Friday, December 14, 2007

Recent purchases

It took us 4 hours to get home yesterday from my school, which usually only takes one...and it was uber dangerous, too. D: I love snow, but not when I'm trying to get home on the highway...I got uber bored, so I ended up romanizing lyrics to some Prince of Tennis songs I had lyric scans for on my laptop. I would have done j-pop songs instead, but the only scans I had were for the Prince of Tennis ending singles WHITE LINE and Wonderful days. xD; I'll post the romanizations later...
Anyway, I think the two packages sitting on my bed when I got home actually kinda made up for the long drive. 8D

I love Kinokuniya. I used to get pissed because there isn't one nearby where I live, but I ordered Prince of Tennis volume 40 and the 40.5 Fanbook on Saturday, and it's already here! 8D I'm so used to Yesasia which takes forever to ship, so...I think in the future I should use Kinokuniya to buy books and stuff, otherwise they'll slow down Yesasia orders like it did with my latest order. >> Sadly, this strategy doesn't work with Hello! Project photobooks. I checked it out when I went to make the order with the Tenipuri books, and you can't get them from the New York stores. It redirects me to their Japan store site instead, which a) I can't navigate very well and b) the shipping would be hell anyway, and take a while. But Kinokuniya is good for manga, so...xD
And then, I FINALLY got my Yesasia order that I placed over a month ago. I'm still pissed that it took so long- it really should have shipped out once Mikan was released. It's all because Sket Dance took so long...but I think it was worth it. Three copies of Mikan (haha, I know, I'm an uber crazy fan), Shouri no BIG WAVE!! limited, Sket Dance volume 1, and the H!P 2007 Winter Live DVD Set.



First up, the three copies of Mikan. I love this song so much. xD Which is part of the reason I bought all three editions. The other part is because there were special photocards in each one, and I love stuff like that. xD
I'd share some more pics of the booklets and limited photobook and stuff, but I'm going to scan these later today, which is even better! 8D
And now...which photocards did I get??
SUSPENSE! xD











Risa, Koharu, and Sayumi.
If I could have chosen which I got, I would have chosen Reina, Junjun, and Risa, my current three favorite members. (or the group card, which I totally didn't know existed until like five minutes ago...?) I absolutely LOVE Reina, and I love how she looks in the promo pics for this single! She has some really nice shots in the limited photobook- I love her outfit and her hair and like EVERYTHING! @_@ Sadly, luck was not really on my side when I opened these last night.
I'm really happy I got Risa, though. =) She's my second favorite member, and I like her photocard.
Sayumi's cute too- she's not one of my favorite members, but I like her appearance in this single, so I'm fine with getting her card.
Koharu, however...don't get me wrong, I like Koharu, but...I don't really like her here. I just don't think she looks that good- and honestly, she's not very high on my member ranking, so...



Next up is the limited edition of Shouri no BIG WAVE!!, which came with a photobook. I actually had no idea it had a photobook until I opened it up and it came out...xD I totally never saw anywhere just what the limited edition actually had in it.
I love this song- it's really cute and upbeat, and the Engrish makes me laugh a bit. Though, as much as I love this song, I think I've had enough "OKEY-DOKEY!"s for a while. @_@
The photobook has some pictures of the four girls involved in this single- the two Momusu, Risa and Aika, and the two C-ute members, Nakajima Saki and Okai Chisato. Aika's really cute. xD And, I'm sorry, I still don't really know who Nakajima and Okai are. I had to look them up to find out which group they're in. ;-; I seriously need to get my act together and learn the names of all the H!P Kids already...


Then there's the H!P 2007 Winter Live DVD Box. I feel like such an uber crazy fan having this...it cost $100, but I think it's worth it- three concerts and a bonus backstage disc. It's my first H!P concert I've actually bought- I've thought about buying some other concerts in the past, but turned them down in favor of more music. I can't wait to sit down and have an H!P concert marathon...xD
What I really like about H!P concerts is that unlike concerts by a solo artist or a normal group (lol, as in like, one that stays the same rather than constantly changing), there's always new groups of people singing an old song. Like current Morning Musume singing a song like LOVE Machine- I love always being able to hear different people sing older songs like that. Compare that to a concert by someone like BoA- you don't really hear anything new when she sings her older songs, because it's still the same person singing it- just live instead of a studio recording.
Now if only they'd record some of these new versions in the studio and release them separately...xD


Last but not least, there's the three manga I ordered. Sket Dance 1, Prince of Tennis 40, and Prince of Tennis 40.5.
Sket Dance is a new manga in Shounen Jump, and it currently has 21 chapters. It's a random school comedy manga, and it's really funny. Most new manga hasn't been doing so well in Jump lately, but I hope Sket Dance survives- it's really cool and funny, definitely one of my favorite series in the magazine.

Prince of Tennis 40...oh this is so much crack. xD The title of the volume is "The Prince who Forgot Tennis"...you really wouldn't think there would be this much crack in a tennis manga, but there seriously is. Basically this volume starts out in the middle of the National Tournament finals with Tezuka's arm being UBER DEAD (xD) and Sanada winning...then Ryouma comes back with Momo, Atobe, and Oshitari (because, see, Ryouma didn't show up to the finals, so Atobe WITH HIS HANDY HELICOPTER THAT HE JUST SO HAPPENS TO HAVE AT THE TOURNAMENT takes Oshitari and Momo to go find Ryouma. Who knows why Oshitari went, he's absolutely pointless), and the rest of the team is uber excited ONLY TO FIND OUT THAT RYOUMA HAS AMNESIA AND DOESN'T REMEMBER TENNIS! DUN-DUN-DUN
Then Inui and Kaidou play doubles against Yanagi and Kirihara, and Inui gets uber beaten up and basically dies in the middle of the court after stopping Kaidou from going into devil mode. Which is an uber scary sight that I hope I never have to see again, btw.
I know, wtf, people actually can get sent to the hospital for playing TENNIS?
Inui wakes up, he has UBER UBER BANDAGES WRAPPED AROUND HIS ENTIRE BODY (ahahaha I love that panel), and then it switches to Fuji vs Niou.
Niou, with his Illusion or w/e it's called, apparently can turn into Tezuka. I DON'T KNOW HOW IT WORKS EITHER. I mean, he's not just using Tezuka's moves, Konomi's actually DRAWING TEZUKA instead of Niou. And then it turns out that, ZOMG KONOMI PUT AN ANIME FILLER EPISODE IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS MATCH FOR A FLASHBACK, and Fuji played Tezuka as a freshman. Angst happens. Then the volume ends.

40.5 is not, as you may think, half of a volume. xD It's the new fanbook, taking after 10.5 and 20.5 (no, it's not that they don't know how to count...30.5 was an artbook rather than a fanbook.). It has tons of information on all the players, and tons of other interesting pages that I'm sure would be much more interesting for me if I could understand any of it. Some of my favorite facts:
-Marui's favorite music is ORANGE RANGE. That's some good taste right there, huh? xD I started skimming to see if anyone else mentioned specific bands, but I got bored after getting halfway through and put it down. Eiji apparently loves idol groups, but he didn't specify H!P. I bet he has a collection somewhere, though. xD
-Ooishi's special skill outside of tennis is that he's able to tell whether a baby chick is a boy or a girl. Wtf, Ooishi. That's weird.
-Jirou carries Marui's wristband in his bag. STALKER
-Sanada carries around the "Sanada Family Rock". xDDDDD oh Sanada. A rock?? Why does his family even have a 'family rock' in the first place??



Haha, look at Inui. xD Who knows why he still wears his glasses. Can he even see with all those bandages? xD
(oh, and Koharu and Yuuji are there too- they hold the honor of being the ONLY EXPLICITLY STATED CANON GAY COUPLE in the series. <33 Now if only Konomi would just admit that the Golden Pair has sex behind the scenes...xD)



So, there we go. Scans and lyrics should be posted soon.

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