Friday, August 31, 2007

The issues of online ordering. Sigh.

So my mom thinks the package with the PoT boxed set 2 and Ao to Bin to Kan's Gather isn't coming. I looked it up, and for the PoT boxed set I'm gonna give it a couple more days (Amazon says it should come by September 3rd)...but Gather hasn't even shipped yet. WTF. It says on Amazon "Sellers agree to ship within 2 business days of your purchase." >_______________>
I looked at the seller feedback, and apparently even though most people think their service was great (and fast, apparently. why me...) and stuff, a couple people in there said that they never received their items. Sigh. Guess I happened to be one of those people.
I think my mom's gonna handle this, but I think that if the boxed set doesn't come in the next week we should contact customer service for the site, and if Gather doesn't ship I'm gonna cancel it and order it from Amazon. Sure, it says it'll ship within 3-6 weeks, but at least I totally trust Amazon to get me the item (now, I don't totally trust them with import CDs, but at least I know something will come, or they'll send me an e-mail and stuff.) in the first place.
I saw the PoT box set at Borders today, and I just about died. DDDD: DAMMIT I WANNA SEE THIS DUBBED


As for the things I ordered recently...
The Yesasia order will be shipped soon hopefully. It gave the estimated date of arrival as a pretty late date, but that was because the PoT DVD was supposed to be ready in "7-14 days". Lolz, it was ready this morning, after only 3 days. It's only waiting on Cap to Bin's "Thank You!!", then it'll be shipped out. So I figure it'll arrive sometime in the next two weeks~
The doujinshi were shipped out Wednesday, so at the best it'll come tomorrow (highly unlikely, but...) and at the worst it'll come sometime next week while I'm at school. Hopefully no one will get curious and open it while I'm not here...*sigh*
And then Flower, I dunno. It's from another "buy used & new" thing on Amazon, this time with only an 88% positive approval rate, but...
dammit I just checked, and now Amazon's selling it for $14. DAMMIT WTF. >___< The offer from the shop I ordered it from is gone now, honestly I don't know what to make of that...is that a bad thing?


Roar, so anyway...yeah, now I have a couple of packages coming these next few weeks. YAY I LOVE GETTING PACKAGES

School is starting...

Well, school's starting Monday. Actually, it really starts Thursday, but the boarders move in on Monday, and then there's a two-day retreat (thankfully for the freshman it's on campus, so no crap outdoor camps like last year) Tuesday-Wednesday...
I'm not looking forward to it. Then again, who is?
I got the rooms list today. I looked through the list, and I just about died. I'm the ONLY freshman boarding who was at Nobles last year. The other kids are all new. So yeah, I'm rooming with someone I don't know. Fun fun fun. I know a couple of upperclassmen (lolz I almost used the word "senpai". >___<), but we're not like friends or anything. Just a couple of girls in the year above me who I know from two years ago in the middle school, and then a kid from my Japanese class. Lol, I love Japanese class. It's the only class where I know exactly who my teacher is, exactly where it is, and exactly who's in my class, before they even give us our schedules. It's been the same the past two years, not counting those two kids from the first year- one was only here for a year because of Hurricane Katrina, and the other skipped a class so he could get farther since he was older or something. Besides that, though, unless we have a new kid that's already taken two years of Japanese...it'll definitely be Sarah, me, Wilson, Ben, and Gray from the freshmen, Richie and that kid that I can't spell his name from the 11th graders, and the senior Tana. And of course the teacher's Mrs. Graham, and the room is Baker 004, or 005, I can't remember the exact number but I know the room and where it is.
I'm not looking forward to like 50 new kids in our grade this year. Sigh. I'm never gonna remember everyone's names or anything. Look, there are some returning kids I don't know the names of, and I was in school with them for two years! >____< Guess that's what the retreat's for- can you say forced bonding? >__< My guess is it'll be like the 7th grade retreat- hang around campus, go on a tour of the campus, scavenger hunts that will be waaay too easy for the returning kids...and oh dear lord oh no they're gonna make us do the ropes course again. DAMMIT. Why the hell does the school have a ropes course anyway? Wtf?
At least we'll probably swim? The pools are pretty nice. Yeah, pools. Dunno why there are more than one.
Then we're sleeping in the gym. Oh well. It's better than sleeping outside.
As long as they don't make us share some of our "most embarrassing moments". Wait, that's the senior retreat, never mind...
You're not supposed to bring electronics stuff, but screw that. I'm bringing my iPod for the night time...

So that's really the retreat...boring and pointless, but I'm happy it's on campus. ^^ Last year was an uber crap outdoors camp, where there was so much forced bonding (which is really pointless, because really we all knew each other) and outdoorsy stuff and THEN THERE WAS THE SQUARE DANCE (oh dear lord bad memories, I had to dance with a TEACHER because I'm so unpopular. D:) and then there was the hike...god that sucked.
I'm still willing to bet half of this is utterly pointless for the returning kids...we already had a pointless "orientation" which was just "let's explain the rules of the computer lab and the library for the new kids and make the returning kids sit through it even though they learned this all two years ago". And then the impact test, but we could have easily done that later...


Besides that.
This year they didn't have a full summer reading list, which was very much appreciated. They just gave us our one required book, and then said "we're expecting you to read, but we're not going to give you a list of stuff to choose from" which really means "we're forcing you to spend time this summer reading when you could be doing more fun stuff, but besides the one crap book we're making you read, you can choose whatever book you want".
So I read kinda the minimum.
I read The House on Mango Street, which is the kind of book I'd never touch with a ten-foot-pole unless it was ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED (which it was.). It was crap. Utter crap. Sigh. At least it was short.
Then I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Come on, that was obvious. I think they're probably expecting everyone in the grade to have read that this summer. Thankfully, it's a long book, so I can use that as an excuse to why I only read this book and...
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu (The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi). No, I didn't cheat and watch the anime. Seriously, I didn't, though to be honest now that I think about it it would have been a good idea. I actually read the first novel online. And it counts~ Well, it should at least. It's a novel, even if it is Japanese and fan-translated...it was a good book, and now I want to watch the anime...
I kinda feel like I should have read more though, and I kinda want to read the second Haruhi novel to make up for it, but I don't have enough time...I'm sure I'll have time at retreat to read, but it's on the computer, and I don't want to print it out considering it's so long...so I might start reading The Last Days instead. I dunno, Mom's been bugging me to read it...


Umm...I'm trying to hurry up right now and free up more space on my iPod so I can add some new music to it before I head off to board. Stuff like Ayu's glitter/Fated, KAT-TUN's Yorokobi no Uta (yes I know it's not really new, but I haven't added it to my iPod yet), Hey!Say!7's Hey!Say!...stuff like that.
I have two and a half days, but I'm sure I'm going to spend a while packing and getting stuff together...

What makes me sad is that Bittorrent is banned at school. Well, for the moment I'm just gonna keep using it normally (if I only use it when I have to (aka something new I want is uploaded on Jpopsuki) then it should be fine for now), but as soon as the computer guy sends out an e-mail saying "no peer-to-peer programs", I gotta stop. Sigh. Oh well. He never said anything about direct downloading...even though the speed at Nobles is pretty slow, it's better than nothing.


I don't like the fact that now I'm going to be a freshman...the same school, but using a different building, and there's no doubt I'm gonna screw something up. Well, there's really nothing I can do about it...wish I had a friend though. Sigh. I need to find someone in the new group of kids that likes anime and isn't that weird girl that follows me around once in a while, who I swear likes me in more than just a friendly way. >____< She's ok, better than that girl from camp who followed me around all the time and stuff, but still...
and if there aren't any new kids, I'll just find Olivia, a senior who's the only person I consider a friend at school, and we can talk. She likes Prince of Tennis, if I remember correctly...she cosplayed as Eiji back at Anime Boston 2007. I need to see pics...back then I ignored it cause I didn't like PoT...
Now I can be an actual member of the Anime Club, yaaaayyy~
last year in the spring I found I could go to some of the meetings, but I only ended up at one. This year I can go to all of them since I'm in the high school~


Now that school's starting again, I think I'm gonna log back in to NarutoFan. I don't know why I just kinda died, but I did...it started because of Prince of Tennis, then I was back on regularly, but then camp happened...and after that I just haven't logged on since. I really should...


So...I don't want to go back to school...but sadly it's kinda necessary. I wish I was going to the public school...with all my friends and everything...but I'm stuck at Nobles for all of high school. Oh well.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Ahaha, sales are very very good~

Lolz, so I posted about the doujinshi in my last post, but then I got an e-mail from the owner saying that 3 of them were sold out. Aww. The only one that wasn't was Young Boy Illustrated- thankfully that was probably the one I wanted the most, lolz. xD
So, instead, she made some more offers...which were UBER UBER UBER CHEAP and so I ended up buying 15 DOUJINSHI for $48. And that's including shipping.
O_______O
Honestly, I wasn't going to spend that much, but I can't turn down uber uber cheap prices!
First she offered some other Todoya doujinshi (Todoya is the group that did Young Boy Illustrated) for only $3 each...and then she said that there was a set of 5 Seigaku crack doujinshi which she was selling for $4 or $15 for the entire set...and then she had a Photobucket folder full of covers of unsorted doujinshi by MG, who did one of my favorite doujinshi...and they were TWO DOLLARS EACH
*diiieeessss*
Soo, if you haven't figured out where this is going yet...
I ended up buying 3 of the Todoya doujinshi (in addition to Young Boy Illustrated), the entire 5-book set, and 6 MG doujinshi.
Oh dear lord. @______@

So that brings my doujinshi total up to 24. YAAAAYYYY


And now I know how to work PayPal! YAAAAAYYYY USEFUL INFORMATION FOR THE FUTURE


Here's the list:

Young Boy Illustrated: $5.00
Let's Return to the Main Subject: $3.00
Hot-Blooded Student Council President: $3.00
Miracle Essu!: $3.00
5 Book Set: $15.00
MG Book 23 (Graphite): $2.00
MG Book 24 (Honey Sweet): $2.00
MG Book 1 (Cool Prince of Tennis Story): $2.00
MG Book 7 (Orange Juice): $2.00
MG Book 10 (Thundering Sky): $2.00
MG Book 11 (Momo's Day): $2.00
(Then shipping was $4, and it was an extra $3 to send the money through PayPal using a credit card...)

Let's Return to the Main Subject is apparently Atobe x Momo x Ryoma, and apparently Atobe's an uber dork, so I'm looking forward to reading this one...=P
Hot-Blooded Student Council President...ok, honestly I have no idea, but it looked amusing so I grabbed it. It's one of the doujinshi on the site that didn't have a description.
Miracle Essu! apparently has Inui trying to seduce Kaidou and Karupin x Everyone, among other things...
The 5-book set didn't have any descriptions either, but it looked interesting enough. I had been thinking about it earlier, but I didn't get them because I really didn't know anything about them. Now, with the cheap price, I figured "why not?"
The MG books...well at first I just asked about all the images (5 of them) that had Eiji in them. =P Then it turned out 3 of them were out of stock (including the one I wanted the most, "Milk Caramel", but whatever), but the owner gave me some recommendations (since she noticed my pattern xP), so I got three of those and then I saw one that looked like a cute Momo/Ryoma. =P So I ended up with 6 doujinshi for $2 each.

Kyaaa~ she's sending them tomorrow, maybe maybe maybe if I'm really lucky they'll get here before school starts! =D Considering there's seriously no way they'll come this week, maybe Monday! I don't have to leave for school until late afternoon, so...

Ok, I placed the order from earlier.

And I bought the $20 copy of GIGS' Flower ~Saki Midareshi Hana~. xDDD I couldn't resist, ok? And to be honest, half the time my mom forgets to either ask me for the money or subtract it from my bank account, so...lolz I feel only a bit guilty. XD If she does ask, I have the money anyway, so...

And then I'm buying four doujinshi from doujinstar.com, I just e-mailed the owner of the site and I'm waiting for her to get back to me. I honestly have never done a purchase by e-mail or anything, but I can figure it out. xD It's much better than paying the original prices. Much cheaper this way.

Nice Disposition (Pink Panthers
$15.00 USD
Title: Nice Disposition
Circle: Pink Panthers
Pairing: Hints of FujiTezu and EijiRyo, but mainly -crack-
Rating: PG
Type/Pages: Regular Size (B4), 32 Pg.
Condition: Excellent
Summary: (Two Copies In Stock! OMG) A crack collection for Seigaku. :P Find out the secret of Oishi's hair in the morning, what Eiji daydreams of, and what pisses off Fuji! xDD Some of these stories are just -too- cute though. :P
Price: 15$


Zasshi Entertainment (Todoya)
$10.00 USD
Title: Zasshi Enta-teimento (Zasshi Entertainment)
Circle: Todoya
Pairing: Seigaku Gen, Fuji x Tezuka, Inui x Kaidou
Rating: PG
Type/Pages: Regular Size, 28 Pg.
Condition: Excellent
Summary: Utter crack. Put the Seigaku Regulars into a fairy tale, and this is what you get. Utter utter crack. 2 Copies Available.
Price: 10$


Friendship'hood (Nabakou)
$10.00 USD
RN: GP07
Title: Friendship'hood
Circle: Yutaka/Nabakou
Pairing: Golden Pair
Rating: G
Type/Pages: Regular Size (B4), 24Pg of Art out of 32Pg
Condition: Excellent
Summary: Snapshots of Eiji and Oishi as doubles partners, friends, and possibly... more... Light, happy introspective book on their deep friendship. Absolutely beautiful and dynamic art to match the mood <3 Omake: Eiji eating popsicles!~
Price: 10$


Young Boy Illustrated (Todoya)
$8.00 USD
Title: Seishounen Zakan (Young Boy Illustrated)
Circle: Todoya
Pairing: Seigaku Gen, Momo x Ryoma
Rating: PG
Type/Pages: Regular Size, 20 Pg.
Condition: Excellent
Summary: Gyod, so much crack xDD Momo's trying to show off his english to Ryoma, and he's like...
"Mai naimu izu Momoshiro. I amu ultura supa tennisu puraiya... blahblahblah... Fuck you, Please!"
Ryoma: Do you know what you just said? What what's with the "please..."?
Momo: Uhm... I heard it on TV... what was it?...
Ryoma: That's not the point! You can't go around saying that!
Momo: Oh right! I remember what it was now!
Ryoma: ??
Momo: Fuck me! Please!
Ryoma: ...
Momo: ...
Ryoma: Ok! Let's go!
xDDD
Price: 8$


A~h, three crack doujinshi and one Golden Pair. =P
I've had my eye on the last one for a while now...it just looks uber amazing. xD The first one got me with "Oishi's hair in the morning", and I had been contemplating buying it for a while but I didn't feel like paying $15 for it...with the sale I couldn't resist. XP The second one had vampire Eiji on the cover...
and the third one is Golden Pair. I don't think I really need to explain further.


Maybe the other stuff I bought earlier will come tomorrow. Then again I've been saying that for over a week now, and nothing yet...*sigh*
I don't think that the stuff I just ordered will come before I leave for Nobles on Monday night, but it's only 5-day boarding so I'll get it the next weekend. =P Except for the Yesasia stuff, that always takes forever, so it'll probably come by the weekend after.

Dammit, not this again...

UGH I hate these e-mails.
We are sorry to report that we will not be able to obtain the
following item(s) from your order:

Gigs (Artist) "Flower [Limited Edition] [Import]"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000F6YS2K

Though we had expected to be able to send this item to you, we've
since found that it is not available from any of our sources at this
time. We realize this is disappointing news to hear, and we apologize
for the inconvenience we have caused you.

We have cancelled this item from your order.

I HATE AMAZON
*headdesk x10*
I honestly don't know what to do at the moment. I really really really want this single. I love the song, not to mention it's one of the openings for the OVA series.
It's out of print on Yesasia and CD Japan, and on Amazon the cheapest price is $20.67. DDDDD:
Dammit, what do I do?

AND the Prince of Tennis Box Set 2 and Ao to Bin to Kan's Gather STILL HAVEN'T COME. DDDD: They shipped out like forever ago; they should be here by now~ I really wanna watch the crappy dub of Prince of Tennis before I head off to board next week...
UGH I'M HAVING A BAD DAY

Monday, August 27, 2007

Bleach games coming out in the US

YAAAYYYYY
So I finally got my copy of the October issue of Shounen Jump today. I still have yet to figure out why the hell they come so early; it would make so much more sense if it was the September issue. But whatever...
The first thing that caught my eye was the fact that there's SO MUCH DRAGONBALL Z THIS ISSUE. DDDDDDDDDD:
But anyway.
Then I flipped open the magazine, stared at the ad for Naruto: Rise of a Ninja for a few minutes (why oh why do I not have an Xbox 360), then flipped past it, and something else immediately caught my eye.
Flaming Hot DVD
Comin' at you next month is Vol. 3 of The Prince of Tennis Box Set! Ryoma and his teammates at Seigaku Academy are now competing at the Metropolitan Tournament, and their "golden pair" in doubles is forced to resort to an unusual formation. Contains episodes 27-38. Special features include: original Japanese trailers and original Japanese opening and ending credits!

So I'm gonna break this down a bit, I guess...
"Flaming Hot DVD!-" (you mean they actually care about Prince of Tennis?) "Comin' at you next month-" (ok, I squee-d for a second before realizing that they meant October; it's still August so I thought they meant September) "-is Vol. 3 of The Prince of Tennis Box Set!-" (already? didn't the second one just come out? speaking of which, it STILL HASN'T ARRIVED. D:) "-Ryoma and his teammates at Seigaku Academy-" (ok, this line is fail. Seigaku is short for Seishun Gakuen, which basically is Seishun Academy or w/e. Seigaku is a team nickname. Seigaku Academy makes no sense. It's like...my school is Noble & Greenough School; the nickname is Nobles, but we don't call it "Nobles School", that makes no sense) "-are now competing at the Metropolitan Tournament-" (to be honest, I stopped there to take a minute to figure out what the hell they were referring to, cause there's no "Metropolitan Tournament". The Prefecturals?) "-and their "golden pair"-" (no, no quotation marks. Golden Pair.) "-in doubles-" (no duh. what, do they think that people think a pair could be in singles?) "-is forced to resort to an unusual formation.-" (the Australian Formation? It's unusual, but I wouldn't really say they were "forced to resort" to it...) "-Contains episodes 27-38.-" (St. Rudolph arc, right?) "-Special features include: original Japanese trailers and original Japanese opening and ending credits!" (NO. NO. NO. The original OP/ED shouldn't be "special features". If they're going to brag on the cover about the episodes being "uncut", the OP/ED should be fully intact! WTF~ Especially because they use the original opening and ending for Naruto boxed sets...I wouldn't mind as much (well I'd still hate it, cause the American PoT OP/ED are crap, but...) if they didn't say on the box "UNCUT". They say it's "uncut", but it's not- it's the exact same thing you see on Toonami/Toonami Jetstream- the American OP/ED, and the American title screen. Seriously, wtf? I was really hoping they'd use the original OP/ED...I wanna see Driving Myself and KEEP YOUR STYLE. DDDDD:)
Lolz, I needed something to rant over, and this was perfect. =D The English version of the anime is crap, and the manga's not too good either.

BUT ANYWAY
YAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY
I totally freaked out on one of the Bleach pages. For two reasons. The first being...
YAAAAAYYYY THE BLEACH WII GAME IS COMING OUT IN AMERICA
and a DS game that I've never heard of before.
I've actually really wanted to play the Wii game for a while, but I don't think there's a Freeloader for the Wii. This is great~ I'm really surprised though, it's way farther than the American anime is. Not that I'm complaining or anything.
The second thing is that they had a thing at the bottom of the page going all "SOUL REAPER ALL POINTS BULLETIN". It was a fake "warning note" or something. Pretty lame, but then...
THERE WERE PICTURES OF GRIMMJOW AND ULQUIORRA
@_____@
Wowwwww, the English manga is pretty close to where the Japanese manga is~


And then way later on in the magazine, they decided to make an announcement...
BLEACH IS BEING SERIALIZED IN SHOUNEN JUMP STARTING NEXT MONTH
YAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
YAYYYYYYYYYY
I think it's a good decision. Bleach is one of the top 3 Jump manga in Japan, and I'm so glad they're putting it in the magazine. I think they're starting from the Arrancar arc, so...

So now the only thing left that would make me uber happy would be if they put PoT in the magazine. 100% never gonna happen though. I always thought it was really popular in Japan, but it seems like it's been near the bottom of the Jump ToC lately. And it's not popular in America at all, so I'm not gonna get my hopes up.


By the way, I noticed something slightly amusing when I was putting away some of my manga the other day.
On the inside cover for Bleach volume 1, there was an ad for other Shounen Jump manga. The main one they were advertising...was Prince of Tennis volume 13.
So...well, both series have 20 volumes at the moment in America. Does that mean that in the time it took for Bleach to release 20 volumes, Prince of Tennis only released 7?
O___o
*goes off to ponder this thought*

Why is shipping so expensive? xD

I'm currently planning out yet another order...*sigh*
At the moment, this is what's in it:
Tennis no Oujisama Zenkoku Taikai Hen (Prince of Tennis National Tournament) vol. 3
Morning Musume - SEXY 8 BEAT (limited edition)
Cap to Bin - Thank You!! (limited release)

I have to get the Nationals DVD. It's uber expensive ($46.25 on Yesasia, $42.51 on CDJapan), but it's Golden Pair angst and it's my favorite episode in the entire OVA series, and maybe even the entire series in general, and it's really cute and amazing, and...I mean, it starts off with lots of Eiji angsting and Golden Pair love, and then it turns into Eiji being uber cute and amazing and more Golden Pair love. <33333 The episode has its own folder in My Pictures for screenshots- seriously, not many episodes do. Only the Golden Pair flashback episode (freshman Eiji = THE CUTEST THING EVER), the chibi episodes, the Prince of Bowling/Billiards/Volleyball episodes, and episode 142 (which happens to be another cute Eiji episode, but it's missing the angst that makes Zenkoku episode 4 so great), and this episode of course. This episode has everything from Eiji crying over Oishi to playing doubles in singles to self-rape...
For the record, every time I watch this episode I'm in tears by the time Eiji confronts Oishi in the flashbacks...yes, I cry over a tennis anime. >____> Shut up.
I wanna make a couple of animated GIFs from that episode, but sadly, VirtualDub doesn't work with .mp4 files. I dunno if I could do it with another program or what...
Lolz I'm gonna shut up about that episode now. I could probably rant on about it for like ever...
Then there's episode 5 of the OVA, which is also on this DVD. Honestly, I couldn't care less about that episode. It's mostly filler anyway. Except for the scene where Kaidou and Yagyuu switch places and play as each other. That scene's great, though it makes no sense whatsoever in the anime...


ANYWAY back on track.
Then there's Cap to Bin's Thank You!!. I didn't think too much of the song when I first heard it, but I love it at the moment~ <33333 Not to mention Eiji's like FRONT AND CENTER on the cover, and I'm planning on collecting all CDs involving Eiji anyway, so...
And then SEXY 8 BEAT. I'm still catching up with Morning Musume; I want their mini-album also but this order is really expensive already, and I have the money to buy it along with this stuff but my mom doesn't like it if I spend more than ~$100 on one order so I'll get it later.


I looked up all the items and added everything to my cart on both Yesasia and CD Japan...
CD Japan has cheaper prices for the items. It's great- the Tenipuri DVD's $46.25 on Yesasia but only $42.51 on CD Japan; SEXY 8 BEAT's $34.75 on Yesasia but only $30.60 on CD Japan, and Thank You!! is $9.25 on Yesasia but only $6.32 on CD Japan.
However...shipping is uber expensive on CD Japan. DDDDD: It ends up being more expensive to buy it on CD Japan...
Maybe I'm just used to Yesasia's free shipping. I dunno.
I apparently have a 500 yen coupon on CD Japan, and 200 frequent shopper points, so maybe if I use those, it'll be a bit less expensive...still though, I feel like I'm being ripped off to pay so much just for shipping. D:
So, I think I'm just gonna use Yesasia for this...I'll save the coupon and the frequent shopper points for stuff I can't get on Yesasia (meaning, more PoT character singles)...


Lolz, and I'm also getting some doujinshi. Doujinstar.com is having a sale where everything's $5, and shipping has a flat rate of $4 for more than 1 doujinshi...so I can't help myself. =P
4 doujinshi for $24...yaaay~

So I decided to take a look through my music in a different way today..., pt 2

Well, not really as much of a "part 2" as it is just a post for the pictures I said I'd take.




Yeah, that's all my music sorted by release date. Took a while. About half of them said the release date on the obi; the other half were overseas releases or something so I had to look up the release dates online. The first shelf is 1997-2005, and the other starts with Ayu's (miss)understood, which was released 2006.01.01, and goes through to Aqua Timez's ALONES, which was released 2007.08.01. =D




Lolz, and this is my music right before packing it up into crates to move into the new house. My mom and stepdad thought it was a waste of bubblewrap, but 1) it's not like they were using it anyway, the only other thing we'd have done with it is have fun popping it, but we can still do that, and 2) it's so not a waste, I'm very protective of my CDs and DVDs and everything. Especially import stuff. So I'd rather be safe than sorry...


I'm gonna go find the scanner tomorrow and maybe actually scan the music I got recently. It might still be packed away though...

Thursday, August 23, 2007

So I decided to take a look through my music in a different way today...

I just moved a few days ago, and my CDs were still sitting in a crate all bubblewrapped and nice and neat and everything, and I finally got around to putting them back on my shelf. Since I was pretty bored, plus I wanted to see what this would turn out like, I sorted my CDs by release date rather than by artist, and the results kinda surprised me. I was expecting most of my CDs to have been released between 2005-2007, considering I first got into j-pop in 2005. Surprisingly, the year that had the most CDs ended up being 2004. Turns out a lot of the Prince of Tennis music I've been buying recently was released in 2004...xD 6 singles and one of the soundtracks. Here's basically how it went down by year:
1 single (hitomi - problem) from 1997
1 single
(globe - still growin' up) from 1999
1 album
(Puffy - SPIKE) from 2000
3 singles
(Aozu - WHITE LINE, Morning Musume - Do it! Now, the brilliant green - Rainy days never stays), 4 albums (Do As Infinity - Do The Best, Puffy - An Illustrated History, Hamasaki Ayumi - I am..., Utada Hikaru - DEEP RIVER), and 1 soundtrack (Kingdom Hearts) from 2002
6 singles
(BoA - Rock With You, BoA - Shine We Are! / Earthsong, Every Little Thing - Grip!, Kikumaru Eiji - ONE, Koda Kumi - real Emotion / 1000 no Kotoba, Koda Kumi - COME WITH ME), 1 mini-album (Hamasaki Ayumi - Memorial address), 2 albums (Hello! Project - Pucchi Best 4, Puffy - NICE.), and 3 soundtracks (Final Fantasy X-2, NARUTO OST 1, Prince of Tennis OST 2) from 2003
15 singles
(Abe Natsumi - Koi no Telephone GOAL, BoA - Be the one, BoA - Merry-Chri, Goto Maki - Sayonara "Tomodachi ni wa Naritakunai no", Hamasaki Ayumi - Moments, Heartsdales - LOVE & JOY, Kaidou Kaoru - Sekai wa Kawaru, Kawamura Takashi - Asobi ni Ikanai ka?, Kikumaru Eiji - Come Together, Kikumaru Eiji - Kiku-chan no Souran Bushi, m-flo loves BoA - the Love Bug, Ooishi Shuuichirou - Honto no Kimochi, Otsuka Ai - Happy Days, Pull Tab to Kan - Wonderful days, UTADA - DEVIL INSIDE), 5 albums (Hamasaki Ayumi - MY STORY, Morning Musume - Ai no Dai 6 Kan, Shimatani Hitomi - Tsuioku+LOVE LETTER, Tamaki Nami - Greeting, UTADA - EXODUS), and 5 soundtracks (Puffy - HiHi Puffy AmiYumi, Best of Inu Yasha II, NARUTO Best Hit Collection, NARUTO OST 2, Prince of Tennis OST 3) from 2004
5 singles
(Hamasaki Ayumi - STEP you / is this LOVE?, Koda Kumi - Birthday Eve, Matsuura Aya - Ki ga Tsukeba Anata, Morning Musume - Chokkan 2 ~Nogashita Sakana wa Ookizo!~, UTADA - EXODUS '04), 7 albums (Amuro Namie - Queen of Hip-Pop, Do As Infinity - NEED YOUR LOVE, BoA - Girls On Top, Otsuka Ai - LOVE COOK, S.H.E - Once Upon A Time, Tamaki Nami - single collection vol. 1, Ishida Yoko - all of me), and 2 soundtracks (NANA movie, NARUTO OST 3) from 2005
10 singles
(Hearts Grow - Yura Yura, JUNE - Baby It's You / -other song that I can never remember the romaji for-, Koda Kumi - No Regret, m-flo loves Hinouchi Emi & Ryohei - Summer Time Love, Morning Musume - SEXY BOY ~Soyokaze ni Yorisotte~, Morning Musume - Ambitious! Yashinteki de Ii jan, Morning Musume - Aruiteru, Ooishi Shuuichirou & Kikumaru Eiji - Type wa D!, Oshitari Yuushi with Hyoutei Gakuen Chuu - Valentine Kiss, SABOTEN - Scenario), 5 albums (Hamasaki Ayumi - (miss)understood, Koda Kumi - BEST ~second session~, Morning Musume - Rainbow 7, NANA starring NAKASHIMA MIKA - THE END, Puffy - Splurge), and 3 soundtracks (BLEACH THE BEST, Kingdom Hearts II, NARUTO Best Hit Collection 2) from 2006
10 singles
(Aozu - Kakaeta Kiseki, Aqua Timez - ALONES, HOME MADE Kazoku - Nagareboshi ~Shooting Star~, Hoshimura Mai - Sakura Biyori, Morning Musume - Egao YES Nude, Morning Musume - Kanashimi Twilight, Morning Musume - Onna ni Sachi Are, nobodyknows+ - Hero's Come Back!!, Ore Ska Band - Tsumasaki, YUI - Rolling star) and 1 soundtrack (BLEACH BEAT COLLECTION THE BEST) from 2007

Some more observations (about my music in general, really):
I have too many soundtracks. *sigh* That doesn't even count the Prince of Tennis character singles.
I have a single by globe, a group that I don't even like. wtf.
Everything I have that was released this year is either related to anime or Morning Musume. Hmm.
I still really need to grab Morning Musume's latest album along with their mini-album, then I can start going back through and getting their older stuff. I have yet to decide whether I should work backwards and start with Iroppoi Jirettai or start from the beginning and go on a hunt for those old out-of-print 8cm singles. No, I'm not going to just get the rereleases, even though that'd be easier. I think I saw a few of the 8cm singles on eBay earlier...
I don't think that Tamaki Nami singles collection is official. I got it at PortCon this year...dunno why I grabbed it rather than something like Utada's Ultra Blue or something. I couldn't find a release date for it, so I stuck it in with the 2005 stuff since it had all her singles up through Heroine, which was released in 2005. Now that I take a closer look at it, it doesn't look all that official...great. *sigh* Oh well.
Everything I got at either Anime Boston, PortCon, or Tokyo Kid (the closest anime store) seems to be some sort of overseas version...I can't tell if they're bootlegs or legit overseas releases, like some of the earlier CDs I got off of Yesasia- I always used to go for the overseas versions cause they're cheaper. Hopefully the latter. I mean, that's 21 of my albums/soundtracks right there. o_o
Everything I have that was released in 2007 is some sort of first press/limited edition. Rolling star, Tsumasaki, Sakura Biyori, and ALONES all have a Bleach sticker attached to the obi. Hero's Come Back!! has some sort of Shippuuden Othello board, and I forget what Nagareboshi came with, but it came with some sort of first press bonus. The BLEACH BEAT COLLECTION THE BEST is the first press version, but I dunno if it came with anything special. All 3 Momusu singles were one of the limited editions- Egao YES Nude is the LE A version with a DVD, Onna ni Sachi Are is the LE B version with a photobook, and Kanashimi Twilight is supposed to be the LE B version, and it has the correct cover, but Amazon didn't send me the photobook or something weird like that. It still counts. =P The last CD, Aozu's Kakaeta Kiseki, is just teh uber limited release in general- almost all of the Tenipuri character singles are, the only exceptions being the Best of Seigaku/Rival Players series. I personally think they should at least give the OP/ED theme singles normal releases, but whatever...

Oh, for the record, I only counted the CDs I actually have on hand right now- meaning yes, there are two CDs on my list of CDs that aren't in here- Ao to Bin to Kan's Gather and GIGS' Flower, but those are still on their way to my house~
And I have the American releases of all my Puffy CDs, but I used the original Japanese release dates for this.

I'll post a pic of the finished product when I actually finish. At the moment I just have them sitting in piles sorted by year...

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Ongaku Gatas - Nari Hajimeta Koi no Bell

So I finally sat down and watched the PV of the song featuring Momusu graduates Yoshizawa Hitomi, Konno Asami, and Ishikawa Rika along with six girls I've never seen before in my life and one I vaguely recognize but I had to look up who she was (turns out it's Satoda Mai from Country Musume).
My first thought was, the PV's nice and everything, but there are barely any colors. At first I thought it was black and white, but not quite considering the girls themselves are still in color.
Then they started singing...and I'm so glad Yossi's already singing again. I love Yossi, and I was afraid she'd pull a Yasuda Kei/Yaguchi Mari and disappear from singing for a couple of years. (by the way, Mari needs to sing more. She's my favorite member of H!P, and it saddens me that she hasn't done anything in more than two years...)
And then there's Konno. Oh god. She's back. She never was my favorite Momusu member, but I was still really sad when she left Hello! Project. I mean, someone graduating Morning Musume, ok, at least she's still singing, but when you graduate from H!P in general...it's kinda the end, isn't it? At least, that's what I thought. Now that I look back at my blog, I never posted about Konno's comeback when it was first announced. Maybe I was really busy at that time or something...but whatever. It's great to see Konno back in action. She wasn't really a main member of Momusu, but I still kinda missed seeing her.
I'm not a review person when it comes to music/PVs, so all I'll say is this: I really like this song, and the music video's pretty nice. I really want this single now...I'll try to grab it next order I make, whenever that happens to be.
And maybe at some point I'll learn the names of the other six girls in this group. Are they Eggs? I honestly have no idea, I'll have to look them up later...

I get this feeling I own like virtually no H!P stuff...

I dunno, lately I've been really annoyed...I look at everyone else on the H!P blogosphere, and they're like preordering the limited edition of everything H!P coming out anytime soon and buying all this merchandise off eBay...and in comparison, I feel like I own basically nothing. And it's really annoying, considering I really love Morning Musume and H!P and I feel like I should be supporting them more and buying their stuff, but...
I mean, this is my H!P collection:
(I would have an accompanying picture, but I just moved yesterday and I don't really know where everything is (except for my CDs, I bubblewrapped those and put them all in a crate that's now at the foot of my bed)
* Abe Natsumi - Koi no Telephone GOAL (limited edition)
* Goto Maki - Sayonara "Tomodachi ni wa Naritakunai no" (limited edition)
* Hello! Project - Pucchi Best 4
* Matsuura Aya - Ki ga Tsukeba Anata (limited edition)
* Morning Musume - Do it! Now
* Morning Musume - Ai no Dai 6 Kan
* Morning Musume - Chokkan 2 ~Nogashita Sakana wa Ookiizo!~ (limited edition)
* Morning Musume - Rainbow 7 (limited edition)
* Morning Musume - SEXY BOY ~Soyokaze ni Yorisotte~ (limited edition)
* Morning Musume - Ambitious! Yashinteki de Ii Jan (limited edition)
* Morning Musume - Aruiteru (limited edition B)
* Morning Musume - Egao YES Nude (limited edition A)
* Morning Musume - Kanashimi Twilight (limited edition B...well, kinda. don't ask.)
* Morning Musume - Onna ni Sachi Are (limited edition B)
And then I also have the Morning Musume 2006 Calendar and a mini figure of Ishikawa Rika that I got at Anime Boston in 2006...
and that's it.
There's so much more stuff that I want, merchandise on eBay I've had my eye on for a while (one of my goals is to get a MM/H!P tour t-shirt), but I just don't have the money...*sigh* And I keep planning on buying a ton more stuff, but then I get distracted by something else (like at the moment, the Prince of Tennis CDs)...I know my next order will definitely include Morning Musume's SEXY 8 BEAT and the 7.5 mini-album, because I feel like I should at least do what I can and keep up with the Momusu releases.
But at the same time I really really wanna get the limited edition of the Ongaku Gatas single, and I want to get Berryz's new album, and I wanna get v-u-den's Koisuru Angel Heart, and then there's countless old singles and albums that I'd really really love to have. T___T And that's just H!P stuff! I still need to order Eiji's character album (too bad I missed the limited edition by a couple years) along with his Best of Seigaku release 'Tsubasa ni Natte' so I can complete my collection of Eiji songs, and I really want Arashi's album Time, and then of course there's the latest Bleach and Naruto endings...and I really have to grab a copy of Cap to Bin's Thank You!!, and Megane's Manatsu no Megane's, and...seriously, I could go on forever. Maybe I should make a wishlist or something. Hmm.
Damn, I wish I had friends who liked j-pop and stuff so I could actually get what I really really want for my birthday. I've figured out that j-pop is totally out of the question in general, unless it's like Puffy (I have their entire US discography through birthday/Christmas presents from relatives...and I don't even really like them all that much...*sigh*)...so then I tried just kinda asking for money last year, but people don't give money for presents all that much and so I ended up getting a bunch of crap from my aunts/uncles/cousins. Except for Puffy's album Splurge. Even though I'd totally rather have something Momusu or Ayu or something, at least it's close?
Sigh. At least there's one relative that understands that she knows nothing about what I want. THANK YOU GRANDMA FOR THE $100 (plus my age, so like last year I got $114) EVERY YEAR SO I CAN BUY WHAT I REALLY WANT! 8DDD
Now to sit and wait until December 16th...

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Melon Kinenbi - Onegai Miwaku no Target PV

I absolutely love this song. Really, I'm not into Melon Kinenbi that much, but when I first heard this song a while back, I fell in love~~ Probably the first Melon Kinenbi song I really like~ (EDIT: wait wait wait that's not true, I really like This is Unmei...totally forgot that was a Melon Kinenbi song)
So when I heard this song was finally getting a major release, I was like "zomgg uber great now I can get it"
We~ll...
The PV came out recently (today? I dunno), and I sat down and watched it- and within the first 10 seconds I was on the floor laughing.
Dohhh UP! link (I'll add a Youtube video for it once I find it uploaded there)

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
*deeeeaadddd*

It's absolutely hilarious~
except for the parts where it's like the cover of the single, but with only the lips moving, cause that's somewhat creepy~

I mean, wtffffff...but really, this is really funny...xDDDDD
I'm seriously like at a loss for words at the moment, though I find myself going back to rewatch it...

Sunday, August 19, 2007

A bit more info on the Prince of Tennis Chinese TV drama

YAY

This is gonna be great~
Kinda a short post over on IKIMASSHOI, but it gives one thing left out of the original post I found out about this from- some general dates. In case you're too lazy to read, they're planning to begin shooting in October, and it'll start airing next June. I can wait that long~

I'm still really excited about this, I've never really watched a TV drama (in any language, really) so this is kinda new to me...
I hope even more info comes out soon, and maybe more pics? xDD



Oh, and I know I said I'd scan my new CDs after Cape Cod. However, I'm moving in two days. It shouldn't affect my internet or anything, but I don't exactly know what's going to happen with the scanner and stuff. >_< As soon as possible, I swear~

Saturday, August 18, 2007

I am sufficiently surprised (PoT CHAPTER 354 SPOILERS)

Well, I came back from Cape Cod today, and I immediately grabbed Prince of Tennis chapter 354 from MangaHelpers. Instead of a download link, it linked to the scanlator's website, which said that there was a huge surprise in the chapter...
...and after reading the chapter, I am sufficiently surprised. By both the main surprise of the chapter, and Rikkai's choice for Doubles 2...


Lolz, remember the rant I made a week and a half ago or so? This one?
Well, in it, I was speculating about the doubles pairs for Rikkaidai...
"so maybe they'll switch the pairs around and we'll get Yagyuu/Niou vs Inui/Kaidou and Jackal/Marui vs Ooishi/Eiji, or maybe Konomi will come up with a totally new doubles pair like Yanagi/Kirihara and totally surprise us, that'd actually be pretty fun"


Well guess what?
lol manga panel

Bwahahaha, yayyyyyy I totally called the Yanagi/Kirihara thing~
Well, that leaves Niou, Yagyuu, Marui, Jackal, and Yukimura for the rest of the matches. Yukimura's obviously singles one. I bet Marui and Jackal are doubles 1, it really doesn't seem to me like either would play singles, though then again, Konomi could surprise us...
I dunno who'll play singles 2. Yagyuu? I think he played singles in Rikkai's semifinal match, but I don't quite remember...well, we'll see now, won't we?


And then the main surprise of the chapter.
Ryoma's uber random amnesia. I think I speak for many of us when I say this:
wtffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
Uber random plot twist? Well, at least it kinda explains why Ryoma was missing? xD
I really don't know how to react to that...just wtf, really
oh, and on that page where he's smiling, his smile looks like Fuji. xD

Well, guess we just have to hope that his memory returns by singles 1 so he can sufficiently pwn Yukimura, because there's no way the Nationals is ending before Ryoma even plays~

Monday, August 13, 2007

Prince of Tennis Chinese TV drama?!?

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Here's the info

Hooly crap this is gonna be great~
Live-action CANON, as opposed to the movie which just failed in general. (Which I still haven't watched fully, but the lack of character development and stuff that doesn't revolve around Ryoma made me turn it off right around Ryoma vs Shinji. It's too far away from canon for me...I'll probably watch it if I get bored later this week.) And the musicals don't count.
Even if it is in Chinese, I can handle that. As long as it follows canon material I'll know what's going on. Hopefully some subbing group will pick it up, which would be even better.
I wonder how far it's going to go? Since they have actors for Atobe, Oshitari, and Gakuto, I bet it'll go through to the Hyoutei arc, at least. I wish it'd go through the Rikkaidai arc, though that looks pretty unlikely at the moment. I REALLY REALLY REALLY wanna see Rikkaidai canon material. The lack of canon in the Rikkaidai arc in the anime made me UBER SAD. T_______T Seriously, the only match that was the same was Inui vs Renji...I wanna see Eiji have a concussion and Niou stealing his line ("Zannen, munen, mata raishuu~") and then I wanna see Fuji go blind and fail until he can randomly feel the presence of the ball and then I wanna see Sanada's FuuRinKaZan because for no real reason, they CUT all that stuff when they turned it into the anime and replaced it with things such as Yagyuu playing golf and Niou reading Eiji's random "habit" and then Fuji hurting Kirihara and then Ryoma's "Cyclone Smash" and Sanada's "Invisible Swing" (which brings me to another point, Sanada vs Tezuka in the Nationals Final is going to be fucked up so badly considering Sanada doesn't have the FuuRinKa(In)Zan(Rai) in the anime)
*dies*
If only they'd pull something like Bleach and have a special OVA that animates the canon material...
BUT ANYWAY

I don't know anything about Chinese dramas or music or anything, and I'm not even going to pretend I do. But I like most of the actors that they chose. =) I'd like to see larger pictures, but...well, I don't mind waiting until this airs. I can't waaaaiiit until it does~ wonder when it's gonna be? Hopefully soon~ and hopefully it'll get put onto the internet and subbed quickly. This looks amazing~
to be honest, I've been wondering what the Chinese version was like for a while. They write the character names in the same kanji, but they're not pronounced the same in Chinese, right? And do they keep the English move names in English, or do they translate them? Lolz, I guess I'll find out the answers to these questions once this thing airs~

Friday, August 10, 2007

So I know I said I wouldn't order through Amazon again after what happened last time, but...

...they had Oshitari's Valentine Kiss single, and I just couldn't resist. xD Considering the only version still available on Yesasia is Sanada's, and none are still available on CD Japan...I basically jumped at the chance to get Oshitari's. xD
I'm not technically ordering from Amazon anyway, just through it...for every item in my cart, I'm using the "buy used & new" option so it's not actually coming from Amazon. It's way cheaper this way too. xD
So this is exactly what I'm getting:
Aozu (Echizen Ryoma, Fuji Shuusuke, Tezuka Kunimitsu, Ooishi Shuuichirou) - Kakaeta Kiseki (Prince of Tennis National Tournament OVA 2nd opening)
Ao to Bin to Kan (Atobe Keigo, Sanada Genichirou, Oshitari Yuushi, Kikumaru Eiji, Sengoku Kiyosumi, Fuji Shuusuke, Kirihara Akaya, Echizen Ryoma) - Gather
GIGS
(Echizen Ryoma, Tezuka Kunimitsu, Atobe Keigo, Sanada Genichirou) - Flower -Saki Midareshi Hana- (Prince of Tennis National Tournament OVA 1st opening)
Kikumaru Eiji - ONE
Oshitari Yuushi - Valentine Kiss
Prince of Tennis Box Set 2


After I get Kakaeta Kiseki and Flower, the only seiyuu OP/ED songs left to get are Fujori (by Hyoutei Eternity; the second OVA ending) and Thank You!! (by Cap to Bin; the third OVA ending)...
ONE is by Eiji, which means I HAVE to get it, which means that all that's left for my Eiji solo collection is his album Hello! and his Best of Seigaku single, Tsubasa ni Natte. But neither of those are limited releases, so I think I'm gonna put those off for now while I go through and get some limited stuff.
As for why I bought Gather...well, it's the JUNIOR SENBATSU TEAM of course. xD Fuck the fact that that was all filler, it has EIJI in it (which made me UBER UBER HAPPY when they added Eiji to the team because I didn't think Eiji would make it on the team in a million years) and it has KIRIHARA in it (well, it's not Kirihara I care about, it's his seiyuu Morikubo Shoutaro who is AMAZING) and having both of them in the SAME SONG is uber uber amazing. WHICH IS WHY I NEED TO FIND DOWNLOADS OF EVERYTHING RELEASED BY THE DUO HEART-BEAT BECAUSE IT'S BOTH OF THEIR SEIYUU. *dies* (even though Eiji's seiyuu sounds nothing like Eiji when he's not actually trying to sing as Eiji.) I really like the song anyway. xD
And last but not least, Valentine Kiss. Hmm, I wonder if anyone out there in the j-pop blogosphere knows about the '80's song Valentine Kiss by some member of Onyanko Club? I hadn't heard of it until recently, when I was looking at the Lucky Star Wikipedia page to see the list of endings and on the talk page someone mentioned something about Valentine Kiss (one of the endings) being used as a Prince of Tennis song. That immediately got me interested, so I looked it up. Turns out, the song has been covered by 5 different Prince of Tennis seiyuu on 7 different releases. On Valentine's Day 2004, Atobe released a single containing a cover of Valentine Kiss. In 2005, it was Oshitari who released the Valentine Kiss single. In 2006, they both released Valentine Kiss singles...I haven't listened to them all yet, I don't know if they were re-releases or actually sung differently or whatever. In 2007, it was Sanada from Rikkaidai who released a Valentine Kiss single. Also, Shishido sung a cover of it as a bonus track on his album, and Ooishi did the same for his album.
The version on Amazon is Oshitari's 2006 version...the only other version I found was Sanada's, which I can still get on Yesasia so I'll grab it later.
Oh, and then I guess there's the 2nd PoT box set. I need to watch the dub. I haven't watched it since they took it off the air back in June...I wanna start from the beginning and I don't think you can do that on Toonami Jetstream. To be honest, from what I remember of the dub, it absolutely sucked, but whatever. Really, if I can handle Dub Piece I can handle this. I think.

I noticed the lack of non-PoT stuff in this, and I swear I'll make it up next order, which at the moment I think will consist of...Arashi's latest album Time, Morning Musume's SEXY 8 BEAT (limited edition of course), and Morning Musume's 7.5 Fuyu Fuyu Morning Musume Mini or w/e it's called (limited edition for that too). Probably Manatsu no Megane's, by Megane's (I don't even know how to make "Megane's" possessive, I seriously doubt it'd be "Megane's's") and Cap to Bin's Thank You!! too (I would actually get those in this order, but there aren't any "buy used & new" options for either single and I don't quite trust Amazon with import CDs anymore), and if I have the money maybe the Ongaku Gatas single. The limited edition probably, because I like the cover a lot better. xD
But that'll have to wait until later.
(or I might buy the 3rd PoT OVA DVD. I just got waaaaayyy too tempted to get it when I found it on CD Japan while looking for the Tenimyu DVDs...I mean, it's Eiji, and Golden Pair angst, not to mention it's the OVA series so the animation quality is great and everything...)



Anyway, I'm heading off to Cape Cod tomorrow morning (against my will) for a week with no TV and no internet, but I'm bringing the PS2 down along with a couple of *coughcoughillegallydownloadedcoughcough* Tenipuri games (I have Doki Doki Survival Secret, Doki Doki Survival Mystic, Gakuensai no Oujisama, and Smash Hit! 2- the first three being dating sims and the last being just a tennis game) and Narutimate Accel to hopefully keep me busy. (lolz, for the record I just recently found out you can download PS2 games and burn them onto DVDs, and I've kinda been abusing that power I guess...) That in addition to summer reading and a couple of episodes of Shippuuden plus about 8 episodes of Bleach plus all of Gintama plus all of Lucky Star...well, I don't think I'll be too bored while hanging out in the cottage. xD

I really was expecting to scan and upload the CDs from my most recent order, but my mom's computer wasn't hooked up to the scanner and every time I remember to ask her, she's not in the house. >____< And now I don't have enough time...sorry, I'll get those up as soon as I get back~


On a total side note, there's no Jump this week. Which makes me UBER UBER SAD because I wanted to at the very least find out who's playing doubles 2 before I get sent off to Cape Cod and cut off from the world for a week. T________T

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

[random rant] oh so close to being caught up with PoT (CHAPTER 353 SPOILERS)

Lolz, I just needed somewhere to type all my thoughts out randomly without talking specifically to someone. My head's been full of Tenipuri stuff lately and it's starting to bug me, cause no one pays attention to what I say at the moment cause Emily doesn't like Tenipuri, Katie ignores me if I type anything more than like two sentences because she'll think it's too much to read, and Sarah (the only one who I think would actually care) is off at camp~
Basically my thoughts on both the current manga arc and PoT's status in America...I just wrote down whatever I thought of as it came to mind, and it's obviously not the nicest thing to read in terms of format and style, but it's not like I really care...



(oh so close to being caught up with PoT...)
...but not quite there yet, cause you see the issue is that I can only find the first two episodes of the Nationals Semifinals subbed in Chinese, and I watched the first episode but it's boring without subs so I think I'll leave the other episode until later when I actually get motivated to care about Fuji vs Shiraishi
maybe it's just cause I'm still hung up over Tezuka vs Sanada where TEZUKA LOST ZOOOOMMMG which is NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN unless it's to RYOMA but he LOST to SANADA OF ALL PEOPLE and they decided to put RYOMA against YUKIMURA which is like BAD IDEA considering it comes down to a fucking FRESHMAN (I mean, even if he is their super freshman, there's seriously a limit on how overpowered he can be) vs the fucking CAPTAIN (and best player like EVER) OF RIKKAIDAI but we all know that after doubles 2, singles 2, and doubles 1, two of them will win and one will lose so it'll come down to Ryoma vs Yukimura for the deciding match to see which team wins the Nationals and we ALL KNOW that Ryoma will win so Seigaku will win the Nationals and the series will end *TEARTEAR*
cause it'd make SO MUCH MORE SENSE to put FUJI against Yukimura (actually the best would have been TEZUKA but for some reason he ended up in SINGLES 3 even though he's the BEST PLAYER ON THE TEAM) instead of RYOMA but Fuji isn't the main character now, is he
we have yet to see Yukimura play since he's been in the HOSPITAL the whole time (being raped by a plant according to a fanfic I read =D) but we know he can do the MUGA NO KYOUCHI and he's the CAPTAIN OF RIKKAIDAI and he's BETTER THAN SANADA AND YANAGI AND EVERYONE ELSE FROM RIKKAIDAI so we know he's UBER POWERFUL so Ryoma's gonna have to pull some new moves out to beat him and add to his uber move collection
that is if he even comes in time for the match, that'd actually be really funny if he totally missed his match due to being wherever the hell he is right now while Momo and Atobe and Oshitari are looking for him
I figure since Ryuuzaki let Momo run off and look for Ryoma that means he's one of the two subs this round because I don't think she'd take the chance of losing another player and missing another match, and the other sub is obviously Taka because of his uber injuries from his last match which was really unrealistic, and when you figure that out it's pretty easy to figure the rest of the matches out, Inui and Kaidou have to be in doubles 2 because there aren't really any other good combinations with the others except the Golden Pair of course but obviously they're in doubles 1, and they should win somehow because of their goal to become "Nationals #1!", and if Inui and Kaidou are in doubles 2 and Ooishi and Eiji are in doubles 1 and of course Ryoma's in singles 1 that leaves Fuji for singles 2
I can't figure out who Rikkai's playing in their lineup though because of all the plot crap, like I really doubt Fuji's gonna play Kirihara again and stuff like that, cause that wouldn't really be as interesting, and since Sanada was in singles 3 and Yukimura's obviously in singles 1 I figure singles 2 will be Yanagi cause he's the last of the "3 demons of Rikkai" or w/e the hell they're called, but then we have the two doubles pairs and if we leave them the same then we're gonna end up with Yagyuu/Niou vs Ooishi/Eiji and that'll be boring, unless the anime of it includes the concussion that was SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN the first time but they cut it out for some odd reason along with like all of the good stuff from all the Rikkai matches in the manga like Fuji going blind and stuff like that
so maybe they'll switch the pairs around and we'll get Yagyuu/Niou vs Inui/Kaidou and Jackal/Marui vs Ooishi/Eiji, or maybe Konomi will come up with a totally new doubles pair like Yanagi/Kirihara and totally surprise us, that'd actually be pretty fun
well I bet we'll see Jirou as long as Marui plays, and that's always good cause JIROU = <333333333333333333333333


so I was thinking about Shounen Jump today and I was thinking that I wished PoT would be on the cover of an American Shounen Jump issue because sometimes non-serialized manga get on the cover like Bleach, but in order for PoT to get on the cover something important would have to happen like the movie coming out or the anime starting up again or something and then I realized that no one cares about PoT in America
it's really sad cause it's a great anime/manga and I think it could have done really well if they did it right, but they didn't and that's the problem
the manga's good, though there are some crappy changes like everyone calling everyone by their first names (no one should call Tezuka "Kunimitsu" except his family, seriously it's just weird to see the regulars call him that) it was fine, but manga isn't really as popular in the US and it wouldn't become popular with just the manga
but then the anime came over and Viz killed it, first of all they had the crappy dub with the uber uber uber crappy voices and everything else was good but the voices can ruin an anime, and they definitely did this time, I mean Eiji's supposed to sound hyper and Fuji's supposed to sound like a girl and everything else, so they totally killed the voices, and then they put it on Toonami Jetstream at first and that wasn't that good of an idea because I really don't think it's that popular, but then they put it on TV which was a good move but then they killed it by SKIPPING LIKE HALF THE EPISODES FOR NO REAL REASON, and I'm sure that confused dub-only watchers who probably had no idea what was going on, and I can understand why they'd want to get farther along in the series faster because the series starts out kinda ehhh and gets waay better later on, but skipping episodes is not the way to go, and so then they finally restarted it from the very beginning but then they took it off the air for good before they got to the good episodes!
so now people have to buy the DVDs to watch it and I don't think it's really attracting any new fans by doing that because if I was someone who only watched dub anime I certainly wouldn't want to spend like $40 on a DVD that I'm not even sure I'm gonna like and it's especially not good because they don't even release separate DVDs, only box sets, and I think that's a turn-off for people because whyyy would they want to buy a box set for an anime they're not even sure that they're going to like
or they could watch it on Toonami Jetstream, but that sucks and I don't think they keep the earlier episodes on so if you didn't see the beginning you're screwed and you'll have no idea what's going on especially because I hear they're about to hit the Yamabuki arc and by this point you don't randomly start watching in the middle, you just don't
and btw I really wanna know what Dan's gonna be like in the dub because it's DAN for god's sake and they can't keep "desu" so how else are they gonna keep his weird speech habit, which reminds me I need to see the rest of the dub in general, cause I'm interested in how they're gonna keep "daa~ne~" and the whole "duck" reference cause that doesn't work unless they dub him to say like "quack" or w/e and if they do that I'll shoot the people who came up with that crappy idea
not to mention I don't know/remember any of the voices besides the Seigaku regulars, so I gotta see how crappy the other voices are
oh dear lord I CANNOT wait until we get to Davide from Rokkaku, how the hell are they gonna work in all his puns in English
actually the manga's already that far but I'm not, I'm only up to volume 8 in the English version but I've been buying a few everytime I get the chance so I'll catch up soon, they're already at Eiji's seal step! yaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy
I forget if that's when Eiji plays Rokkaku or Rikkaidai so I don't exactly know how far the English manga is but whatever, not like it really makes any difference, Eiji's amazing and uber great yayyyyyyy
ok I think I'm finally out of things to say

[/rant]


Oh, and completely random, but virtual cookies to anyone who spots what's wrong in this manga page. xD I didn't notice it until someone told me...

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

[Download] Aqua Timez - ALONES

Ahh, this is finally out. =) Feels like it's been forever since the first episode of Bleach that used this opening...since the first time I heard it, I wanted to hear the full song.

I downloaded this from Jpopsuki about 20 minutes ago...it's a 320kbps rip, apparently from Nipponsei. Since I'm still seeding it, I just zipped it without changing anything. I think the tags are in the original Japanese, while the filenames are romanized. There's a 500x500 cover, and two .txt files too...

Tracklist:
01. ALONES
02. 暁 (Akatsuki)
03. Mr.ロードランナー(DJ Mass'Skate Sonic* Remix)(Mr. Roadrunner (DJ Mass'Skate Sonic* Remix))
04. ALONES (instrumental)


Download~ (btw, MegaUpload has decided for some odd reason that I know enough Japanese to navigate their Japanese site. I have no idea why, but all MegaUpload pages redirect me to the same page but in Japanese...>______< At first I blamed it on the fact that I'm at a Japanese school and everything at the moment, but then I remembered that I was using the English site last week here...)

So, as I said before, I'm not a review person. But I'll try to give a bit of thought on each track...?
ALONES is the title track, and I'm absolutely in love with this song~ The full version is great, and unlike a certain other recent anime song (>_> Hero's Come Back!!...) it's just as good as the TV size. I didn't really pay any attention to Aqua Timez before this song...I just kinda ignored their releases except for the Bleach movie theme (which I didn't really like...). But hearing ALONES made me at least pay a bit more attention to their releases...I downloaded their recent single Shiori, and I really like it. =D There's one part around the middle of this song that I think doesn't really fit with the rest of the song, but it's not that bad or anything...
Akatsuki: ok, the name made me slightly giggle. Which makes no sense, cause it's not like this is related to Naruto or anything, so it means absolutely nothing that Akatsuki is also the name of the bad guys in Naruto. >____> I think this song is ok...I don't like it as much as ALONES, but I tend to think that way about most b-sides.
Mr. Roadrunner (DJ Mass'Skate Sonic* Remix)...well, it's a remix. Aaand I've never heard the original song. >___> I'm not a huge fan of remixes in general, and since I haven't heard the original yet...I kinda skipped this song. xD;
ALONES (instrumental) is...instrumental-ish...and there really isn't anything to say about it...being an instrumental and all...except that I hate when songs start out with vocals right away without an instrumental intro because whenever I try to sing them I always come in late and it screws everything up. >_______> This happens to be one of those songs. It's always the good songs, the ones I might possibly want to sing in public, but I can't because of this...


Anyway, the order with this single (and Onna ni Sachi Are limited edition B, and Egao YES Nude limited edition A) shipped yesterday, so it should come sometime next week...unlike Onna ni Sachi Are, this already came in 320kbps so I'll just upload the scans once it arrives.