data recovery center tomorrow or day after.

Meanwhile, I’m on my new hard disk so I have to start over. Starting with software. So don’t be surprised if the next posts on the anime awards do not follow the usual graphic format.

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However, not all hope is lost! In-between trying to revive my hard drive and panicking for my digital life, I surfed through NicoNicoDouga on my mom’s netbook and found some cool vids :) It’s an entertaining Dame remix of Shaft and Kyoani anime OPs and EDs! By the way, in English “da-me” means useless, just like my hard disk =_=

They should make more remix videos like this!

(Daitai) Shaft Studios OPED Remix (i.e. a great 11-min artsy feast for your eyes):

Well look at that, it’s my favourite anime studio, Shaft! To be exact, it’s the remix of works by Shinbou Akiyuki till April 2009 (no Bakemonogatari for you), who’s the director for most Shaft series. The video includes his pre-Shaft productions as well. Was really hit in nostalgia by Starship Girl Yamamoto Yoko!

Couldn’t find the non-Nico-comments version though, gomen.

KyoAni remix (i.e. a wonderful rendition of fluid animation, all in one go):

Complete with Full Metal Panic, Key shows and oh, who could forget Haruhi and Lucky Star. It’s the latest DameMixx creation and includes shows until December 2009, so it’s pretty updated. Btw, my favourite KyoAni show is Air :)

Just a little hint, a few of the above are gonna make to my Top 5 opening ;) Look forward to my next post!

Here’s to this hard disk not being another da-me one.

Time to get the Ahbonk.net Anime Awards show on the road!

First up are the ending sequences, meant to cool the audience down after 20 minutes of economic talks, concert shows and hot stapler action. As usual, they are judged based on their music, creativity and entertainment value. From number 5:

+ Storybook art feel is nice, though not as nice as the first season’s.
+ I like the song, moreso than other people on the Net it seems.
+ Horo is kewt, super-deformed or otherwise.

+ First off, this series has a different richly animated ending sequence for EVERY episode!
+ So think about it, this nicely produced ending was only for one episode! How cool is that!
+ Flying panties soaring the skies, silencing the world in their glory. You don’t see that everyday.
+ Song is soothing (end up laughing at the seriousness of it all), and the animation is very well-done.

+ Well what do you know, another Shaft Studios masterpiece. Figures.
+ Though nothing much is happening, it has a lot of hidden references to the events of the show.
+ With beautiful art direction to boot.
+ After Sony published his Miku album, Ryo (Supercell) was invited to compose for this ending. Also, Nagi sang a lot of anime tunes at home and posted her voice on NicoNicoDouga. To think that she was invited to sing for this ending… it became a hit collaboration between two doujin musicians. Love the music!

+ Kamiyama Kenji and Production I.G (which also resulted in Ghost in the Shell: SAC).
+ It’s not only an ending sequence, it’s an art piece.
+ I know, having paper-cut art direction is nothing new. Still suitability and implementation counts.
+ The music goes really well with the whole thing. Or the whole thing goes really well with the music. Ah whatever, they both rock.

+ The ending sequence is the only thing worth watching in this crappy show.
+ Yet, the ending made me curious about the show itself (regrettably).
+ I have a soft spot for old skool RPGs :) Superb effort on the art, plus a lot of sprite references.
+ It presented a lot of fantastic fantasy elements (tower, flying whale) in a minute and a half!
+ They even made the nice song RPG-like, which turned the sequence into an entertaining package.
+ The timing is great, ended up watching a lot of times and getting impressed each time.

Honorable Mentions:

+ Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood (ED1): Click here for ED
+ K-ON: Click here for ED
+ Maria Holic: Click here for ED
+ Seitokai no Ichizon: Click here for ED
+ Cross Game (ED3): Can’t find it online :(
+ Nodame Cantabile Paris-hen: Click here for ED
+ Inuyasha Final Act: Click here for ED

It’s that time of the year again! Top 5 ending, opening, moments, characters and anime shows by me in the next coming weeks! 2009 was quite a weak year for anime (for me anyways), but it had a few shiny gems planted here and there.

Took a while to montage the above pic! Can you name all the 35 anime I watched in 2009 in the above picture? If you can’t, leave it to figure.fm. I uploaded the pic and nearly all were identified in under an hour :O http://www.figure.fm/post/en/6863/Challenge+Tag+that+2009+Anime.html

今年もやる！ahbonk.netアニメ賞２００９、スタート！
なんかバナーを作りたいと思って、上のモンタージュになった。なかなかいい感じと思う！
バナーのとおりに、観た２００９年のアニメは全部３５つで、去年超忙しかったｗｗｗ
ところで、その中、いくつ知ってるかな？

Did a little photoshop tribute to Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu’s opening sequence, thought the art stills were inspiring. Wanted to outline my hair like below but got too lazy :P

And the original photo, taken in the dining room lol: