The Blog of Xbolt

Rozen Maiden. A show that came highly recommended from the venerable Loremaster of the CQFF. He talked about Rozen Maiden even before I watched Sugar, but I never got around to watching it — until now.

The Rozen Maidens are a collection of dolls created by the great dollmaker Rozen. And each one is actually alive. They were created for the purpose of realizing “Alice”, Rozen’s idea of infinite beauty. But all of them fell short of that goal in some way. So, they compete in the “Alice Game”, where they fight each other, to the death, in order to take all the Rosa Mystica, the things that give the dolls their life.

Jun Sakurada is a reclusive boy who spends the whole day locked in his room. He passes the time by ordering things that strike his fancy over the internet, only to return them just before payment is due. One day, he receives a letter saying he won something. It says to pick yes or no, and then place the letter in his desk drawer. He does so, and an ornate wooden box materializes in his room. Inside, is a doll and a small key. He takes the key and winds up the doll, which then comes to life — and then it slaps him for handling her so crudely.

Shinku is the fifth Rozen Maiden. She always orders Jun around, much to his annoyance, but she does care for him, as well as the other dolls, very much. She has a particular admiration for Detective Kun-Kun, a puppet on a TV show. And she loves to drink tea.

Hinaichigo is the sixth Rozen Maiden. She is very childish, and loves drawing. She is the first doll to lose the Alice Game, to Skinku. But Shinku does not want to kill her, and instead takes her on as a servant. Her favorite food is strawberry daifuku, which is a rice cake with strawberry filling. (Ichigo means strawberry in Japanese. So of course she’ll love strawberry foods!)

Suiseiseki is the third Rozen Maiden ~desu. She is the great Mother Desu ~desu. She always ends every sentence with “~desu” ~desu. This erroneous grammar makes her more cute ~desu. And it is extremely infectious ~desu. You’d better be glad I didn’t decide to go “~desu” all the way through this review ~desu.

Souseiseki is the fourth Rozen Maiden. She is the twin sister of Suiseiseki, but is much less boisterous and noisy than her sister. She is very stubborn, and deeply devotes herself to her masters, especially Rozen.

Suigintou is the first Rozen Maiden. She is the arch-nemesis of Shinku, and has no qualms about resorting to underhanded tactics to win the Alice Game. Out of all the dolls, she is actually the one who loves “Father” (Rozen) the most, and it is her desire to see him that drives her to fight in the Alice Game.

Kanaria is the second Rozen Maiden. She is always talking to herself about how she will take the others’ Rosa Mysticae, coming up with many “brilliant plans” to accomplish that. But, she always fails, and no one else takes her seriously.

Barasuishou is the seventh, and final, doll. She is even more evil than Suigintou, and I was hoping for her to die a horrible death ever since we first met her. She wears an eyepatch.

Rozen Maiden – Raving Suiseiseki

It was a toss-up between putting up this video, or a compilation of every ~desu in the series. In the end, I picked this one.

Game

This Gameboy survived a bomb blast.

They don’t call it “The Brick” for nothing.

Kusogee Jikkyou Play

Vocaloid RPG FTW! If only this was a real game, eh? (And Hello Planet too.)

This week also marks a tremendous milestone for me. My entire cache of Vocaloid songs on my hard drive is now longer than 24 hours. It is now not even in the realm of possibility to listen to all of them in one day.

Blood is horror movie. Normally, I don’t watch horror movies, but I watched this one because I read one of the light novel adaptions several months ago. My Dad got it out of the school library for some reason unknown to me, and then I read it after him. And I liked it well enough to want to watch the original film.

The story is about a girl named Saya, who hunts huge bat-like creatures that live off human blood. And she’s the best at it, too. She doesn’t use guns, she uses a Katana the old-fashioned way!

The film is set in 1960’s Japan, on the Yokota Air Base in Tokyo, which may have become infested with the creatures. So Saya investigates.

Conan O’Brien & Andy Richter dub some more anime!

I have no idea.

Bad Apple on CNN (Cirno News Network)

Y’all remember Bad Apple, right? Well, it got so popular, even CNN picked it up.

And of course, being the Cirno News Network, ⑨ journalists are ⑨. I laughed so hard at them. Methinks that lady might never “get it”. Aya is a much better reporter, you know.

And to make sure you know why this is funny: Bad Apple is NOT a stop-motion video. The stop motion video was made after the original, by printing out all the frames and going from there. Not the other way around. XD

And Marisa is not creepy. Shame on you for saying so.

Tsukiyukihana

Kaito = Win
Epic Music = Win
Win + Win = OVER NINE THOU-

Q.E.D.

(I could have put this WinRin remix of Koi wa Sensou here, but that would be way too obvious. XD (This is like, the fourth or fifth KoiSen remix I have. Sure are a lot of them.))

Bamboo Blade is a show about a high school kendo club. Hence the name “Bamboo Blade”.

Toraji Ishida is the club’s instructor. He makes a bet with a friend of his, who is the kendo teacher at another school. They would each get five girls and have a match with each other. And if Toraji wins, he would be treated to free sushi for a year! Yum! But first he has to find some members, because there is currently only one.

Kirino Chiba, a junior, is the team’s captain. At the start, she’s the club’s only active member, since the seniors have already graduated. She’s always energetic and enthusiastic, and glad that her teacher has suddenly begun teaching more enthusiastically. (Little does she know his real motive…) She usually has the (=ω=) face on, which I like to refer to as “The Konata Face”. And she’s probably my overall favorite character.

Tamaki Kawazoe is the second member to join. She is extremely good at kendo, and can defeat everyone she meets, despite being very, very short. And what’s even better, she’s a die-hard anime fan. She especially loves Blade Braver, which I would totally watch, if it weren’t just a show-within-a-show. Oh well…

Miyako Miyazaki is Danjuro’s girlfriend. A very pretty and friendly girl, she… Oh wait, that’s wrong. She’s actually a very dark and scarry girl. When she gets angry, she emanates an evil black aura. (But immediately reverts to being friendly whenever Danjuro is looking.)

Sayako Kuwahara is a close friend of Kirino’s. She is always being spontaneous and random. She is now a junior, and had joined the kendo club during her first year, but always stormed out vowing to never return. (She then showed up the next day.) But this year, she doesn’t do that.

Satori Azuma is the last person to join. She is very good at kendo, and is second to only Tamaki. But she is very bad with her studies, despite being very diligent. And so, she initially doesn’t want to join the club in order to study more, but she eventually changes her mind. (After a little “persuasion” from Miyako…)

Yuji Nakata and Danjuro Eiga are the only boys in the club. Yuji is always kind, cheerful, and helpful. He is also the only one who knows the real reason for the teacher’s sudden enthusiasm. Danjuro is shaped like an egg. He didn’t want to join the kendo club at first, instead wanting to join the ping-pong club. But there turns out to be no ping-pong club, so he joins with Yuji. Everyone is shocked when he brings in the beautiful Miyako and says that this is his girlfriend.

Overall, I liked the show. The characters were fun, and I learned at least a little about how kendo is done. Before, I knew nothing at all about it, except that they use wooden sticks. So that was fun too.

Tamaki Discovered

The poor Vice Principal.

Touhou 3D DogFight SE Edition

This is one of the ten best videos I have ever seen on YouTube. EVER. Not just on YouTube, it’s one of the most epic videos IN EXISTENCE. “OF ALL TIME!”

If you’re not familiar with Touhou, you probably won’t understand all the moves they make. In that case, you can just enjoy the epicness of a good old-fashioned dogfight!

Imitation

This is a pretty good VocaRock song.

Haibane Renmei came highly recommended from the same person as one of the two guys through which I found out about Sugar, all those years ago. (Does one and a half years entitle me to use that phrase?)

And I do see similarities between the two. Neither one is a grand tale of heroes and villains, but simply people. As the series progress, we meet characters and get to know them. In my humble opinion though, Sugar was still a far greater masterpiece. But that’s not to say Haibane isn’t a great show, because it is a great show, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It just didn’t affect me nearly as much as Sugar had.

The Haibane look like angels, complete with wings and a halo. But what they are exactly, is unknown.

Rakka is a newcomer to Old Home, where the Haibane take up residence, and she tries to adapt to her new life there.

Reki is the go-to person in Old Home. If you’re hurt or sick, Reki is going to be the one to look after you.

Nemu is the oldest Haibane living at Old Home. She works as a librarian, and often takes naps. (Which everyone teases her about.)

Kuu is the youngest, aside from the small children. She’s energetic, and forms a close friendship with Rakka.

Kana is a mechanical engineer, and works in the town’s clock tower.

Hikari works as a baker. She’s probably my favorite character. Serious, but can do silly things at times.

The town of Gile here and the town of Muhlenburg in Sugar also bear some similarities, in that they both look like they came from Old Europe. I quite like that style, actually. Gile also has something else going for it: Windmills. My whole family has a particular fondness for windmills, you see.

A Winter’s Solstice

I did a double take when I saw who wrote this song. Yoko Kanno, the same person who wrote the excellent soundtrack for Cowboy Bebop.