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Daughter of White

In stark contrast to last week’s less than mind-blowing performance, this week I thought I would have a lot of trouble deciding what song to pick. I had downloaded quite a few great songs already, when I finally came to this week’s top song. Instantly, I knew I had a winner.

This song takes place during the Daughter of Evil saga, and from a different perspective: Yowane Haku.

I don’t think that Haku songs get in the rankings very often, let alone becoming #1! So this was a very special week.

5 Centimeters Per Second is story about how the passage of time can cause people to drift farther and farther apart.

Takaki Tono and Akari Shinohara start off as elementary schoolers who grow to really like each other. But at the end of their final elementary year, they have to move away from each other. But they write letters back and forth.

To be honest, the story is really nothing to write home about. It’s your typical romantic tragedy deal. However, the art is some of the best art of all time. “OF ALL TIME!”
Anyway, the art rivals even Clannad. I didn’t think that was possible, but by golly it is:

5 Centimeters Per Second Trailer

Hmm… Last week’s Air review was really short too. Sorry for two extremely short reviews in a row, but I couldn’t help it. Next week’s will be longer. I promise.

Walking on Air

This video has nothing to do with last week’s anime.

This video contains Heavies flying through the air.

This video is awesome.

Last night, I was playing TF2, and the server emptied out except for me and one other guy. So we tried this, and had a lot of fun. Anesthetize, if you ever read this, you were great!

Whammy Anarchy

This week wasn’t a very strong one. I only liked two new songs in this week’s ranking. I either didn’t like the other ones, or they had been featured in previous weeks. Oh well.

Incidentally, Unfragment (#5 last week) was the top song this week.

For New Year’s, I stayed up watching Air until midnight. Air was the last of the “Key Three”, three animes based on visual novels by Key Visual Arts. Kanon and Clannad were the other two.

The story is about Yukito Kunisaki, who travels around doing a neat puppet show, and lives off of the generosity of the people who watch. He’s traveling around because he wants to find the “girl in the sky”, that his mother searched for. Upon entering a small seaside town, he meets Misuzu Kamio, a girl who eagerly wants to become friend with him. Stuff happens, and they find themselves entangled in a story that began a thousand years before.

Of the Key Three, Air was actually my least favorite. In retrospect, I watched them exactly backwards. I should have watched Air first, then Kanon, then Clannad. Kanon was pretty good, and Clannad was something really special indeed. But oh well.

How Much Money Did Yukito Make?

The phrase is applicable here, but the dubs are scary. >_>

Shattered Horizon “Breaking News”

Uh oh. That can’t be good.

This video really makes me wish that Shattered Horizon had an epic singleplayer story campaign. It’s got the potential there. The game is set 40 years in the future, and man is mining material from the Moon. However, a disastrous mining accident (pictured above) blew apart much of the Moon. Astronauts from the International Space Agency became trapped on the ISS, and they’re supposed to apprehend the guys from the Moon Mining Cooperative, who caused the accident. The MMC on the other hand, don’t like that idea, and an armed conflict starts.

Good stuff, but it gets lost when you’re in the game. It’s just another thing where the blue guys are fighting the yellow guys. HOWEVER, the gameplay makes up for that. I love the zero-g, mostly because it is difficult to stay oriented. I love challenging my grasp of 3D space like that. But still, a long singleplayer campaign with puzzles and stuff would be totally win.

On a side note, I immediately drew connections with both Cowboy Bebop (exploding Moon) and Planetes (in space no one can hear you scream).

Since the New Years 2010 Vocaloid Review Bonanza is over, I decided to start a new column today to replace it. Every Friday, I’m going to post my favorite new song from that week’s Weekly Vocaloid Ranking. The WVR is a list of the week’s most popular Vocaloid songs on Nico Nico. (This’ll also free up YouTube Tuesday for stuff besides Vocaloid PVs. XD )

And so, without further ado, here’s my favorite from this week:

Unfragment

Welcome to 2010! Hard to believe that the future has arrived, isn’t it? I finished off 2009 with a whole bunch of Vocaloid songs, and now I’m going to begin this year with a whole bunch of human covers of Vocaloid songs.

Miku Miku ni Shiteageru (Ichigo) – Miku Miku was never one of my favorites, really. But this… This cover is beyond epic.

The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku (Kanipan) – I did not believe it was humanly possible to sing that fast. It boggles my mind.

I Like You (Rockleetist) – Rockleetist is the queen of English covers. Listen to this, and you’ll see why.

Saihate – Heavenly Mix (Nayuta) – Nayuta’s voice compliments this song very well.

Love is War (Nodoame) – This is Nodoame doing a cover of Kaito doing a cover of Love is War. So it’s a cover of a cover, and it’s awesome.

Hmm… How about that? I started and ended this series with Love is War. And no, I didn’t plan on doing that. Honest!

Anyway, for your convenience, I made a Youtube playlist of all the songs I covered.

And with that, 2010 begins. Cheers!

Hayao Miyazaki. If you know anything about the Japanese film industry, you almost certainly know the name Hayao Miyazaki. He is widely hailed as one of the greatest animators living today.

Spirited Away is his most famous work. Since it was released in 2001, it became not just the highest grossing animated film in Japanese history, but the highest grossing film. Now that’s something. But despite being so famous, I never watched any Miyazaki films before now. But since I got the DVD of Spirited Away for Christmas, I have rectified that negligence.

The film starts out normal enough. A young girl named Chihiro is moving to a new town, and is none too happy about it. Her dad misses the turn, though, and winds up on a dirt road going through the forest. Despite objections from his wife and Chihiro, he charges forward. (Dads. Sheesh.) The road ends at what appears to be an old abandoned amusement park. The parents go on in and take a look around, but Chihiro would much rather be elsewhere.

They find a place that has a lot of fresh food lying around. However, nobody is to be seen. The parents start chowing away, but little Chihiro seems to have a lot more sense than they do. She doesn’t eat anything, and wanders around, looking at things.

Night falls.

Now this is where the real stuff happens. Suddenly, Chihiro starts seeing all these strange creatures. She meets a boy, Haku, who tells her to get her parents and leave quickly, as they are in grave danger. But too late. Her parents have been turned into pigs by a spell! She meets Haku again, and he tells her to get a job in the bathhouse run by Yubaba, to prevent something from happening to her as well. The bathhouse is for spirits and things to go get washed up.

I don’t want to say too much about the story, so I’ll leave it at that. Now let’s talk about the visuals. It is clear that Miyazaki has a very active imagination. It certainly comes through in Spirited Away. I’ve never seen anything quite like it in my life. the closest thing I can think of is Alice in Wonderland. But this is different than that. A truly unique style. Spirited Away was very strange, and something even I’m not used to seeing, but I still liked the film a lot.

Stair Trouble

This is actually one of my favorite scenes in the movie. The train going by was a nice detail.