Category: Random Musings

This past Sunday, the popular music and variety show Utawara, hosted by Matsumoto Jun and Matsuura Aya, had a two hour summer special that featured Arashi, KAT-TUN, and Koda Kumi. What I’m writing about today is the segment that featured Koda Kumi: it was called the 「チビっ子エロかわダンス選手権」 (Chibikko Erokawa Dance Senshuken). Apparently, the show announced that they were holding such a competition and they got 1,419 applications. They eventually narrowed the field down to nine teams and those teams are the ones who performed in this roughly half-hour segment. Basically, each group does a dance to a Koda Kumi song, and they get judged by Wada Akiko, Tomochika Tsuyako, and Machamacha.
Warning: Proceed at your own risk. This post includes links to videos that I would probably label “Not Safe For Work.” In showing those to my friends, the responses I got were “OMG,” “Vade retro, satanas!” and “I have a feeling any chance I had to go to heaven just went down the crapper.”

Some random thoughts in my head for this first day of August:

GameFAQs‘ Best. Series. Ever. contest ends today. This final match is the FInal Fantasy series vs. The Legend of Zelda series, and so far the voting has been really close. I admit that I have a vested interest in seeing Final Fantasy win (the bracket I filled out in the spring is doing very well, but hinges on FF winning), so Please go vote for Final Fantasy! 🙂

I’ve been listening to Five for Fighting’s “The Riddle” lately. I absolutely LOVE the lyrics to this song. You can watch the music video on YouTube (or if you’re anal like me and just want a good sound quality version, you can listen to and not watch the Sailor Moon AMV that uses the song lol).

I’m almost done playing Xenosaga III. The story is really good this time around, and there are tons of cutscenes. It’s very much the final episode of the series in the tying-up-storylines sense. I’m in the final chapter right now, having played about 40 hours (and done pretty much all of the extra bosses and minigames), and probably have another 5 or so more hours to until the end. Obviously not nearly the length of Final Fantasy XII, but that’s a game in a different class. On that note though, I still haven’t finished playing FFXII (there’s just way too much I still have left to do in that game).

Thanks to jj, I found out that the guy who made the Suzumiya Haruhi Gundam Parodies of the OP and ED has been up to a lot recently. This person, named plamo on YouTube, has not only made a parody of Touka helping Hakuoro in episode fourteen of Utawarerumono, he’s also made a Gundam parody of the end of the episode two of Suzumiya Haruhi and the God knows… song from episode twelve.
In addition, this guy has created Gundam parodies of several OP and ED sequences including:

Gokujou Seitokai’s OP, Koiseyo Onnanoko
Joshi Kousei GIRL’S-HIGH’s ED, incl.
Magikano’s ED, Magisuki MAGIC
Mai-Otome’s ED, Otome ha DO MY BEST desho?
Suzumiya Haruhi’s OP, Bouken Desho Desho?
Suzumiya Haruhi’s ED, Hare Hare Yukai

And that’s just a portion of all the videos.
I found all of them incredibly entertaining. I love the attention to detail, such as the way Strike Gundam’s Aile Pack comes down after defeating the enemy Gundam just like Touka’s hair floats down after she kills the enemy general. The Gokujou Seitokai OP made me laugh so much and reminded me of how much I liked the opening song.
plamo’s homepage can be found at http://ugougo.gejigeji.jp/. It includes a page for the “cast” of the videos and a page of production notes for each video.

Update: plamo has uploaded a new video, NHK ni Youkoso’s ED, a parody of Odoru Akachan Ningen. It is freaking HILARIOUS. You really have to watch it alongside the actual ED animation to appreciate how good it is.

Based on the results of the poll from last Saturday asking when you preferred the Weekly Roundup Poll, Sunday was the clear winner with 44% of the votes. Since I have no objections to that, the Weekly Roundups will be moved to Sunday, which would be the day Haruhi and School Rumble air, effective starting this week. This should bolster the Blood+ and Haruhi votes a little and might take some away from FSN, but we’ll see how it turns out. In case anyone was curious, my top three current favorite series are: 1. Blood+ 2. Ouran High School Host Club 3. Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu. Following those closely are Utawarerumono, Fate/stay night, and Kamisama Kazoku. The summer season is less than three weeks away! Expect a schedule of sorts sometime (hopefully) in the next week or so. I actually started listening to a ton of Spitz and Suga Shikao music earlier this week, so I’ve been in a mood to see the next Honey and Clover this entire time. And finally, you might be wondering why I called this entry the “Homeless” edition and what the picture to the right is all about. I was browsing the popular japanese blog Houtou Opera House and noticed an entry on something called 「ホームレス大図鑑」 – “The Homeless People Large Illustrated Encyclopedia,” or what I like to call “the big picture book of homeless people.” I know this is a serious subject, but that book title just had me cracking up for the longest time. Basically it’s a book about, well, the Japanese homeless. You might understand a little better if you go and check out H-Opera’s scans of the book (scroll down about halfway) – it’s certainly interesting. Anyway, this is just one of those curiosities that gave me a good laugh (at the book title, not the subject matter), and made me go “I can’t believe someone wrote a 271-page book about this.”

I’m back now, more or less ok. The short story is that I have a partially collapsed lung, aka. a pneumothorax. It should get better on it’s own in a few days (hopefully).

The long story:
On Tuesday night, I got off the exercise bike and felt some back pains. At the time, I thought nothing of it and assumed it was just muscle strain. The problem persisted through the night and into the next day. Basically, it hurt whenever I took a deep breath and whenever I was lying on my back. Enough alarms went off in my head that I went to see my doctor today. She did a normal check-up and took some chest x-rays. Unfortunately, their office equipment wasn’t that great. And so while she saw some abnormalities in the x-ray, she couldn’t tell exactly what it was. Her advice was to go to the ER.
So I came home, grabbed my stuff, wrote that quick update, and went on my way to the hospital. Now mind you, I’ve never been to the emergency room, so I had no idea what the experience is like. It ended up being better than I thought it’d be, though the local hospital was a lot smaller than I expected. The triage nurse checked me up, I filled out some paperwork, and then I waited. About 45 minutes later, they called my name, put me in a small room, and made me change into one of those hospital gowns. Then came an even longer wait. After the initial nurse who took my blood pressure and my temperature, no one showed up for the next 90 minutes. I had brought this week’s issue of Time Magazine (which has a Nintendo Wii preview incidentally) to read and there was also a TV in the room to keep me occupied. The ER doctor finally came and examined me, and then sent me to get more chest x-rays and a blood test done.
Once those tests were done, there was more waiting until the doctor finally came back. His diagnosis was that I have a partially collapsed lung, aka. a pneumothorax. According to him, it wasn’t something specific I had done as much as it was just because I’m tall and thin (or as he referred to it, “genetics”). From the x-ray, he thought that my left lung had a tear of some sort and some air got out. There had also been some internal bleeding. Usually a small pneumothorax heals by itself as the body absorbs the air. But there’s always the chance that the tear gets bigger instead of smaller, in which case they have to stick a tube inside of me and start sucking out the air. He told me to come back tomorrow afternoon for a follow-up x-ray and to go see another specialist next week for a check-up. There really wasn’t any medicine he could prescribe me except for painkillers (which I turned down).
And so I’m still in pain, but it’s comforting to know that it’ll get better (hopefully). A huge Thank You to everyone for their support – it really means a lot to me. 🙂

As most of you have probably already heard, Square Enix announced Final Fantasy XIII today. This is the trailer for Final Fantasy XIII that aired this morning on FujiTV’s Mezamashi TV.

Here’s one of those rumor-stories that greatly disturbs me, and I hope it never comes true:

We were recently passed on the information that a Japanese Magazine titled Animage, in their current issue, announced that Fox has acquired the rights to the popular anime series SAILOR MOON and is looking to Joss Whedon to presumably write and direct a live action film. Further, they’re hoping Miss Can’t Keep Her Genitals Inside Her Clothes herself Lindsay Lohan will star alongside Jennifer Garner (as the main villain) in an all non-Asian cast.

Sources: MovieHotties.com: Lindsay is Sailor Moon? and Cinematical: Lindsay Lohan is Sailor Moon?

I’ve written up the release dates of opening and ending themes for a lot of the shows this season. As usual, it doesn’t include everything, just those series I watch or I sampled. A few notes to prevent confusion:
-The Himawari OP/ED is one maxi single with both songs/artists.
-The Nishi no Yoki Majo ED is found on Mariaria’s as-of-yet untitled mini-album to be released on May 10th.
-The Third’s ED is also being released on a mini-album, this time the self-titled 「スーパーフライング」 by 超飛行少年 (Super Flying Boy).
-The Ouran High School Host Club ED is on LAST ALLIANCE’s upcoming single 「DAZE&HOPE」.
-The NANA ED is due out in June according to this interview. Thanks to Angel for the info.
-I haven’t been able to find release dates for Bleach’s OP4, either of the NANA songs, or the Juuousei OP. It may just be too early.
If you see any errors (wrong dates, misspellings, etc), please point them out.