Between Linux and Anime

Winter 2012 Brainmarks!

On February 7, 2012

At last! And I can even blame my lateness on BRS, who only just aired.

What are brainmarks? FAQ follows for those who need it:

Spoilered: What are brainmarks?	Select Show
Q: Wait wha? This is basically me jumping on the season preview/season impression posts bandwagon that basically contains just about every other aniblogger except me. Since I’m actually checking out the entire spectrum of shows with my housemate nowadays I figured it’s finally time. Q: …”Brainmarks”? Picture the entire season’s offerings swirling around in a state of interminable chaos in your feral brain. Now picture fishing a number of shows out of that mess and pinning it up neatly – marking them for further exploration and investigation. That’s making brainmarks, and that’s what this post does for you. As a bonus I even rank them. And yes, I like inventing words (remember photoogling?). Q: Aren’t you just jelly about Blogsuki’s aptly named “Thin-slicing” posts? Why not at all. Whoever gave you that idea? whistle Q: Uh okay. So basically any show that appears here is great, and any that doesn’t sucks? Well, no- maybe. Lousy shows obviously won’t show up here, but I may give shows that use mostly recycled material/strategies a pass as well, even if they are relatively well done and entertaining. Conversely, not so well executed shows that do something interesting or that show potential for interesting development may show up, but there is of course no guarantee those won’t go quickly to the shitpits. Basically the most relevant metric here is “potential interestingness”. Q: Jason moofang’s fuzzy definition of interestingness you mean Yes. Q: Shouldn’t this really be called “Jason moofang’s guttural nearly-arbitrary ranking of nearly arbitrarily selected shows” then? No- well… … Fine, be that way.

Spoilered: What are brainmarks?

Not everyone seems to agree, but as far as I can tell Winter is a fairly lacklustre season, coming in the wake of a comparatively awesome Fall. Still, that doesn’t quite mean that there is nothing worth watching, and as usual we’re here to do a little ranked enumeration of the noteworthy stuff.

7 brainmarks this season! Hit the jump and we’re off!

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Anisong of the Season: Oath Sign

By Jason "moofang"

On January 22, 2012

In Anisong, Fate/Zero

So I decided to resurrect Anisong of the Season. Fall 2011 was an overall pretty awesome season with plenty of great music. It felt like almost every show had an OP, ED or both worth sitting through – Tamayura, Last Exile, Chihayafuru, Guilty Crown, Mirai Nikki, even the idolm@ster songs got better in the second half. So I was left with the happy problem of actually being spoilt for choice for Anisong of the Season, in contrast with the season before where I basically just gave up because I didn’t particularly like anything.

In the end from among my favorites of the season (Which included tracks like Memoria of Fate/Zero, Starboard of Last Exile) I chose Oath Sign, the ringing, beating OP for Fate/Zero. Fate/Zero was to me the best show of Fall 2011, head and shoulders and waist, and Oath Sign just had that certain “just right” quality to get you into the correct mood for the show every time, almost on the level of what Bouken Desho Desho did for the original Haruhi. The spectacular animation sequence that accompanied it and LiSA’s rough-and-raw rock-out style only added to the awesome. Loved it, love it. I only hope that the new OP that would in all likelihood surface for the next half would be as awesome. It’ll be a long wait :( Especially since, Nisemonogatari awesome notwithstanding, Winter is thus far looking like a really dry season compared to what we got in Fall.

(Random insert: why does Last Exile 2 appear to be so off-the-radar, at least among the aniblogs that I follow? That stuff ended up something I would consider top-three material even in the stacked season that it fell in, and yet no one seems to be murmuring a word about it. Weird.)

So anyway, here’s Oath Sign by LiSA. As usual, you can hit F8 to listen to it while it’s up, and hit the jump for a picture, Romaji lyrics, and translations. Enjoy.

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Because there aren’t yet enough Nisemonogatari 01 posts out there

By Jason "moofang"

On January 13, 2012

In Anime/Manga

Low camera angles, white colored silhouettes, delicious, abusive sarcasm, lens flares. What can I say. Okaerinasai.

(Yes, there are already a tonne of voices going nuts about Nise out there, my own incoherent tweet included. Sue me, I’m filing another entry into the chaos. Besides, a little birdy told me to, you know who you are)

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Hana no Android Gakuen 02-04 English Translated!

By Jason "moofang"

On January 7, 2012

In Hana no Android Gakuen, Manga translations

Yeap it’s done! Man this is quite a bit of work @_@ I even put more effort into the cleaning and presentation this time, so hopefully it looks decent. Anyway, translated strips below, enjoy :) Episode 01 was here btw.

Oh, anyone knows if there is/will be more, and where to camp for them? These four are all I have seen.

Like all Japanese manga, this should be read right to left, top to bottom.

Episode 2: The Melancholy of Sharp-chan

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Pain and Living -Kara no Kyoukai 03

By Jason "moofang"

On January 4, 2012

In Kara no Kyoukai

Violence and sex are two things I intensely dislike when used as prominent themes in the stuff I watch, especially the former. The third film opens with a dash of disturbing scenes strongly featuring both, and I have every reason to be ired by that. Judging the book by it’s cover Kara no Kyoukai should never have been something that captures my fancy, and yet, as folks who read my previous two posts on the show would know, I am quite madly in love with the series. It simply means the storytelling and the exploration and the questions and the musings are that incredible. The third film of the Kara no Kyoukai series is a bloody mess of twisted violence and drugs and rape, but make no mistake. This is a beautiful episode.

Spoilers after the jump.

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Hana no Android Gakuen 01 English Translated!

By Jason "moofang"

On January 3, 2012

In Hana no Android Gakuen, Manga translations

This is something of a “challenge accepted” thing when my friend idyllic asked me to translate some strips. Yes, after Ubunchu kind of faded into the backdrop, it turns out that Android also has a high-school manga!!. So far at least four strips have been released, and this is the first. I’m relatively free now so I would probably eventually translate the other three as well (and more if I can find them). That’ll be after I finish my super-procrastinated Kara no Kyoukai post though. Anyway, here it is, my apologies for the shoddy overlays (I’ve never done this before), and enjoy your Android high school comedy.

Spoilered	Select Show
Damn your smug face Apple-kun!!

Like all Japanese manga, this should be read right to left, top to bottom.

Btw, in case it wasn’t clear, the “big 5” are Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, HTC, LG and Samsung. The two random guys on the right-most strip, second row are Casio and Huawei.

Original (raw) strip taken from here.
Other (raw) strips can be found here and here.

This translation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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Kalafina -ing at AFA 2011

By Jason "moofang"

On November 13, 2011

In Anime/Manga, Events

Important difference? I didn’t have a chair ;_;

Yes, I got suckered into forking out fifty bucks to stand at the concert. It’s all Kalafina’s fault I swear! I just couldn’t sleep at night anymore with all the disembodied voices in my head going “It’s Kalafina~~~~ KALAFINA~~~~” “They’re doing a live AT YOUR BACKYARD~~~~” “People are flying down to see them, you just need a 30 MINUTE bus ride~~~~” “You’re reallyyyy not gonna go~~~~?” “It’s friggin KALAFINA~~~~”

Alright alright I know already geez. And so I did. I went, I paid, I got starstruck, and now I’m back. And I’m just gonna take a moment here to attempt to pen some post-concert impressions while the memory is still fresh.

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Fall 2011 Brainmarks!

By Jason "moofang"

On October 25, 2011

In Anime/Manga, Brainmarks, Fate/Zero

We we we so excited~~~

What can I say, it’s a phenomenal season.

For those who missed the previous (and first) brainmarks post, here’s a little FAQ thing:

Spoilered: What are brainmarks?	Select Show
Q: Wait wha? This is basically me jumping on the season preview/season impression posts bandwagon that basically contains just about every other aniblogger except me. Since I’m actually checking out the entire spectrum of shows with my housemate nowadays I figured it’s finally time. Q: …”Brainmarks”? Picture the entire season’s offerings swirling around in a state of interminable chaos in your feral brain. Now picture fishing a number of shows out of that mess and pinning it up neatly – marking them for further exploration and investigation. That’s making brainmarks, and that’s what this post does for you. As a bonus I even rank them. And yes, I like inventing words (remember photoogling?). Q: Aren’t you just jelly about Blogsuki’s aptly named “Thin-slicing” posts? Why not at all. Whoever gave you that idea? whistle Q: Uh okay. So basically any show that appears here is great, and any that doesn’t sucks? Well, no- maybe. Lousy shows obviously won’t show up here, but I may give shows that use mostly recycled material/strategies a pass as well, even if they are relatively well done and entertaining. Conversely, not so well executed shows that do something interesting or that show potential for interesting development may show up, but there is of course no guarantee those won’t go quickly to the shitpits. Basically the most relevant metric here is “potential interestingness”. Q: Jason moofang’s fuzzy definition of interestingness you mean Yes. Q: Shouldn’t this really be called “Jason moofang’s guttural nearly-arbitrary ranking of nearly arbitrarily selected shows” then? No- well… … Fine, be that way.

Spoilered: What are brainmarks?

Show

I know I’m late as hell, but I guess that’s becoming normal :( It does mean that I managed to watch at least 2 episodes of all the shows I’m going to list though, so hopefully that somehow translates into better perspective and depth :)

Here we go!

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Evangelion 2.0 – the evafag’s monsterpost

By Jason "moofang"

On October 12, 2011

In Evangelion

At last! This post had been begging to be written for aeons now, (and took more aeons to actually get written), and it’s finally here! Which is sadly more than I can say about any official word on when the next Rebuild movie is scheduled to appear :(

Asuka!!!! *horns and confetti*

For those who missed the first movie’s post, this is where I do the evafag thing and muse on the film while doing all the watching and comparing with the original that you’re probably too lazy to do for yourself.

Well why even bother, sayeth you? Well, because in the opinion of this evafag, while the Rebuild films so far stand fairly well on their own, they really become much more interesting and reveal a tonne of hidden tasties when considered in the context of what happened in the original. I said it in the Eva 1.0 post and I’ll say it a little more surely now that I’ve seen and mused on 2.0 – Gainax is saying something, or some things, somewhere down there amidst the evident change of mood, between the dark and demented conflicts of the original and the brimming passionate pseudoheroisms of the new films. The question is, what? Well my friend, come along with this evafag into the dark side of evafanaticism and we’ll see if we can get some answers…. *nasty chuckle*

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Anisong: Kimi ga Hikari ni Kaete yuku

By Jason "moofang"

On August 16, 2011

In Anisong, Kara no Kyoukai

Decided to do this one after all. This is the ED to the second film of the animated film series Kara no Kyoukai – the Garden of Sinners. It is a pretty nice song on its own, but it only truly resonates when savored in its intended context – as a curtain-closer to the second film. So if you haven’t watched it yet, I highly, highly recommend you go do so. Yes, watch all seven films. You won’t regret it.

Anyway here it is, “Kimi ga Hikari ni Kaete yuku”, or “You return it to light”. Quite possibly a love song at its core. A dreamy song that traverses a spectral path from shimmering melancholy to triumphant catharsis. As usual, hit F8 to listen to it while it’s up, and hit the jump for a picture, romaji lyrics, and translations.

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Between Linux and Anime

Kind of like Schrodinger's Cat

Category: Anime/Manga (Page 5 of 11)

Winter 2012 Brainmarks!

Anisong of the Season: Oath Sign

Because there aren’t yet enough Nisemonogatari 01 posts out there

Hana no Android Gakuen 02-04 English Translated!

Episode 2: The Melancholy of Sharp-chan

Pain and Living -Kara no Kyoukai 03

Hana no Android Gakuen 01 English Translated!

Kalafina -ing at AFA 2011

Fall 2011 Brainmarks!

Evangelion 2.0 – the evafag’s monsterpost

Anisong: Kimi ga Hikari ni Kaete yuku

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