Movies & Street Racing

Spent the afternoon watching Valkyrie and Gran Torino. The former was a pretty solid movie, I think. It was very straightforward and no-nonsense in how the story was told. The only emotion this movie evokes in the viewer is suspense, but in this case, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. It told the story it wanted to tell, and I think that's enough for this movie. Plus, it was pretty educational for me, since I hardly knew anything about the July 20 Plot before watching this. ^^;;

Gran Torino was different from what I expected... Surprisingly, it's a lot like the Pixar movie Up, except with more violence, racism, and thick Asian accents. :P

But seriously, the themes of both movies are pretty similar, though they're presented in different ways. Both deal with death, old age, and finding new meaning in one's life through others. Both also balance drama evenly with humor, though Gran Torino's is definitely dark humor. (Most of the funny scenes involve either Eastwood talking Disgruntled Old Man smack or ghetto ethnic hoodlums calling each other names such as, "rice paddy n***as." Which was actually funny to me. xD) It was a pretty interesting movie, though not for the faint of heart... it gets pretty brutal towards the end.

As you can plainly see above, I've been watching a very wide range of anime series the past few days. :P

I was planning to give the Initial D marathoning a rest after third stage and move on to Kanon or something, but of course third stage was RIGHT when the series started getting good again. And boy am I glad I stuck with it. Fourth stage has been SO boss. It's so boss that I'm writing like a fucking fanboy. It's such an improvement over everything that came before it; they basically took everything good about the series, mixed all of it in a blender to make an AWESOME smoothie, while simultaneously having trimmed off the extraneous shit that the series didn't really need anymore. During the first five or so episodes, I would tear up from how good the series had suddenly become, that is how impressed I was with all the changes made. Even the opening theme songs are better in this season!

To go into greater detail would be kind of a spoiler, so I'll just say that Project D is such a great, but simple way to propel, or better yet, cannonball the series further while also revamping a lot of aspects of the show. That, and the Takahashi brothers, who were already interesting before, are finally being used to their full potential as characters here; they're about 75% of the reason why fourth stage is SO good. That, and Keisuke Takahashi + Takumi make THE pimpest racing rivals of the series.

Don't know if I ever mentioned this, but I attended a concert at this year's ACen, and it turns out that that particular musical group contributed a LOT of music to Initial D. (Which makes me wish I had watched this anime before seeing the concert, but at least now I appreciate having seen them at all.)

This is probably my favorite song of theirs from the series. I don't think they performed it at ACen, though...

ROFLCOPTER

HAY GUYZ, THE NEWEST HARUHI IS UP. ENDLESS EIGHT IS (HOPEFULLY) ENDLESS NO MORE.

EDIT: WHAT. THE. FUCK. IT'S NOT FUCKING OVER WHATTHEFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKSDS AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGSGHSGGGGGGGGGGGGG

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHFHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHUHFHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH

WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS WHY WHYWHYWHWHWHY jsjhjdksakajJSHSJHJSJS

WHY

EDIT 2: FIVE MINUTES LATER AND I'M STILL UPSET. IF I DIDN'T LIKE THIS SHOW SO MUCH, I WOULD FUCKING END THIS, MAN, JUST FUCKING END IT.

FUCK THIS, I'M WATCHING THE DAILY SHOW. :(

ARE YOU SERIOUS

YOKO KANNO COMPOSED THE AQUARION THEME SONG!! ONE OF MY MOST FAVORITE ANIME OPENING SONGS!! She also composed Platinum from Card Captor Sakura, which is just a step behind the Aquarion theme in terms of how much people love it. :D!

I love this woman that much more now! *squishes her*

EDIT: I seriously stayed up the entire night tweaking my MAL list layout & signature. I woke up at 1PM today. Why do I always overdo these things. ._.;

Initial D almost makes me want my license... almost.

Just saw Daniel Radcliffe on David Letterman, and man. He is a *lot* more confident in the way he handles himself during interviews (and he's funnier too!) in comparison to when he was promoting the first few HP movies. Though he sort of started to give off the same vibes that Emma Watson does during interviews--which isn't necessarily a good thing. I've always thought Emma was a little too talkative and the way she behaves seems really forced and unnatural to me. Ah well, that's showbiz for you. Though it is a little sad to see him go from being young and normal to someone a lot more "Hollywood-esque."

Not planning to see the new HP any time soon since I still haven't read past the fifth book, so I'm currently debating whether to see Bruno or Public Enemies in theatres. ^^;;

And on the anime front...

I got one too! And man, compiling that anime list was a pain in the ass! There are so many shows I barely remember coming into contact with: Violinist of Hamelin, freaking Pilot Candidate, even Lain took a while. I'm still in the process of updating it (I JUST now remembered the Street Fighter movies, haha), so the recent updates thing will probably continue to have random shit pop up on it. Not posting it on my profile b/c it takes attention away from the image, so I'll just occasionally include it in posts. ^^;

EDIT: Will write about Honneamise & Akira soon-ish.

MAJOR Seiyuu Love!

ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod. My respect for Japanese seiyuu has shot up, like, 150%! asdashghfff!!!

• Okay. First off, this is a clip of the recap episode from the CLAMP anime X (TV). Watch the first 25-ish seconds and take note of the voice of Kakyou, the character narrating. Then, skip to 3:50 and take note of Subaru's voice (guy in white coat).
  (WARNING: Do NOT watch past the scene of Subaru and Seishirou, unless you don't care about being spoiled for this series.)

When it comes to seiyuu, the people I take most notice of tend to be the ones who have very distinct and recognizable voices. (e.g. Koyasu Takehito sounds like Koyasu Takehito no matter what role he plays. Same goes for Takahiro Sakurai.) But recently, I've started to notice seiyuu who sound COMPLETELY different depending on what type of role they're playing.

For instance, I looked up the credit list of X to see who voices Kakyou (because his voice sounds exactly the same as Hakim's from Victorian Romance Emma). When I found out the seiyuu for both is Yuuji Ueda, my eyes almost popped out of my head. Because one of Ueda's most famous roles is...

Sanosuke from Rurouni Kenshin! (Which happens to be one of my most favorite anime voices EVER.) I mean, isn't it incredible?? Just compare the voice Ueda uses in X and the voice he uses for Sanosuke. He sounds TOTALLY different! I can hardly even hear a trace of Kakyou's voice in Sanosuke's; they sound like they were voiced by two different people. I mean, SERIOUSLY! *mind = blown*

The difference is less dramatic, but I also recognized the seiyuu of X's Subaru, Tomokazu Sugita... a.k.a. Kyon from Haruhi Suzumiya. (Who you can hear in the Haruhi video I posted a couple days ago.) Just goes to show how different Sugita sounds when his voice isn't dripping with sarcasm. I guess I didn't notice much when Sugita played Mayama from Honey & Clover because in that role, he still used his comedy voice half the time.

Likewise, Sugita also voices Soldier Blue in Toward the Terra, where he sounds even more noble and not-sarcastic.

• This is the end of the first episode. Soldier Blue appears ten seconds in.

I was honestly shocked when I found out Blue shares the same voice as Kyon; Blue sounds noble and commanding most of the time, but uses a very gentle tone when he speaks to certain characters, which is a voice I could never in a million years imagine coming out of Kyon's mouth. xD

So yes. Thank God for ANN's Encyclopedia, the giver of knowledge. :P