I found a folder entitled “Star House City” sitting on an FTP server the other day and decided to download it just because the name sounded interesting. Turns out that was a good idea. Star House City is the newest album from Korean House Superstars; House Rulez.

The whole album is just fantastic and I had to have every MP3 I could find of theirs. It’s been really hard trying to find stuff from their previous album…I found 10 of the 15 tracks and all of them are labelled wrong, so I can’t even tell what track numbers they are supposed to be. >.>

Check out video for their song “Do It!” below. It’s really catchy, just like all the rest of their songs.

A short trailer was just put online for Michiko To Hatchin–the story of Michiko; a free-willed “sexy diva” who destroys a supposedly inescapable prison fortress and Hatchin; a girl fleeing her strict foster parents. The two join forces on an improbable escape to freedom. The trailer itself doesn’t seem to show any of the actual scenes from the show, probably an OP clip, but the music and animation were both excellent.

With the production staff Michiko To Hatchin has got, I’m really excited to check this show out. Shinichiro Watanabe, the brains behind Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo will be involved, but not as a lead director this time; he will be involved in music direction. While Hiroshi Shimizu, who has worked in animation for FLCL, Fullmetal Alchemist, Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, will be contributing as a character designer this time around. Also Sayo Yamamoto, an experienced storyboard writer from Death Note, Ergo Proxy, Eureka Seven, Rozen Maiden: Traumend, Samurai Champloo and Texhnolyze will be directing the show.

As you can see, the crew has some big names under their belt, but they are all trying new areas they haven’t done much in, so it should be interesting to see how well they do at it.

Here’s the trailer;

NANA

The movie begins following Nana, the singer of a rock band called Blast that faded away when Ren, their former bassist and Nana’s love interest, left to join a major band called Trapnest. While riding on a train to Tokyo she coincidentally encounters another girl who is also named Nana, is the same age as her and is going to the same place at the same time. They sit next to each other for the ride and talk a bit, but aside from the various coincidental similarities, the two couldn’t be more different. This Nana is well brought-up and polite while the other is somewhat more rebellious and, at times, insecure. After the train arrives at it’s destination the two part ways and the new Nana goes to live with her boyfriend–or so she thinks. The guy she moves in with doesn’t really seem to be as interested in her as she is in him and he asks her to move out and find her own place somewhere. While on her hunt for accommodations she finds a nicely priced place at only 70,000 yen, the Japanese word for 7 being nana, not so coincidentally. She immediately decides to preview the place and when she arrives there coincidentally runs into the other Nana once again. Despite being polar opposites of personality they decide to rent the apartment together because it would be much cheaper that way. They quickly become good friends and the proper Nana helps punk Nana to regain her confidence reform Blast and reclaim her glory as a Rock singer. In between all this, good Nana is being cheated on by the guy she still thinks is her boyfriend and punk Nana helps to comfort her and push her to keep going. Good Nana wins some free, front row tickets to a Trapnest concert and, not knowing punk Nana’s prior involvement with Ren, invites her to come along. She however declines without really supplying much reason aside from being ‘busy’. She later discovers Nana and Ren used to be close and that she probably still has feeling for him and despite this, or possibly even because of this, she decides to try asking her again. This time she’s a little less resistant and decides to tag along. After the show, punk Nana happens to meets up with Ren and have an emotional moment, albeit a bittersweet one because they know that even though they want to be together they want even more to play their music and that will keep them apart from each other.

NANA2

The second movie focuses more on Good Nana and her important part in the revival of Blast, despite not being an actual band member. Good Nana has long had a crush, as most innocent girls such as her do, on Takumi, the long-haired bassist of Trapnest whom she happened to actually get to meet at the end of the first movie. At the beginning of NANA2 he basically asks her out for a drink and she of course willing goes along. Punk Nana warns her not to get involved however; as he’s known to be a bit of a player. Her girlish obsession is too strong though and she falls into a relationship with him. Nobu, the guitarist of Blast has secretly liked good Nana since they first met when she and punk Nana moved into their apartment together. While at an after-party for one of Trapnest’s recent concerts he hears of this relationship and almost gets into a fight with Takumi, but storms out of the place first. After awhile of not hearing anything from Takumi, good Nana starts to feel that maybe punk Nana was right and when Nobu suddenly confesses to her she decides she’ll dump Takumi and go out with Nobu. This of course makes Nobu really excited and they enjoy a close and happy relationship. All seems to be going well and one day punk Nana shows up at the apartment with some really good news; Blast is being considered for a record label. Unfortunately good Nana has some bad news to counter it; she’s pregnant and doesn’t know who is the father; Nobu or Takumi. Word spreads and Takumi finds out about the coming bundle of joy (and messy diapers) and decides that if it is his he wants her to raise the child and live with him. She decides to go along with this, much to Nobu’s dismay and the rest of the band is quite shaken by the loss of their good friend to a different life. As they say though; the show must go on–and it does. When word gets out that their former bassist is Trapnest’s current guitarist the media is suddenly all over them and they quickly leap into the spotlight where they dazzle the crowd with some awesome tunes. Good Nana, despite living a new and different life, is still accepted to spend some time with her friend from the band and enjoy some fireworks. Then the movie ends…I want a sequel! >.<

Well…that was quite a bit of talking…and to think I left some of the details out to keep the train of thought a little more on one track! I really enjoyed these two movies and highly recommend them to anyone that may be interested. NANA and NANA2 are definitely worth watching, even if they are a little girly. NANA also has an anime and manga that I have yet to see that I may talk about in a future post after checking them out.

Get NANA2 now at Play-Asia!

I’m not usually one to tear up at every chick flick that someone tricks me into watching, so I never really expected I’d ever catch myself crying to an anime, but this immensely beautiful piece of modern art proved me wrong. The power of the loneliness I felt in the characters was so strong that I actually felt sad enough to cry for them. This short movie that started Makoto Shinkai’s prospering anime career is well deserving of my praise. I was seriously awestruck after watching this. I had a few episodes of other shows after this in my media player playlist, but after this ended I had to pause for a few minutes just to pull myself back to reality from the intense emotions it invoked.

Voices Of A Distant Star is a story of a teenage couple, separated by the vast expanse of outer space with only emails sent from a cellphone to tie the two together. As the girl is dragged light year upon light year further from Earth the messages take longer and longer to transmit until eventually they are so far apart that it takes 8 years just to send a message. The love between the two is so powerful that, despite light years of space and nearly a decade of time between them, they still so strongly want to talk to each other.

What amazed me the most about this however is that almost every part of the movie was done by Makoto Shinkai himself; from the directing, to the animation, right down to the voice acting played by himself and his wife. For being a project completed by a single man this is extraordinary beyond belief. Mr. Shinkai is a very talented man and is very well deserved of the following he has developed thus far.

I was totally blown away by this fantastic game! It’s got style, it’s got game play and it’s got some actual challenge to it. It’s not hard, so much as it makes you actually think about what you are doing. It’s not just a point and shoot action game, you have to think about how you can most effectively stop your enemies form stopping you first. Once you figure out what you need to do, it’s just a matter of doing it, unlike many modern shooters that seem to be more based on luck than actual thought and skill. You feel a much greater sense of accomplishment when you figure out how to beat a boss in this than you do in other games when you finally manage to live long enough to fill the bosses with enough bullets to drop a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

I could play this game for hours on end and completely lose track of the time. It’s just so entertaining. The consistently fast pace in this game keeps it very engaging and exhilarating–but be careful! You just might forget you should have been in bed seven hours ago!

You start off as a member of a rebel group, fighting their way through wave after wave of well-armed baddies scattered throughout a city in Japan in the post-apocalyptic future. The city is overrun by these strange mutant animals that resulted from an experimental species of animal created specifically as food and raised on the island of Hokkaido. In this post-war future life is peaceful, but as a result; overpopulation has rapidly accelerated and there is a rather immediate need for a more stable and replenish able food source. A group of sceientists genetically engineer a specific creature for the cause, but mutations gradually occur and these new creatures begin hunting their own hunters and eventually escaping the confines of Hokkaido and invading greater Japan. These creatures are referred to as the Ruffians.

Japan was in dire need of some saving at this point and commissioned the Armed Volunteers to save the country, however; they saw it more fitting to oppress the citizens and try to take control for themselves. The last hope of Japan seemed to be lost in the chaos, however; a strange rumor began to surface. A rogue group known as the Savior Group was on the hunt to take out some Ruffians and save the citizens of Japan. What was strange about this rumor was that all the members of the group were said to have been cured of various illnesses via the miraculous power of a mysterious woman known as Achi.

The story follows two teenage members of the Savior Group, Saki and Airan, as they battle the Ruffians and try to retake Japan from it’s seemingly hopeless state. They, like many others, received the salvation of Achi and were healed of their illnesses on the condition that they devote themselves to fighting the Ruffians and saving Japan from spiraling into a state of chaos and despair.

The game plays like a standard, arcade style, on-rails shooter, but it is very unique in comparison and has a much more prevalent story progression than most on-rails, arcade shooters. Everything is very anime themed, from the over dramatic story to the colorful and highly stylized graphics. So if you like a good epic scifi anime adventure this game will sure fill the bill.

Sin & Punishment was a hit Nintendo 64 game in Japan that, for various reasons, never made it to North America. But after an incredible number of requests for it to be included on Nintendo’s Virtual Console it finally made it to the finger tips of millions of Wii owners all across North America. This game was recognized by the game importing community for it’s english voice acting with japanese subtitles, which made it a very popular game to import. Flash forward a few years to the current and now you don’t have to import it! Just turn on your Wii, load up the Shopping Channel and download Sin & Punishment right off the Virtual Console section!

This game was created by legendary game developer, Treasure; a game company known for making some of the biggest cult classic video games, but they’ve laid dormant in recent years. You may know them for Gunstar Heroes or Radiant Silvergun and it’s sequel Ikaruga. They are the creators of many of the most sought after imported games of all time, and now they are back to finally bring their fantastic futuristic adventure, Sin & Punishment, to the western hemisphere!

If you like the good old arcade style rail shooters or epic scifi anime (or even both!) I very highly recommend you give this game a try! It is most certainly worth the mere 1200 Wii Points it costs on the Virtual Console. It is a rather challenging game, but in a way that makes you really want to keep trying to figure out what to do rather than just being frustratingly impossible. Current Gen game developers need to figure out that there is a difference between challenging game play and broken game play. >.>

I picked up Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings when it came out and man was I ever surprised by this game! I’ve come to expect pretty much everything with the Final Fantasy name attached to it to be an instant classic, but even so, I still felt some skepticism of a roleplaying game on a handheld. Good handheld RPGs just plain don’t exist–or so I thought until I plugged this little plastic cartridge full of win into my DS.

Now before you start attacking me for making the generalization that all handheld RPGs suck I’ll just say that there have been some pretty good handheld RPGs, but nothing that you could actually call a truly epic RPG, nor that you could call anything more than good. Minish Cap, for example, was fun, but it was by no means as awesome as Twilight Princess or Ocarina Of Time. RPGs just don’t tend to lend themselves to handheld gaming.

Revenant Wings sought to change that, and it succeeded tremendously. Most handheld RPGs are basically time-wasters with a storyline, while Revenant Wings is an epic adventure with a quick and modular gameplay system, so you don’t have to play through hours upon hours of grinding to walk across a single map to the next story segment. The first FFXII was an excellent game, albeit plagued with the never-ending grind gameplay of FFXI.

Revenant Wings basically structures the game into ‘mission’ segments reminiscent of Tactics with it’s victory conditions system. Each map usually starts with an intro event where the characters talk a bit about what is going on, then there is a bunch of enemies to fight against and after that, a victory event where they talk about what they are going to do next.

The dialog is cleverly written to remind you where you left off in the previous mission and providing some depth of what will happen in the current mission. It has a powerful and intriguing story while still maintaining the handheld gaming style of being able to pick up where you left off easily without losing track of what was going on.

The graphics were also very beautiful. the DS isn’t as technologically capable as other handhelds in the graphics department, but many games like this more than make up for it in graphical style. Everything looks so cool and unique in the game and the epic landscapes from the first game certainly were well represented in this one.

The music, as with any Final Fantasy game, was fantastic. But I found the soundtrack to this game had a slightly different and powerful allure to it. It wasn’t just another rehash of the same soundtrack that has been used in every FF since the dawn of time. Much of the music was more radically expanded upon than in the previous games, which was rather refreshing to listen to.

If you have a DS and are a fan of RPGs I very highly recommend giving this game a try. I enjoyed every minute of it. I liked it so much that I made that nice shiny wallpaper for at the top from some of the awesome concept art I found for it on the net.

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I’ve quite enjoyed Dragonaut so far, it nicely filled the hole that was left when Darker Than Black got licensed and thus stopped being fansubbed. The art is very colorful and appealing and the character designs are excellent. Though I found the size of some of the women’s breasts to be a little on the disproportionate side to the point of detracting from the show.

Basically the story involves a boy named Jin who was on a shuttle, piloted by his father, to go into outer space on the first public transport space flight. This all went wrong however, when something came speeding down from outer space, directly through their shuttle in mid-takeoff. Needless to say, there was much chaos that ensued and somehow Jin survived the several mile fall into the ocean and relatively unharmed at that. The crash was blamed on pilot error, but it was in fact the result of an alien life form, they refer to as Dragons, colliding with the spacecraft. There was a big cover up and an organization known as the Dragonauts was formed with the goal of protecting the earth from the planet Thanatos which had crashed into Pluto, destroying it and hurling several dragons to earth. Jin is captured by this organization and asked to join, as he was in fact saved by one of these dragons in the crash that killed the rest of his family aboard the first public transport flight to outer space.

The dragon that saved Jin is a girl that calls herself Toa. She, along with all other dragons seems to be capable of taking the form of a human. The Dragonauts have been pursuing her, thinking that she is dangerous, however; she is actually just like a normal person and seems to develop somewhat of an affection for Jin. The two want to be together, but the Dragonauts want to tear them apart and dangerous circumstances invoked by the Dragonauts make her often have to use her powers to help Jin.

The action in the show is pretty cool and entertaining, but I what I liked most about it was how well they fused and action series with a love story. In all the fight scenes you can really feel that Toa cares about Jin and is trying to protect him, despite the ISDA’s misconceptions.

It’s one of the best shows I’ve seen so far this season, and I’ll be keeping a close eye on it to see how the story unfolds. I like the OP too, it’s sort of DubStep-ish, but very catchy and upbeat too. Overall I think it’s definitely one of the must-see shows of this season.

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While surfing about on the Akiba Online forums I stumbled across a really fun band known as Special Others. From the YouTube video of Good Morning I can see that they very much enjoy their music. They write very jazz-inspired and very danceable music. If you are into fun, rhythic music check out the video for Good Morning I have included in this post!

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I made that word up just now because nothing describes Moetan better. This is a very perverted, very Japanese show. If you are new to anime this probably isn’t the place to start. This show is basically one big long loli fan service. It’s hard to take it seriously though, because it so intensely loli fan service oriented that it’s practically self-parody. It’s certainly a good series for over-the-top comedy.

Moetan is of somewhat interesting origin however; Moetan is actually considered an ‘educational’ series. Originally a manga, Moetan is actually an English language study aid created by Sansai Books. Moetan’s name actually is an abbreviation of “‘Methodology Of English, The Academic Necessity’, however; it is fairly obvious this was a play on the words moe and tan, both being used to represent cuteness in a girl. The show has frequent scenes where the main character, known as Ink, tutors a classmate known as Nao-kun whom she secretly has a huge crush on. She conceals her true identity, Nijihara Ink, as a magical girl who refers to herself as Pastel Ink. They basically look exactly the same with different hair color, but somehow nobody seems to notice.

Nobody, that is, except her classmate and rival in both love and magical girlness; Sumi Kuroi. Everyone’s obliviousness plays a part in the humor of the show as Ink and Kuroi quite often use their powers where anyone could see them, but they somehow think nothing of it.

Ink gained her magical powers from a magician she refers to as Ah-kun who was left in her world in the form of a duck after being banished from the magical kingdom he came from. He gets a nosebleed every time Ink transforms to her magical girl form–for those that don’t know; nosebleeds are a Japanese pop culture representation of strong sexual attraction. Ink is naked during her transformation sequence, so Ah-kun gets to see various things that are illegal in many countries, if you catch my meaning.

One of my favorite parts of the show is the english tutoring scenes. The phrases that Ink try to teach to Nao-kun are almost always direct rants from the production staff about how difficult there jobs are. It makes for much amusement hearing characters in an anime talk about how poorly drawn things are and such things as that.

Also, this guy is awesome. He’s always running into a scene, making some pedophile remark and then running off before a police officer shows up seconds later asking if anyone has scene a ‘suspicious man’. His entrances are, as you can see in the picture below, overly dramatic and hilarious.

It’s not exactly what you’d expect an ‘educational anime’ to be like, but who am I to argue? It’s hilarious; that’s all that matters to me. If you haven’t seen a wide variety of anime you will probably miss several of the references, but it’s still a very watchable show and is very entertaining. If you like over-the-top somewhat perverted humor than this is the show for you!

All sorts of cool Moetan stuff is available at Play-Asia.

I’m sure you already know about Tim Burton’s classic gothic movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas, but it’s Halloween today, so it’s pretty much required viewing. As such, I thought it might be something interesting to talk about. Tim Burton has made many other great gothic film like Edward Scissorhands and Corpse Bride, but I feel none of them were quite as fantastic as The Nightmare Before Christmas.

The movie emulates the Disney musical format in a way, but with a dark and gothic twist visually. I found it made the movie very artistically appealing and set it apart from other similarly themed films–aside from Corpse Bride that is, which was basically just a rehash of it’s animation style because the devoted fans just wouldn’t let it end with just one movie. The movie makes use of a sort of claymation appearance, which is a very uncommon animation style. Because of this it allowed a more ‘real’ look to it while remaining surreal in it’s content.

The story follows Jack Skellington, also knowns as Pumpkin Jack–he is looked up to by all the fellow residents of his zany home of Halloween Town. Every year the townsfolk make intricate and elaborate plans to make October 31st the scariest day of the year. Jack is depressed by living this same life every year, planning Halloween. He wishes for something different–he desires variety in his repetitive life. He begins to wonder if there is more to life than Halloween and begins to search for somethiing different.

While wandering in the woods, Jack and his ghostly pet dog, Zero find several trees with doors on them leading to to other holiday-themed worlds. Jack, in his curiousity, accidentally enters Christmas Town, a land of joy and holiday spirit. Jack, fascinated by this unique new world, quickly returns to Halloween Town, where he presents the townspeople with his slightly inaccurate impressions of Christmas. The townspeople, who also become interested in the holiday, agree to celebrate Christmas. Jack leads the attempted festivities as Santa Claus but Sally, Jack’s secret admirer, sees only disaster in his plans.With the unusual Christmas gifts and decorations they create , being more frightening and grotesque than pleasing, it is apparent that she assumes correctly. Jack ignores Sally’s concerns and asks her to create his Santa Claus outfit. Jack then assigns Lock, Shock and Barrel, a trio of mischevious, child-like monsters, to transport Santa to Halloween Town. They, after mistakenly capturing the Easter Bunny, successfully kidnap Santa Claus. Against Jack’s wishes and largely for their own amusement, the trio deliver Santa to the lair of Ogie Boogie, a sadistic, compulsive gambler who plots to play a game with Santa’s life.

Christmas soon arrives and, although Sally attempts to stop him, Jack embarks into the sky on a coffin-like sled pulled by skeletal reindeer, hoping to deliver presents to children around the world; although the townspeople are overjoyed, Sally wanders off alone; defeated. As Jack begins delivering gifts, children are horrified by their monstrous, animated presents, while their parents believe Jack to be a monster attempting to imitate Santa Claus. The military shoot him out of the sky, destroying his sleigh. Although Jack is initially depressed, he realizes he is still the ruler of Halloween Town and can bring joy to the world in his own way.

Sally attempts to free Santa, only to be captured by Oogie Boogie. Just as they are about to be killed by immersion in a foul stew, Jack arrives and challenges their captor. Oogie Boogie flees, placing his complex, sophisticated, deadly gaming machines in Jack’s path as obstacles. However, Oogie Boogie becomes tangled in one of his own machines and is split open, revealing himself to be merely an animated sackful of insects. Most of Oogie’s “bugs” fall into the stew and are boiled alive.

Santa Claus, freed, reprimands Jack, then sets off to correct Christmas by exchanging Jack’s frightening toys for more pleasant hings. This he does successfully. Jack and Sally return to Halloween Town, aided by a reformed Lock, Shock, and Barrel. There, they embrace atop a spiral-shaped, flexible extension of land, while Zero looks on from afar. Sally has been replaced in Dr. Finklestein’s service by another mannequin, leaving her free to live with Jack.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is a very unusual movie and is definitely required viewing among your Halloween festivities! If you happen to have not yet seen this wonderful holiday classic I suggest you go check it out!

You can buy the Japanese version and some cool merch at Play-Asia.