Rupee Shards

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anime, encoding, fansubbing, images, internet, manga, music, video games, youtube

Created By Desbreko

Hatsune Miku

I guess this is the next step up from my interest in OS-tans a while ago; I've been browsing around for Hatsune Miku songs. I've known about the Vocaloid software and the Miku voice for quite a while but never looked into it much until Dagger linked to a beautiful rendition of Ishikawa Chiaki's Uninstall (the OP theme for Bokurano) on her myOtaku page a while ago. Yes, I'm blaming her for my little obsession here.

The songs I've found have ranged from good, like Ne Tou ge de Reset! from Lucky Star's Hiiragi Tsukasa character CD, to just plain funny as in the case of this version of the Star Wolf theme. Another couple of good video game ones are the Final Fantasy VI Decisive Battle boss theme and Dancing Mad end boss theme. Miku's imitation of Kefka's laugh in the second one is hilarious. I just wish the people posting these knew how to encode decent mp3 audio because the sound quality on most kind of sucks.

And then there are the memes. Miku seems to have inherited the Ievan Polkka from Bleach's Orihime, of leekspin fame. There are leeks all over in the animations and art I've seen of Miku. Caramelldansen is another one I've come across which is way, way too catchy, and dancing Miku is cute too. Apparently someone wrote a program called MikuMikuDance just for making 3D animations of her.

It's times like these I wish I knew Japanese so I could browse Nico Nico Douga for this stuff. Almost every Hatsune Miku video I've seen on YouTube was ripped from there. I found Mikufan.com, which reposts videos off Nico Nico Douga, but there isn't a whole lot there yet.

Brawl, Music, and Sweet Pikmin Love

I spent a couple hours yesterday in the My Music options just listening to Smash Bros. Brawl's music and tweaking the likeliness that certain songs will play in the background when a level is selected. SSBB has a crazy amount of music—usually at least four tracks per level—and I'm still unlocking new songs. There are some amazing remixes of old themes, some taken straight from the original games, and even vocal tracks like Pikmin's Ai no Uta.

SSBB - Ai no Uta (Pikmin) Japanese Theme

I've loved this song (maybe a little too much) ever since I first heard it a little after Pikmin's release so of course I cranked its likeliness to play all the way up. The lyrics in romaji and translated English can be found on Chudah's Corner. It's a bit sad, a bit funny, and it describes the life of the Pikmin perfectly.

I'm hoping so much that they'll release the game's soundtrack.

Smash Bros. Brawl Friend Code

My Super Smash Bros. Brawl friend code is: 1504-5385-2566

Add me and leave a comment with yours if you'd like to play online together. I hope to start filling up my friend roster with OtakuBoards and theOtaku peoples soon.

Super Metroid 100% Walkthrough

If you haven't checked out the Game Videos link in the introduction, it goes to my YouTube channel where I post video walkthroughs for my favorite games. A lot of them are boss videos, where I show strategies for beating bosses and explain everything in the video description, but my latest project was a full game walkthrough for Super Metroid.

Super Metroid - 100% Walkthrough - Part 11 of 14

[View Full Playlist]

The walkthrough was a lot of fun to make (even if I did go through hell with my PC crashing and burning twice in the process) and I'm really happy with how it turned out so I thought I'd share it again here even though I already posted about it on myOtaku. Unfortunately, embedding playlists doesn't work (consider this a feature request if anyone of importance happens to read this) so I've put up my favorite segment of it and a link to the playlist page. In the video descriptions I wrote up notes to explain the various tips and tricks I use, which are time stamped to match where they're shown in the videos.

In the future I also plan on making posts here whenever I add new videos to my YouTube channel. I'm not sure what my next project will be yet, especially with Super Smash Bros. Brawl releasing tomorrow (it will no doubt devour all of my gaming time for a while to come), but I've been thinking of doing dungeon walkthroughs for a Zelda game next.

Also, if anyone needs help in any of the games I have videos for on my YouTube channel (or any Zelda game for that matter), feel free to post questions either here or there and I'll answer as best I can. I always enjoy helping people out with games.

Mahoromatic

I watched the first season of Mahoromatic recently and thought I'd write up my thoughts about it. To start, I should mention that I'm not a big fan of maid, robot, or ecchi (i.e. lots of fan-service) themes in anime, which happen to make up nearly the entire show. I've not seen many shows like it so I have little to directly compare it to. However, I like a change of pace from my usual preferences every now and then and Mahoromatic sounded like it would be a fun watch.

The first thing that struck me was just how clichéd the whole thing is. I expected this though—I mean, it is a maid robot show and you really don't need to have seen any of them to know what they're like. There's Mahoro, the cute female lead who applies for a live-in maid position for Suguru Misato, the standard nerdy, glasses-wearing kid living by himself in a large house. And, oh yeah, Mahoro happens to be the most powerful combat android ever created. Having fought for nine years to defend Earth from an alien invasion that's been kept secret from the general population, she now only has one year to remain operational, provided she avoids farther combat. Mahoro does actually have a reason for applying as Suguru's maid, after being allowed to live as a civilian for her remaining year, but even that's terribly clichéd.

No one watches a show like Mahoromatic for the story, though, so it doesn't matter how ridiculous it is. It can safely be tossed out the window and you won't be missing anything.

The reason I did watch Mahoromatic was simply to laugh at and revel in the cuteness of Mahoro's day-to-day life. The series was produced by GAINAX and SHAFT so the visuals are top notch and Mahoro is indeed cute. Her innocent nature and little personality quirks even make her, dare I say it, moe.

Quite ironically, the show frequently contradicts Mahoro's trademark phrase, "I think dirty thoughts are bad!" There aren't many panty shots, which are usually all too common in anime, but there is an abundance of boobies. In fact, in the very first episode Mahoro gets into the bath with Suguru. We all know the excuse—only to wash his back, she says—and we all know it's just that. I personally don't care one way or the other about fan-service but if it puts you off then you shouldn't bother with this show.

In the end, there were no surprises and Mahoromatic turned out to be exactly what I thought it would be. It was shallow, clichéd, mindless, self-indulgent, yet still fun and entertaining. And at the end of the day entertainment is why I watch anime, and it's why I'll be continuing on to the second season.