Spring Anime 2010 Preview

 

Under the belief that I may have a 20GB student cap… I think I’ll still be able to watch anime at university. Overall, this season does look pretty good and better than winter season (which I’ve sort of lost interest in).

Definitely Watching:

• Angel Beats – Even after death, you can’t escape going to school! <- The fact that they’re dead and going to school does seem a little lame, but then it may add a slice-of-life genre to the anime. The art looks quite a lot like the first season of Haruhi from the previews I’ve seen so far and the supernatural “angels and gods” war does seem intriguing. The original VN was done by KEY as well, so it should be good . But what kind of name is “Otonashi” (kind, gentle, well-behaved)?
• Black★Rock Shooter – This is a definite without being said. Based around the song of the same name composed by Ryo; and huke’s character design, B★RS will be a must watch for a lot of the Vocaloid/Hatsune Miku fans. I’m slightly disappointed that it’s an OVA, but the number of episodes is still unconfirmed. The background for the story will also be interesting to watch, seeing as the PV suggests B★RS started off as a normal school girl. Definitely can’t wait for this!
• K-ON!! – Okay, so they added another exclamation mark to differentiate between season one and two. A little weird, but sure this is KyoAni. I’m hoping there will be more music in this one than the continual moe/slice-of-life randomness that was the second half of season one. KyoAni better have more songs up their sleeves, because Fuwa Fuwa Time pissed me off last season. It was good once, but not a million repeats like a broken record player.
• Shakugan no Shana S (2) – I will probably end up watching this, just because it’s Shana. I need SnS III, not these OVAs… This one airs this Friday.

Considering Watching:

• Iron Man – Seeing this made me laugh. I never expected Marvel to start entering the anime scene so this will be something interesting to watch if I get around to it. The Ironman movie was alright, but I haven’t seen anything of the anime yet.
• Mayoi Neko Overun! – Cats, catgirls, nekomimis and what else? Might appeal to some, I’m considering watching it if I have nothing else to do.

Student life at University

This is just me sharing some thoughts about student life as I’ve finally made it to university as a first year student; studying “pre-med” (as it’s called) at the University of Otago. Feel free to leave a comment~

So the summer holidays are finally over for me and I’ve moved down to Dunedin to continue climbing the next rung in the educational ladder. Although I arrived on Friday last week, there’s been absolutely no internet until now due to the fact I only went through course approval today. So that was a little disappointing, but it is slightly countered by the fact that the wireless internet here is way faster than my home connection and I’ve heard it’s a 20GB bandwidth cap per student, per month – better than the NZD$49.99 I was paying at home for a slow 10GB connection.

I'm loving this. My home one is like a quarter of this. And I'm on wireless as well right now.

The weather in the past few days has been magnificent. It has been hot and sunny every single day that I’ve been here so far and I’m pretty sure I’m sunburnt somewhere. Dunedin isn’t exactly known for its weather; asides from a reputation for being cold as it’s “in the deep south” (of New Zealand) and so the awesome weather was a pleasant surprise. It’s better than Auckland (which is like cloudy/overcast most of the time), Wellington (worst summer ever) and Christchurch (but I can’t think of a reason right now).

To Aru Kagaku no Railgun MMR – Special 01

I think this was meant to try and mimic the previous Index-tan specials that J.C. Staff did, but this 8 minute long special that came with the first DVD/Blu-ray volume of To Aru Kagaku no Railgun was just plain weird. Titled: To Aru Kagaku no Railgun MMR, with MMR standing for “もっとまるっと超電磁砲” (Much More Railgun). If you’ve watched the previous specials that J.C. Staff do, then you’d know that this is generally humorous and includes a lot of random references between the other shows that they do.

Replacing the Gekota giveaway with Alastor; the dorm room manager being a former soldier; Schrödinger’s cat becoming the palm-top tiger; random references to various words involving “jan” and then Misaka’s “Please conserve electricity, biribiri” line done in weird voices wasn’t that good. The only decent thing in the episode was most probably the references to the turbines which is a stab at the Sister’s Arc.

Frankly, this was pretty crap and it looks like they just tried to string random ideas together. Perhaps I had been expecting more seeing as I enjoyed the last Index-tan, but this was just bad.

[Manga] To Aru Kagaku no Railgun Chapter 28

The 4th ranked Level 5 in Academy City – Meltdowner – against Mikoto will be one kickass fight.

Again, spoiler for those who have yet to read the manga/only watch the anime. This chapter brings yet again another showdown which I definitely want to see animated! Following from Frenda’s defeat last chapter, Mikoto tries to question her about who hired them before Mugino and Takitsubo enter and save Frenda from getting fried.

[PPD] Playing Project DIVA simulator: Project -Project DXXX-

Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA was a rhythm game produced by SEGA for Sony’s PSP. This involves pressing the correct combination of buttons as they appear onscreen, whilst Miku dances around in the background singing. Now there’s a fanmade version of Project DIVA that simulates the gameplay which you would experience on the PSP or the Arcade version. Project -Project DXXX- is a simulator that runs on the computer, created by KHCmaster. Now I don’t own a PSP and haven’t had the chance to actually play Project DIVA, but from what I understand, DIVA has a whole lot of extras such as changing Miku’s costume. This only simulates the gameplay and focuses on the PV or video of the song you’re playing.

Main Menu of Songs (running on Windows Vista Business)

I discovered this about a fortnight ago when I was looking at some Project DIVA footage and starting searching for a way for me to play it or something as similar as possible. From what I could tell, PPD’s gameplay is just like the real thing. Asides from the background video footage being different (PPD plays the video that you’ve designated in the songs folder), it looks very similar. If you wanted to, you could just take footage from Project DIVA and use it here as well.