Confessions of a Kugimiya Disease paitent

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If someone can take the time to sit down and count all the "Uguu~"'s that Hocchan blessed us with, there has got to be someone who can compile all of Kugyuu's "うるさい　うるさい　うるさい!"

Ps. You have no idea how much work it was extracting that 42 seconds of Kugyuu goodness.

Buono! 『MY BOY』 (MV)

Source.

That must have been one awesome cake.

If it sounds familiar, it is because 『MY BOY』 is the 3rd ED for Shugo Chara Doki!

The making of the MV in two parts here and here. One of the few that are surprisingly compelling watching.

Shugo Chara Doki ep 62

Well, it could be worst. It could be "terribly hard theory that no one understands"

Whoever came up with the concept of Nadeshiko/Nagihiko is brilliant. 

I have no words to describe this awesomeness

Whoever came up with the concept of Rimahiko should get a award. Preferably the Nobel Peace Prize. It is the definition of "win". In fact, the word "win" is derived from Rimahiko. I just need a convincing explanation.

But really, sparks literally fly between Rima and Nagihiko, and not in the traditional sense either:

Rimahiko is awesome. There is no other way to describe it.

佛山王悦事件

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The facts of Wang Yue's short life are well recorded, and I will not seek to repeat them. In summary, Wang Yue, a 2 year old toddler, was run down by a vehicle, left injured on the road until a recycling lady found her and called for help. Wang Yue passed away on 21 Sept 2011, 8 days after she was run down.

Naturally the knee jerk reactions of the Guangdong TV news report that was broadcasted and posted on Youku and spread across social networking websites were inevitable. Admittedly, the footage is rather shocking. So much so that CNN's Eunice Yoon and ABC Australia's Stephen McDonell on Lateline declined to show the footage in full to squeamish English speaking Westerners, instead freezing frame before she was hit.

So this is the sorry tale of a toddler wandering off away from her mother, who is distracted. Gets hit by a truck. Truck stops for a while. Then reverses back, running over the girl again. Stops again. Then it goes on ahead.

CCTV camera footage then shows 18 people walk/run/cycle by, with at one stage a mother and her young child walking past. Young child is curious, but mother hastily ushers child away.

Then another truck comes, and drives over the toddler on the ground without stopping. The truck does pause, indicating that the driver was aware that he/she was driving over something. The truck actually bumps up from the ground significantly enough to be shown on the CCTV camera footage.

The child is then left there until the recycling lady (陈贤妹) comes along to look at the rubbish, sees the body of Wang Yue, carries it to one side, and runs around calling for help. The CCTV footage concludes with the mother running into the frame and carrying her daughter away.

Naturally the entire weibo'sphere lit up in indignation, and before long the 人肉搜索 started their own vigilante witch hunt. The shopkeepers along the row of shops got threats. Some of the 18 people who passed by we hunted down on RenRen. Their alleged phone numbers were posted online, and at least one of them gave an interview with 今日早报 to put his side of the story: it was dark, poorly lit and he did not see Wang Yue.



Closer to home the knee-jerk reactions of the Malaysian online community included lines such as “Are you blind not to see a child on the road?” and “What is wrong with the world nowadays?”. Some of the more moralistic Christians tried to explain it “sin came in, man are weak and thus fall easily to temptation and trails (sic), even if they're at fault, they claim their rights and defend themselves”.



The media has tried to explain it, from suggestions that the capitalistic growth of China has dulled the senses of the Chinese, the erosion of values during the 文革, the 南京彭宇案, the lack of self-conscience, lurid stories of people being ripped off for helping people, to some anti-China hyper neo-fascists trying to lump 1.4 billion people by extrapolating 18 people from 7.2 million residents of Foshan.

Weibo was filled with shrill cries decrying the Chinese peoples apathy and cruelty, lamenting this as a “shame for all Chinese [that cannot be washed away]” Others on weibo have accused the parents of Wang Yue of neglecting their child. I personally feel that people who pursue this line of argument obviously never had any children. Try keeping an eye on a 2 year old while you're trying to do something. I find herding cats more predictable.

光明日报 suggests that the root of the problem is China's neglect of a moral civilisation. On the 24 Oct 2011 edition of ABC's Lateline, China correspondent Stephen McDonell concluded his report on this matter with “something has gone wrong if you need to impose a fine on people for not doing what should come to them naturally”. To make such a statement, he has shown that he clearly hasn't spent enough time in China.

The concept of a Rule of Law (admittedly a very European concept) doesn't quite exist in Chinese societies, and not necessarily limited to motherland China either. The law in Chinese society has never been much of a mechanism to protect the rights of an individual: rather, it is a burden, that must be circumvented and/or ignored at all costs. For all their 2000 years of history (as the Chinese culturalists love to remind us barbarians), they've never had a system of governance where the society was ruled by counting heads. The power of law came from chopping heads.

My personal stand is that I do not rejoice in the loss of life. I don't celebrate the death of anything. But while I do not encourage it, my upbringing does not allow for it, I can understand why those 18 people walked/cycled/drove by without doing anyting.

Because I have been in their position.

Many years back, while I was much younger and still in Kuching, I left a poor girl crying on a bus stop after she had her handbag stolen.

This was one hot and muggy afternoon in Kuching, where I was waiting for a bus. In what passes for a bus stop in Malaysia，there was another person also waiting. All I heard was a scream, and saw the blur of a man on a motorbike riding away.

Someone had snuck behind the shelter of what passes for a bus shelter in Malaysia, grabbed her handbag, and made off with it. I gave chase, but it was pointless as there is no way I could outrun a motorbike, which turned a corner and disappeared from view.

I went back to the bus stop, and saw the poor girl crying and being consoled by a someone who was not there previously. Just there and then, the bus that I had been waiting for turned up.

I had a choice. I could take the bus, and be on my way to my destination. Or I could miss it, to stay and console the poor girl, missing the bus, and most likely not making to my destination on the day. Remember, this is Kuching. You don't so much catch a bus as rock up to the side of a road and hope something turns up. Which can be anything between a 5 minute and a 2 hour wait.

So I took the bus. And left her there.

If there was CCTV camera footage, I would be a guy who disappeared from the frame, only to reappear flogging down the bus, getting on it and going my way, leaving the poor girl lying there. I would be accused of being heartless, selfish, with no morals, blinded by material wealth, a symbol of a decaying society, and a bastard, by the masses with their knee jerk reactions.

But could I have done anything if I had missed the bus? I had no handphone. Little money on me. I did not see the licence plate of the motorbike. The thief was a blur, and frankly if it was my father I would not have been to identify him either. I could console her. At most, I could have accompanied her to the police station. But what else could I do?

The alternative was after waiting for 45 minutes for a bus was to miss it and wait even longer. How many people would have done that? Ask yourself, how many people, having waited so long for an unreliable bus, would have let it pass?

It is all very easy, in the comfort of your own room behind a keyboard to take the moralistic high ground and unleash vigilante bile on the actors of this play, but when you are in the same position, without the benefit of hindsight, would you have done things differently?

People always have 20/20 vision with hindsight. Rarely do we have such a clear view of what is ahead of us.

Cold hearts? Or simply self-preservation in a society whose motto seems to be “the strong shall leave, and the weak should perish”?

If only life was that simple and straightforward.

Endnote:
It is times like this, that I want to brandish this in front of the Malay nationalists and Chinese culturalists in Malaysia, and shout “You want me to balik Tongsan? You want to balik Tongsan? This is what Tongson looks like!” in their faces.

Behind the scenes with Toyosaki Aki as Suu

Source.

It is not often that one get's to see 1) the inside of the recording studio (not that it is the most interesting place on earth) and 2) the seiyuu in action. Especially when it is Suu.

Suu is still a brilliant character.

Also in the video: a look at a young 16 year old Tokosaki Aki, and how she actually looks before she was airburshed into スフィア.

Tamura Yukari has been busy

And I don't exactly mean this either.





We're barely half way through December, and she's not on one, but TWO covers!

I still can't believe she did Kawasumi Mai. That was amazing.

Uptime

Time for a reboot, I reckon.

Nagasarete Airantou - ep 04

Oh god, Hocchan is pure gold as poor terrified Suzu.

Any more moé and she would be going "Uguu~" and called Tsukimiya Ayu.

Nagasarete Airantou - ep 15

Machi's nuts. That's the only way to describe her.

Twitter Gems, part 33

Oh god KitaEri, what are you really doing to us?!

AFA11: 『I ♥ Anisong presents ROCK YOUR SOUL!!! Super Anisong Concert』

AFA11. Singapore. 11-13 November 2011. This time however, NicoNico would be broadcasting live from Singapore. And not just a few cameo shots. They would be broadcasting live across the world from the concerts.

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Naturally the highlight of AFA11 this time round would be LiSA @ Oribe Risa. The singing voice of Angel Beats. With her performance streamed across the globe live by NicoNico. This is probably the closest I'll ever get to AFA, so having cleared my calendar, I decided to tune in. It was my first live stream of a concert. Heck, I think it is even my first concert, real or otherwise. (I don't get out much)

「I ♥ ​Anisong ROCK Y​OUR SOUL!!!」 would take centre stage this time round. Starring Sea☆A, LiSA and Hayakawa Toshio.

So at 9pm AEST (7pm SGT, 8pm JST, 3am PST), I tuned in.

8.54pm: The (virtual) doors on NicoNico open. Live viewers so far: 1551.
9.04pm: The live feed from Suntec comes on. I see a stage and people. Can hear the Singaporean accent of people talking in the background.
9.08pm: First pictures from the ground
9.12pm: Still tuning up. Doesn't look they're going to start on time
9.16pm: MC comes on stage. Cowboybibimbop falls in love with her.
9.24pm: Sea☆A comes up on stage. First up: the theme song for AFA11 - 「DREAM SHOOTER」



I'll be blunt: Sea☆A a artificially created sugary mess that is an attempt to bring the "aidoru" culture to Singapore. Its not going to work. Japan is not South East Asia, and South East Asia is not Japan. That said, I do admire them for taking the effort to sing in Japanese (but then even SNSD could do it, so......) and entering the Japanese entertainment market. Showbiz is harsh. They did put some effort into their choreography.



And I thought that SNSD was an artificial blob. I suppose one pro of all this is that they're all English speaking. But bloody hell, they've picked up the terrible naming convention that seems to be the traits of mass J-pop.

Other songs performed:
-Soda Sound Fountain
-DELI-DELI☆DELICIOUS



I was hoping LiSA would be coming on next. It was nice to know that I wasn't the only one glad seeing Sea☆A wrap up. Then Hayakawa Toshio @ ANIKI came up.

After one song, the live stream was cut. So I have no idea what ANIKI performed. He was apparently performing a medley, which pretty much brings up all kinds of licensing issues.

Still, I got to take a break, grab some fruit, and swung by the toilet. Things I would not have been able to do if I was physically there.

10.49pm: Nico live stream back.
10.53pm: Tuning up. Can hear bits and pieces of GalDeMo. :)
11.03pm: LiSA comes up on stage!

Her opening song, "Believe in myself" was pretty apt. It certainly got the crowd pumped up. And no mention of her appearance would be complete without mentioning her zettai ryouiki. She certainly knows how to work up and crowd.



Next up was "Day Game", a GalDeMo song. For the first time in my life I finally understood why anyone would want to see line up and jostle with a million other people simply just to see their artist in the flesh performing. The song itself as a Angel Beats album was great, but the live music was just electrifying. And man, they really went crazy with the drums with this song.

By this time the late hour didn't matter too much to me. I couldn't get enough of her.

And after "Day Game" LiSa did not disappoint, trying a a few words of English. I think it was her attempt that actually had the crowd going totally wild. For me, I took my proverbial hat off to her. It is no joke trying to speak in a language that you're not familiar with.

She then broke out into "Oath Sign", the highly anticipated OP of Fate/Zero. Having seen her perform it earlier in the day, it was a double dose hit. To have LiSA performing the same song twice in the same day, it was too much for me. I had to dial down the volume. And restrain myself.

Living in high density living means you need to be considerate.



When "Ichiban no takaramono" was next it was just pure ecstasy. A beautiful song, very tastefully done by the musician's to be a bit more upbeat, while maintaining the essence of the song. By the end LiSA was crying. I think. It was hard determining whether it was tears or sweat. I have a feeling the airconditioning of Suntec was working overtime that night.

Mind you, that is no small feat. Having been to Suntec personally, I can vouch that the greatest risk of being in Suntec is frostbite.

Her next rendition of the Angel Beats OP, "My soul your beats", was solid, but I think Lia can rest assured that she need not worry about her job security. But this piece showed that LiSA has some incredible lungs. Especially towards the end. LiSA doesn't quite have Lia's smooth high pitch through.


LiSA eventually took a breath, and went "Singapore is the best!". As if I needed to be reminded. As usual, Singapore shows the region how to do things. Properly. I have a feeling AFA will be annual event in Singapore's MICE calendar for a while.


Amongst all this, I couldn't help but feel the vast gulf that separates Singapore from their neighbours. And I'm not talking about the South China Sea either. Kuching is little under 90 minutes from Singapore by air, yet the type of clientèle that BCCK and Suntec play host to couldn't be more apart. With Marina Bay Sands (just don't call it a casino), the gap will only get wider.


"妄想コントローラ" next was a new song for me. I'm not quite sure how to comment on this. But it was what was after this that was noteworthy. She pumped up the crowd and got them to sing along to some of the beats of "妄想コントローラ". LiSA then expressed her appreciation, first in halting English, the switched to more confident Japanese. She expressed her gratefulness, and noted that it is music that bonds people across cultures and languages.

And I lost her after that. This is why I have respect for those who can comprehend multiple languages coherently.



"Crow Song". Where do I start. Arguably the 2nd best of the Angel Beats GalDeMo songs, just after "Thousand Enemies". While I was sad that she did not perform the latter, she was at her peak with "Crow Song". I just wanted to break out the Angel Beats eps and do a marathon.

I just wish the English language had better comparative and superlatives. "The wild crowd became the wildest crowd" somehow doesn't cut it. Singapore (+ all the other people that came in) loved her.

And she loved Singapore, promising to come back. Her "I promise you, I'll be back" drove people crazy. The twitterverse lit up on that single sentence. If she does come back to Singapore, there will be no lack of hospitality. I do hope she becomes a regular feature in AFA like May'N.

"LxixSxA!" was her last act. She got the crowd spelling her stage name. And with that, at 12.00am, she wrapped up. One hour of LiSA goodness.


Final thoughts:

Again, Singapore shows how to do things properly. This year was a sweetener, as much of AFA11 was streamed by NicoNico. And I was impressed how well the stream was from my end. While not 1080i HD, it was a lot smoother and clearer than I expected. With the exception of a few dropped frames quickly forgotten by LiSA's awesomeness, it was almost as good as being there. The camera angles were numerous, and I have no doubt that the footage will be used as a DVD release.

We have come a long way from the postage stamp sized videos of RealMedia. I remember trying to watch the funeral of Princess Diana via the BBC RealMedia stream in 1997. It wasn't so much a video as viewing still images with buffering every other minute. Sure, NicoNico did rope in Akamai to provide such a seamless experience, but shows that AFA is no longer a niche event. It is very much mainstream, with big money and a global audience involved.  Those who could not be there in person were no less involved across the Internet.

Japan is no longer the regional and cultural power it once was. The Hallyu wave shows no sign of slowing down, and the Koreans have learnt from the mistakes from the Japanese in asserting their cultural prowess. While KBS and SM Entertainment have no qualms of harnessing the power of social media in promoting their brands such as SNSD and SHINee (just look at Youtube. And I'm not talking about the official MV's either), the old giants such a Sony Entertainment and King Records, and even Aniplex spends their resources hunting down anyone who dares upload any of their intellectual property to Youtube.

It is this kind of disconnect that alienates all but the dedicated of fans. Something these companies can ill afford in this converged world.

While there are positive developments, such as Aniplex's announcement in AFA11 that the Fate/Zero Japanese BD will not only be sold worldwide, and that it would come with English subtitles, this is more the exception than the rule. From my conversations, the AFA organizing committee jumps through a lot of hoops trying to get performers. The Japanese domestic market is not growing, and with competition from foreign talents it is in fact shrinking.

Such a unique experience, especially for those outside Japan, is something that cannot be copied.

The Japanese anime and entertainment industry could learn a lesson or two from AFA.

Cables

Business Times, 22 Sept 2010: RM2b undersea cable to HK, US proposed

The Star, 1 Feb 2011: TM to invest RM427m in submarine cables

I found this 2 pieces of news interesting. 4 months prior PEMANDU made clear an intention to enter the submarine cable business. Down the road it was scaled back to purchasing 2 fiber's from the Asia Submarine-cable Express.

Source: Telegeography

Regardless, this is nothing but good news. Malaysia is chronically short of Submarine Cable capacity. Bandwidth requirements are only going to go up, and Malaysia, in particular non-TM communication companies, rely too much on transit provided by Singaporean upstream providers.

I was hoping for a cable hugging the coast of Sarawak and Sabah, skirting across Mindanao in southern Philippines, and connecting to Guam. We would avoid the notoriously geologically unstable south Taiwan area, which caused the great outage of 06.

Guam is slowly surely starting to become an important hub for international transit.

Surviving a fan convention

The Courier Mail, 1 Nov 2011

No, I'm still not going this time round. *sigh*

Female seiyuu height chart

Source via here.

Isn't Kaneda Tomoko supposed to be 150cm?

Male seiyuu chart here. Didn't realise that Hino Satoshi (Sakai Yuji; Hiraga Saito) was so short.....

CLANNAD ep 15

I still want Misae's cat. :)

Twitter Gems, part 32

Source.

Protip: the person formerly known as J1m0ne.

One hour of Moe Moe Kyun

No seriously.


Source

Maybe it wasn't a bad thing being limited to 10 minute videos after all.....

Apparently, three

Source

Hideyoshi dakimakura descriptions are always awesome, especially when they're machine translated.

I can't stop laughing at Hobby Search's description of his 3rd dakimakura. There is so much win in this.

Spotted in Brisbane

Having trouble moving stock?

What was wrong with 175MB xvid AVI's?

Do I qualify as a "true believer"?



I'm giving up on trying multiple fansub groups. It being a 54 ep series does not excuse this madness.

This is what happens when you put people into HDB flats, part 3

Source.

Sometimes the parodies are actually better than the original song itself.

Ouran High School Host Club live-action: Ep 10

Pub trivia: the Suo empire building where Tamaki visits his estranged grandmother is actually the Tokyo University of Technology. Check the image in this post.

The Ootori mansion (nice house if there was ever one!) is the The Gallery of Horyuji Treasures (法隆寺宝物馆) of the Tokyo National Museum.

Tamaki's house is the Hyokeikan of the Tokyo National Museum. I wonder if they did some post-production to the roof through.

Mori's doing damage to the doors.

TBS can't decide where to put the Suo empire. Shot of the Nippon Engineering College of Hachioji where Tamaki waits to see his grandmother. This they probably did some post processing.

I think I've figured out which phone is featured in the Ouran live-action: the Xperia acro IS11S.

Its based on the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc (aka Xperia X12) that is shipped out to the world, but the IS11S has some Japan-specific features. I suppose most importantly it doesn't quite "arc". Known as the "Xperia acro" it comes in 2 flavours: SO-02C for NTT DoCoMo, and IS11S for au by KDDI (their Arashi ad's are now stuck in my head damnit).

Its a little thicker and porkier than its export counterpart, but for not without a reason:

Ouran High School Host Club live-action: Ep 9

And I thought Kyouya was just kidding about the Host Club photo book. They will be very valuable, being only available in quantities of 30.

Ah well, the Ouran movie in March 2012 anyone?

Hani-sempai is quite cute in a dress. I don't think that's exactly what Kirimi had in mind when she went "lovely-kei" through.

"What is a man? I don't even know what a woman is.................."

This was a ep that was clearly aimed at fujoshi.

After Yubisaki milk tea through, I can never see cross-dressing the same way again.

My memory of the Haruhi date ep/chapter is a little fuzzy, but I don't remember Hani-sempai crossdressing through..............

Baka to Test to Shokanju Ni - 04

I have a feeling Shouko is a member of the Obedient Wives' Club. :P

Ouran High School Host Club live-action: Ep 8

We knew this day was coming, but still:

Reverse Harem!

Debauchery?

I think some explanation is in order here. Kirimi is saying  しゅちにくりん（酒池肉林). Literary it means "ponds of wine and forests of meat". It is meant to convey/describe a decadent scene.

It is classical Japanese, which is hardly used in day-to-day usage. And not exactly the type of language you'd expect to hear coming from a 7 year old!  

Glasses character?

Lovely-type/loli-shouta?

Stoic type?

Incest?

 The Hitachin twins look quite pleased...

Bookworm?

Tamaki isn't as horrified at what Kirimi might throw at him in the live-action

The source of all this

For the record, Kirimi (Sawada Mone; 澤田萌音) is actually surrounded by real shoujo manga. From left to right on the bed: お兄ちゃんと一緒 (Me and my brothers), キスよりも早く (Faster than a kiss), and 金色のコルダ (La Corda d'Oro).

I think this is how the seeds of bro-con are planted......

The only thing that is fictional is the manga that Kirimi is actually reading (and that Haruhi is reading to her). There is no 初恋ラブ manga. And I'm trying to work out any internal joke/reference of the author being 香取チィスコ. 

I must say, the producers really did stay very faithful to the manga for this episode. Poor Haruhi (Kawaguchi Haruna) was "forced" to plow through 50 manga, there was a hint of the burden Tamaki (Yamamoto Yusuke) has to carry, and the Romanov/Tokarev references.

I suppose it would have been child abuse suggesting that maids recklessly pile impressionable loli's kids with shoujo manga......