Japantrip 2009 part one

Its 7.30 am. Waiting in arnhem on the train to Frankfurt which, leaves at 8:08. Its cold and dark outside. A preview of hokkaido...

Waking up and getting ready winter edition

Another waking up and getting ready in 5 minutes clip has been made.


Quite some tips this time.
Getting dressed with a different technique with special sock apparatus and glove technique. Cheese fondue and cappuchino honey sweetener/lipgloss breakfast is made with some smart usage of wires. Wire is also used for laundry. Smart usage of foil for faster drying. Head warming is a bit weird. Brushing teeth is a bit weird with dual toothbrushes, reducing water use by using a pet bottle.

video via japanprobe
image via konachan

Girls and mecha

Gemuste has done a poll on favourite anime series and has put up results by gender. When taking a look at the results:

Males
1) K-On!
2) The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi
3) Lucky Star
4) Gundam (all series)
5) Saki
6) Evangelion
7) Nanoha
8) Hetalia
9) Clannad
10)Toradora!

Females
1) Gundam (all series)
2) K-On!
3) Code Geass
4) Macross Frontier
5) Evangelion / Toradora! (tie)
6) The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi
7) Lucky Star
8) Clannad
9) Guren Lagan
10)Minami-ke

Seeing the amount of mecha series in the girls top 10 (or top 5 even), makes it looks like there are quite some girls that like mecha series. It looks like the new approach of putting bishounen in mechas pays off. I'm not sure about the accuracy as there were 923 males compared with only 360 females who answered. But it does look like the target audience is evolving.

via altjapan via gemuste

image via gelbooru

Short 東方 Touhou AMV/MAD

After seeing the AMVs at the convention I was thinking on how much work it would be to make one. So being inspired by a touhou arrangement I heard before, I decided to give it a try. Due to my natural lazyness, I also decided not to use short movies from anime, but to only use images.

The song is by はちみつれもン(hachimitsulemon) a doujin music group, vocals by erica. The song is slow but gives off a nice japanese atmosphere. The title is 酔月(drunken moon), so when deciding on what touhou character to put in there was not very hard(touhou's drunkard suika ibuki)

As the song is calm, not many fancy effects were used. Panning and zooming images with simple transitions depending on the song/image. Some subtle differences in the effects were put in there, referring to the situation or character in the image.

So enough text, on to the video:


Also a nicovideo version:

Abunai 2009: Dutch Anime Convention

Last weekend I've been to the local anime convention(One of the few in the Netherlands). It was a 3 day event so me and other members of the local japanese culture association went and stayed at nearby cottages.

The convention was nice and there was plenty of stuff to do.
There was a dealer room with many shops having stands selling goodies. This time nothing peaked my interest, so no loot. Anime and movies were shown on large screens in videorooms(though I didnt watch anything)
SoramimiKaraoke The karaoke was there to provide there karaoke(I didnt sing though I did time some songs for karaoke)
What I did do was spend some time at the games room, playing projectorgames (falldown and skykids ftw!)

There were plenty of cosplay events like a cosplay act and fashion show.
They even had a maid cafe with some very cute maids.

So as an impression of how it was, here is a picture of four cute ladies cosplaying as the K-On girls.(I assumed there would be plenty of pictures online elsewhere so not many pictures were taken. The only cosplay picture I have taken is this one OTL)
(If fate allows and you happen to be one of the cosplayers on the picture, contact me if you want the original or want it removed)

Another nice event was the AMV competition. Many great AMV were submitted.
The Winner(The song is in dutch, the lyrics matched the video clip perfectly):


This year the organization was able to arrange a taiko performance by Tatake, a Belgian taiko group who even has performed in Japan. The performance was nice and refreshing as they added some typical Belgian humor to the act,

Most of the time I spent time hanging around with other people having a great time. I'm already looking forward to next years convention.

第３回MMD杯 MikuMikuDanceCup 2009 Summer

People checking out the nicovideo ranking must have already noticed it. Currently the MikuMikuDanceCup is being held. Basically it is a contest of the best animation made using MikuMikuDance. The final entrees have been uploaded and the most popular ones are quite high in the general ranking. The contest is until friday 21/08 and the results will be published on monday 24/08.

Most animations use the Hatsune Miku/Vocaloid models. Some use different models like Mona. not much to say about the 3D model but the animation looks great. Some use the k-on girls...

My favorite until now is this very nice Touhou animation.


more videos on this tag

image via konachan

化物語 ED 君の知らない物語: Bakemonogatari ED kimi no shiranai monogatari

SInce it's the 13th already the single has been released and some new videos have appeared on nicovideo:

A better quality version:

nicosound link

The second song on the single:

nicosound link

And a PV version:


image via moe.imouto.org via pixiv