So… in-case no-one was paying attention to my twitter thingy over there, i was at Video Games Live (i really hate their website design) at the Royal Festival Hall in London this evening (along with seemingly everyone else from Amecon that lives within a 100 mile radius of London, lol).

Not sure what “festivities” were occurring before it started as i was too busy eating at a chippy in Camden and only got there in time to start going inside to sit down, lol (i’d so never be a professional journalist, lol).

(guess who sponsored this event, lol)

Anyway, off to my seat, right near the back (because i left it too late to buy decent tickets, lol… want a box next time), first thing of the evening, the cosplay contest, and what do i see but the Bubble Bobble guy from the Amecon omake, lol… totally should have won, ahh well, the tentacle won so that’s ok too (wasn’t that tentacle at an Amecon one year… or possibly Ayacon? I know it was one of them, lol).

And on with the show… right from the start you could tell this was going to be fun…

Host: “Some people say video games are for kids.”
Crowd: “Boooooooooo!”
Host: “Some people say video games cause violence.”
Crowd: “Boooooooooo!” “Kill them all!!” “DIE!!!” “Booooo!”

Anyway, it all started out with a medley of old school arcade games, space invaders, asteroids, defender etc, before starting with the newer video game music. I was fully intending to use my pen and paper i had out to write down the setlist, and i was fully intending to take more pictures/video from inside the event, but well, my paper remained blank, and the above was the only picture inside i took, lol, but the important thing is that the intention to do more was there! …so yes… as for the rest of the setlist, just imagine all of the cult favourite video game music (ff games, metal gear solid, halo, nintendo stuff etc. etc.).

…towards the halfway point (or was it just after, hmm… my lack of note taking really shines through here, lol) the host announced they had something big for us…

Host: “We’ve got something big up next!”
Host: “We’ve been holding this back just so we could premier this here!”
(obviously everyone thinking some sort of Halo 3 related thing)
Host: “…so… who likes Harry Potter?”
*2 people cheer*
*few moments of silence as people try to work out whether he’s being serious… all that build up for Harry Potter?*
*lots of BOOOOOOOOO’ing!!!*

So yeah, the composer for the Harry Potter games walked on to booing and shouts of “We didn’t come here for Harry Potter!!” (which was entirely true… we didn’t, lol).

And then… the host just didn’t give up, lol, he carried on with his obviously scripted lines, and said something like “EA have done great things for the industry.”… prompting even more booing from the crowd, lol. (EA can go die in a hole, stop buying all the decent games studio’s and bloody forcing them to work on ****ing shitty movie games)

Kinda felt sorry for the composer, it obviously wasn’t his fault, i’m sure he didn’t choose to work on Harry Potter, lol, ahh well, Harry Potter and EA thoroughly deserve their booing (Kingdom Hearts does too, but sadly that got cheers, lol… milking a cash cow on a crappy rpg much? Square haven’t made anything decent since their PS1 days).

During the interval i was surprised at how many people seemed familiar from Amecon there, lol… pretty sure i saw some of the committee too, and people from Manga Entertainment. I’m sure i would have seen more, but sadly i was tucked up in a corner at the back (seemingly near every single cosplayer that was on stage at the start, lol… they didn’t all come together surely?).

2nd half, more good stuff, piano solo’s of FF music, halo 1, 2, and 3 medley (you know, for a Microsoft sponsored event there wasn’t really that much music from Microsoft games, good for them in not making it heavily slanted towards one company!). Ended with one winged angel (as if it could end with anything else, lol).

Overall an good evening with decent music from an excellent orchestra. My only complaints would be that the host was a little too much like Mr. Jonny Yong Bosch for my liking, and was obviously reading from a script… “I’ve gotta say this is the best orchestra i’ve ever worked with”, “This is the best venue we’ve ever been to”… yeah right, like you haven’t said that at every event you do. My other complaint is that the host guy ruined the last song by playing his stupid electric guitar over the top of it so it was hard to hear the orchestra, totally un-needed.

Anyway, to make up for lack of pictures/video of inside, i give you a picture of the view of London from the venue:

(YAY!! I finally worked out how to take non-blurry night time shots in night time mode on this camera, lol)

Continuing from part 1…

Shugo Chara! – First episode was damn excellent. Funny concept, great lead character, excellent animation quality, and a hell of a lot of pink, can’t go wrong! Decent OP song too.

(sooo much pink!!)

 

ef – a tale of memories – Worthless, see previous post on the matter.

 

Minami-ke – A nice laid back series with funny characters in relatively normal situations. Kana rocks!! Cool animation too (especially the table jump, lol). I think my random purchase of the 2008 calendar for this was a good one.

 

Genshiken 2 – More Genshiken, excellent! That is all.

 

Sketchbook ~full colours~ – A light, sweet funny slice of life show. Easy to spot what other stuff these guys have animated, lol…

 

Prism Ark – Not terrible, but not that good either. Feels like they crammed a lot into episode 1, lots of jumping backwards and forwards. I guess it does have high quality panty shots, lol, but otherwise i think Night Wizard is a much better generic action/magic/fighting type show (at least Night Wizard is funny).

 

Moyashimon – Very odd/unique, and very funny. About a guy that goes to agriculture school, and has the ability to see microbes. The best way to really describe it is to watch it, lol. The OP animation is very well done.

 

Koharu Biyori – Well it’s basically the same as the manga (aka Indian Summer), lots of fanservice, lol. I do get the feeling they were trying to copy something similar sounding to Lucky Star’s OP song, fail for jumping on a bandwagon. Probably won’t watch anymore of it, though i do wish they’d release the 2nd volume of the manga over here.

 

And that’s probably about all i’m gonna watch, really hard to choose a favourite so far this season, lots of good stuff, so based on pure enjoyment factor i’ll call it a tie between; Night Wizard, Bamboo Blade, Minami-ke, Kawaii Jenny (what? i’m enjoying it, lol), and Moyashimon.

A few weeks back i saw the Eternal Sonata faceplates that were a pre-order gift in the US (and of course we don’t get them as usual here in Europe), and i thought i might aswell get a faceplate for my Xbox 360, seeing as i’ve had it a while and it’s still plain and white, lol.

Very pretty… so i spent about a week lurking on eBay trying to decide whether i should buy all of them, or pick one, or a couple to buy. After several days of not making any decision, my decision was made for me, lol, i saw the Japanese faceplate (which was seemingly only available in the Trusty Bell console bundle):

All i have to say is that an actual (extremely cute/pretty) drawing on a faceplate is far far far superior than the US ones which are just a few printed screenshots.

My 360 now looks all pretty, and just in time for Eternal Sonata’s release on Friday, can’t wait! I guess i might review the whole game at some point like i did with Enchanted Arms.

I have too much to say about this load of pretentious pseudo-”artistic” nonsense also known as “ef – a tale of memories” to put in my short round up, so it gets it’s own post…

What on earth were SHAFT thinking when they made this? It looked like it could have been quite good, but sadly it’s been ruined by a bunch of random animation effects every few seconds. Do we really need that many camera cuts, zoom outs, pans of clouds? Heck even Kyon in ep 1 of Haruhi can point out pointless could pans, and there were only 2 of them in that episode, ef episode 1 has bloody 72 shots of clouds…. 72 FFS (on average 1 every 20 seconds)!!!

I took the liberty of going through the whole episode and making a tally of all the pointless effects they’ve used, and i’ve gotta say i’m impressed, the random effects far outweighed any normal scenes in the show:

Shot of clouds: 72
Zoomed out shot when people talking: 38
Half of head when talking: 26
Random glow: 23
Shot of random object: 18
Black & white scene: 17
Random colour overlay: 17
Shot of hands: 15
Zoomed in shot of eye: 11
Silhouette: 9
Shot of feet: 7
Shot of sea: 6
Sunset scene: 5
Shot of shadow: 5
Shot of moon: 5
Paintbrush filter: 4
Random blur: 2
Random glare: 2
Random letter boxed image: 2
Picture in picture: 1

Are they trying to hide their lack of animation budget by in fact having no animation whatsoever in the show, just people standing still talking with a random photoshop filter and some clouds every few seconds to distract everyone. If so, i think they might have gone a little bit over the top.

Or is it someone bought them a new animation program and like a 5 year old with a new transformer wanted to try out every single option the program had to offer (all in the space of 24 minutes?).

Or… do they possibly think that this turd they have produced is called “art”, because if so, the only people they are fooling are themselves.

As said over here, this is not Pani Poni Dash, Negima, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, why ruin a perfectly good show with pretentious “artistic” (as i’m sure they like to call it) bollocks, all this reminds me why i avoid Covent Garden in London, full of pretentious “artists” painting everywhere. Art classes these days need a module on “how not to be an ass”.

 

I think we can all come up with a few alternative names for it, anyone want to add any?

ef – a tale of cloud pans

ef – a tale of photoshop filters

Lalala, that time again, part 1 because i know there’s gonna be a part 2 later. My quick and dirty summary of the anime (+misc) i’ve watched so far this season, any sane person should probably go watch stuff themselves instead of relying on some random guy rambling on about stuff, but oh well…

Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun – Certainly not a typical school love story, lol. Guy (who obviously has some abnormal jumping abilities amongst other things) being told he must now live with and protect this succubus girl that’s afraid of men (she is incredibly pretty though! ). Odd yet funny, definitely continue watching. The OP song is pretty fun too.

 

Kawaii! JeNny – Well, kinda as you would expect judging by looks. Though i have to say the first episode did entertain me more than the live action Sailor Moon did. Excellent OP and ED songs too… “High high high energy!”.

 

Blue Drop – All girls school, intreguing characters, some sort of troubled past possibly involving mech. Could be quite interesting, though i’m more interested in the character interactions and how they’re gonna evolve rather than any mech. Need more yuri based anime!!

 

Shakugan no Shana II – …Shana season 2, can’t say much more than that, apart from maybe Shana in high def is georgeous (edit: well not quite true HD, but still very pretty)! Looks great!

 

Night Wizard – I really thought this was going to be pretty generic action rubbish that i’d stop watching before the episode was over… but… it started out pretty funny! I mean what better motivation for killing a bunch of monsters than they’re in your way of getting to school, lol. Plot shows promise too. Also interesting to note is that it’s based on a tabletop rpg instead of the usual videogame/manga/novel, looks like it’ll be pretty good.

“leave me alone when i am having my lunch”

 

Clannad – Good start to what will undoubtedly be another great (and tearful?) series. Beautiful ED song too (i feel like crying already).

 

Myself; Yourself – Wasn’t as average as i was expecting, the end of the first episode left me thinking “gah don’t end it there, i want to see what he does next >_<”. Childhood friend characters are *always* the best, and there’s pleanty of them here!

 

Rental Magica – Need a problem solved, go hire these bunch of magic users. Actually… don’t… you’re better off hiring the A-Team instead, this was pretty boring. I spent the entire episode thinking “*sigh* is it over yet?”, won’t be watching any more of it.

 

KimiKiss – Hmm, very pretty, think i prefer Myself; Yourself though. Will probably carry on watching regardless. Ryou Hirohashi’s character seems pretty fun. ^_^

 

Bamboo Blade – Quite entertaining. Another guy with a great motivation… “must get 5 girls in Kendo club so i can win that bet and get a years supply of sushi”. Not to mention Ryou Hirohashi is voicing Tama-chan. Oh, and the OP and ED are quite good, probably 2nd best ED so far imo (i wonder if there’s a genre of music for “many people singing at the same time”… because if it is i like that stuff (like AKB48, Morning Musume etc… large amounts of people singing at once), lol).

 

That’s about all for now, imo nothing “omg this amazingly outstanding” so far, but everything has generally exceeded my expectations, lol. I have to say my favourite OP/ED song goes to Kawaii! JeNny (bias towards Momoi songs… nah… me? of course not, lol), with the Bamboo Blade and Clannad ED, and Ninomiya-kun OP a close 2nd.

Still got these to watch:

• Sketch Book
• Shugo Chara
• ef – A tale of memories
• Prism Ark (sadly i get the feeling this is going to be terrible)
• Minami-ke
• Genshiken 2
• Koharu Biyori (aka Indian Summer)