Miscellaneous

Introduction – “I Get to Write for Random Curiosity? Really?”

Hi everyone. Nice to meet you. My name is Takaii and I’ll be hopping on board to write for Random Curiosity! I never thought that I would get the opportunity to write for RandomC, but sometimes amazing things happen, right? I’m here to post my thoughts on whatever series I may be blogging, and listening to what you have to say down in the comments. I love reading comments and can’t wait to see what you guys have to say.

The Name's Takaii.

I was exposed to anime back in 2000, when Rurouni Kenshin and Outlaw Star were still the newest thing out in America. Once subtitled anime got more popular, I began watching just about anything I could get my hands on. Anyone remember streaming videos through Winamp? I was able to watch my first Japanese animated movie, Appleseed, off of it. Some of my old favorites that will never leave me are Mahoromatic and Love Hina, with Love Hina being the first anime I watched with the original Japanese voice actors and Mahoromatic introducing me to Ayako Kawasumi (voicing Mahoro, Saber, and Alice among many others). For anyone that watched the English dub, Mitsune’s voice was so bad that I vowed to always watch shows in their original language. And thus, the door to anime had been opened.

For series that are a little bit more current, my favorites from the past few years range from Clannad, Gurren Lagann, Lucky Star, to Toradora and Ookami. While I’m not the most well versed on all the different types of anime out there, I do have a very open mind when it comes to things I will watch. My favorite genres though are romantic comedies, slice of life shows, and those really, really GARR type of shows that get your adrenaline pumping (Gurren Lagann anyone?).

I also enjoy listening to music from anime, especially the OSTs. For the past few months, the most notable songs in my mind are Angel Beat’s Brave Song (GlDeMo Ver!) and Bakemonogatari’s 君の知らない物語 (Kimi No Shiranai Monogatari by Supercell). I’m very open to different types of music, and I would love to hear some of your song recommendations. (Anything Japanese is fine, it doesn’t have to be from an anime necessarily.) From the OST viewpoint, Maeda Jun‘s work on Angel Beats is what’s been on repeat for me while I study. It makes for really, really good studying music. Completely off topic, but I managed to get Eri Kitamura’s signature on Yui’s picture on the Thousand Enemies album (Eri Kitamura voices Yui). I know that she doesn’t sing it, but it feels right having her sign it.

On the writing aspect side of things, I tend to focus on the important events during an anime, while trying to still bring out the gist of what’s going on during the entire show. I’m not going to focus too much on summarizing, and express my opinions on the important points instead. I value any feedback you may have, and I hope that in turn I can entertain you guys to the best of my ability. I’m very, very excited to start writing for Random Curiosity and never thought that I’d be here writing an intro post for myself. I hope that I will be able to provide entertaining posts for you in the near future.

On that note, I hope I didn’t bore you too much, and here’s my formal introduction;
タカイイです。どうぞよろしくおねがいします。 (Takaii desu. Douzo yoroshiku onegaishimasu)
-Takaii

I’m still trying to get MyAnimeList setup, but I’m having trouble recalling everything I’ve ever watched. For what I’m blogging, I’m fairly sure I will be covering Bakuman and Yakumo.

Miscellaneous

Introduction – “Another suspect…?”


As you all know, since Omni’s retirement six months ago, Divine has been covering the past two seasons of anime nearly single handedly, taking on 11-16 shows a season and still managing to get posts out in a relatively timely and consistent manner. However, despite Divine’s seemingly unworldly level of dedication and conviction when it comes to blogging, he is still only one man and can only cover so much at one time. Due to time constraints and other issues, Kiiragi and Prooof are also only able to cover two shows a season, with the indefinitely running shounen series One Piece and Bleach being among them. So, after hearing about how Divine was looking for someone with a diverse taste in anime to cover a more broad array of shows for the site, I decided to offer my help in this endeavor. In doing so, I hope to please the readership of this blog by providing a more broad coverage of anime seasons and satiate my own desire to voice my opinions of the latest anime on a medium other than forum discussion threads.

Miscellaneous / To Aru Majutsu no Index

To Aru Majutsu no Index II – PV

[flv:To_Aru_Majutsu_no_Index_II_PV1.mp4 550 310]

While I’ve found time to watch all my shows, my coverage of them will slip a bit this week due to a change of projects at my job and me spending time on various miscellaneous tasks on the site, such as the new playlist for the sidebar Flash player. To help tide things over in the meantime, I figured it was worthwhile getting a quick post out about the To Aru Majutsu no Index II promotional video that was shown at the end of this week’s episode of Ookami-san on AT-X. I won’t get into any detail about this sequel now, but will say that I’ll definitely be watching it.

For those who have been wondering, yes, a Fall Preview is in the works. However, I’m in no rush to get it out since there will be more promotional material available as we get closer to the start of the new season. Not to mention, another big part of the season preview here at RC involves the broadcast schedules, which haven’t been announced for all the new shows yet. Originally, I was hoping to get the post out mid-September (roughly two weeks from now), but it’s looking like it’ll be closer to the last week of this month as I’ll be fairly busy in the upcoming weeks.

Fall is also one of the most jam-packed seasons, with over thirty new series airing this year. Even after limiting the preview to the usual criteria, I still have 27 or so I wish to provide proper previews for, which means PVs and everything. I’d also like to add some information on OVAs this time around, even if it’s just a list of the ones that will be released over the course of the season. Clearly, it’s not something I can get done in one sitting, even if there were forty hours in a day. So for now, consider this Index II PV a taste of things to come.

Miscellaneous / Random Musings

Thanks For Reading! 60 Million Visits and Counting!


It felt like a milestone of sorts, so I just want to stop and take a moment to thank all our readers for checking back regularly and making this site what it is today. Founded by Omni back in November 2004, Random Curiosity has grown tremendously over the years and now has over 4,140 posts, 173,000 comments, 60 million visits, and 120 million page views since its inception. Timely posts, regular updates, and fairly objective views make up the direction that took site to where it is now, but none of that would have mattered if you the readers didn’t keep coming back to hear what we have to say about the latest anime.

It wasn’t too long ago that Omni announced his retirement from blogging and I decided to pick things up where he left off under the new domain, randomc.net; however, our readership has grown significantly since then (~25%) so I’d like to thank all the new people who have either stumbled across the site or heard about it from a friend and made it one of their regular stops on the Internet. It might be a bit intimidating at first, but I encourage you all to join in on the discussions and share your own thoughts and impressions on anything and everything anime related. I promise I’ll do whatever is in my power to keep the trolls at bay. 🙂 It’s my hope that this will become a more inviting place for anime fans old and new, where anyone can easily relate to the impressions written here. If you have friends who are into anime but haven’t heard of the site, please do tell them, because just like you and all our other readers, we’re fans of anime first and foremost and just want to talk about it with people who have similar interests.

Once again, thank you all for reading and getting accustomed to things under my wing. Hopefully the changeover from dedicated summaries to more in-depth impressions wasn’t too alienating at first. I’ve enjoyed blogging a lot more ever since I started focusing on talking about anime and their plot lines rather than simply summing it up, so that’s a change in writing style that I’d like to continue improving on in an attempt to make episodic blogging a more interesting and worthwhile read. I’ll still have lots of high definition screen captures of course, for those who just can’t get enough of them. I probably won’t have another milestone post until 70 million visitors, but we may just see that before the end of the year at this rate — just in time for the site’s sixth anniversary.

* Yuri and Otonashi are snacking on some Pizza Hut pizza for those wondering. The full-size image can be seen here.

Miscellaneous / Random Musings

Quick Update: Feeling Under the Weather

For anyone wondering where my posts have been in the past few days, I was busy attending and helping out with two of my friends’ wedding on Saturday and somehow started feeling sick the day after. It wasn’t due to a hangover or anything, as I only had a few and was a designated driver for the night (after party and all). Instead, I’ve been bedridden feeling feverish for the past two days and had to call in sick for work. I tried to get some blogging in but the focus simply isn’t there. I already have a fairly big backlog after a mere three days (i.e. five shows), so I’ll have to figure out some way to catch up on that when I actually feel better. I may simply opt for short 200-300 word posts rather than my usual 700-1000 ones lately. We’ll see. I can’t think straight right now. I was actually hoping to get some more PV posts out too, but those will have to wait.
K-ON! / Miscellaneous / PV

K-ON! Live Event ~Let’s Go!~ (2009.12.30 in Yokohama Arena)

[flv:K-ON_Live_Event_Let’s_Go_01_Opening.mp4 550 310] Opening

As some people are already aware, the K-ON live concert that took place at the end of last year at Yokohama Arena was released on DVD and Blu-ray on June 30th. It was near the end of this live event that the surprise announcement for a second season was made. While that came as a pleasant surprise, the concert itself was what I dying to see at the time and here we are six months later. Most of Houkago Tea Time’s songs were performed to a karaoke backtrack with the seiyuu only pretending to play each of their characters’ instruments, but they did learn how to play a couple of songs themselves. The actual live music performances were saved until near the end of the concert, but things started off with a bang and an opening performance of “Cagayake! GIRLS” after a crowd countdown.

Yokohama Arena’s max capacity is 17,000 for those wondering, and by the looks of it, it’s a sold-out crowd they performed in front of. One side of the arena was sectioned off for the stage area, but I’d wager that there are at least 15,000 attendees at this concert. When things are put into that perspective, it’s pretty easy to see why K-ON!! is airing on 28 different stations right now.

*Note: Lots of videos after the jump and not recommended for those without the bandwidth speed to handle it! I was pretty aggressive with encoding, but you’re still looking at 20-30MB per video.

Miscellaneous / Poll

Poll: Summer 2010 Anime Season

In the past, only the Reader’s Choice poll for the year-end Best of Anime post got an real sort of attention, but I’m leaning towards having something similar every season to see what our readers are looking forward. In any case, I hope the Summer 2010 Preview was helpful in sifting through all the new shows and finding the ones that interest you. I already have a really good idea of what I plan to watch (and of those which ones to blog), but here’s your chance to voice your picks and compare them with others. As always, comments are welcome if there’s anything you want to add about a particular show or the summer season in general.

Note: The same poll will also be available on the sidebar.

Miscellaneous / Random Musings

Super Street Fighter IV Anime

[flv:Super_Street_Fighter_IV_ODA_Trailer.mp4 550 310]

With the impending worldwide release of Super Street Fighter IV this upcoming week, I thought I’d take a moment to make mention of the ODA that is going to coincide with it. As some of you may already be aware, last year’s release of Street Fighter IV on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 included the Street Fighter IV: Aratanaru Kizuna (a.k.a. The Ties That Bind Us) 65-minute ODA by Studio 4°C with their collector’s editions. As the owner of a copy of the Blu-ray version that came with the PS3 CE, I was thinking about covering it at the time but never got around to it. Aratanaru Kizuna was fairly lackluster from a production standpoint, even though I enjoyed how it introduced newcomers to the franchise such as Seth, C.Viper, and the story involving the S.I.N organization. This time will be different however, as the Super Street Fighter IV has piqued my interest enough to talk about it now and eventually cover it here on Random Curiosity.

…More after the jump, including an English version of the trailer.

Miscellaneous

Introduction – “The Prooof is in the Pudding”

With the recent retirement of Omni, certain series have been lacking coverage, namely Bleach, so here I am to fill that void. Bleach is the longest running series I have been following and it goes back to the time I spent a few weeks one summer doing nine-hour-a-day marathons to catch up on all of the episodes. As it is one of the series that originally drew me into the realm of anime, I also feel a bit obligated to follow the Bleach franchise faithfully through its good parts and bad parts, until the very end.

Compared to Divine and Omni, the type of shows I watch is noticeably less diverse since I got into anime and manga relatively recently. Death Note was the first series I watched; after that hooked me, I got into Bleach, then Shakugan no Shana, and then there was no turning back. Though I don’t quite consider myself a hardcore fan, I do dabble in various anime-related circles, like art, music, clubs — mostly using the Internet as a gateway. Last year, a friend linked me to one of Random Curiosity’s season previews, and I have been a regular reader ever since.

I currently reside in Taiwan, where the more “anime-friendly” environment (e.g. K-ON ads on buses) and a lot of spare time have made it easier to increase the variety in my anime list and allowing me follow more series simultaneously than before. As for my all time favorite series, I would have to say they are Fullmetal Alchemist, Clannad, and Death Note, though of course this list is always changing as new series are created.

Bleach is the only one of the big three shounen series (Naruto, Bleach, One Piece) that I keep up with, but I may blog other shows from time to time as well. My writing style tends to be very concise and I’m not particularly eloquent, but I will try my best to elaborate when necessary and smooth out my writing. Of course I welcome any feedback as well, and I look forward to contributing to this site and following the ups and downs of the Bleach universe together with the RC community.

Douzo Yoroshiku!
–Prooof