Back from the most expensive concert I’ve ever been to! The London United Cube Concert consisting of 4minute, G.NA, and BEAST(/B2ST/whatever).
2+ hours of cold queuing on the streets of Brixton, then 2 hours of standing indoors waiting for it to start (while partaking in the odd tipple of sambuca of course).
It started out pretty damn awesome, 4minute, then HyunA thrusting in my face with possibly one of the songs contending for best song of 2011:
…followed by G.NA doing her stuff (shame she didn’t sing this). Then the rest of the concert was screaming fangirls… I think Beast may have been on stage singing too possibly, couldn’t hear them over the screaming though, lol, my ears are still ringing (that may be the closest any of us will ever be to experiencing the sheer pitch and volume of a crowd of fangirls at a Justin Bieber concert).
Pretty good concert, worth £75? Probably (just about). Minus the usual idiots it could have been improved loads by mixing up the songs/setlist instead of having all of 4minute/G.NA’s stuff first then all of Beast’s for the 2nd half …that just meant most of the guys in the audience were left with nothing to look forward to for the 2nd half of the concert.
All we need now is Miss A to come over (even just to Europe would be close enough!!).
Clearly internet petitions do work (eventually…), that one I mentioned ages ago was trying to get them to release the full version on CD at the time (site seems to be gone now).
I wonder why they’ve chosen to release it now, a bit late? It doesn’t even look like they’re really promoting it at all, and being digital download only it’s surely not going to have much of an impact sales-wise with Oha Star’s primarily young schoolkid audience. Leads you to one of two conclusions; a) someone wants some extra money (though with the aforementioned lack of promotion and likely non-existent sales, it would seem they clearly don’t want money, lol), or b) someone only just remembered they still had it sitting around and chucked it up on iTunes because it’s better there than it doing nothing but gathering dust.
Either way, all is good with the world, finally a high quality full version instead of a live recording where all you can hear is a bunch of sweaty guys clapping.
The last season of anime is possibly one of the best in recent memory, few shows, but what shows there have been included some right gems! Level E with it’s fantastic plot twists, and Hourou Musuko (aka Wandering Son) which is quite possibly one of the best (yet incredibly underrated/outright written off by some people) slice of life shows ever made!
I’m sure you’ll agree that the first thing you notice is the beautiful watercolour artwork, it’s refreshing to have an anime that isn’t afraid to try something different style-wise, and I’d say it’s paid off nicely.
The basic premise of the show is that the main character likes dressing up as a girl and we follow him and his friends interactions with each other. Sadly the majority of viewers simply turned off after the first few minutes because of that plot (clearly their insignificant shallow minds couldn’t cope with anything other than fanservice, fanservice, explosion, fanservice). But frankly the show’s premise is another breath of fresh air, a departure from traditional animetrap fare with a show that portrays the characters and their feelings in a much more realistic manner.
As a slice of life show it does what it says on the tin; we follow Nitori-kun, his friends, family, and all of their ups and downs for a few years of their school life, you do end up becoming attached to all of the characters by the end. However if I were to pick one downpoint I’d say it does at times feel a little too fast paced with the occasional time jump and a lot of characters introduced at once in the beginning,a full 26 episodes for the series would have been much better. >_<
It’s currently available on Crunchyroll for most of the world (with some rather dodgy at times subtitles: namely in the first few episodes consistently getting the various characters school years completely wrong, which made some of the relationships between characters really confusing… his sister and her friends are in the year *above* him, not below, lol). Oh how I hope for a blu-ray release with English subtitles (however we all know it’ll sadly never be released in physical form anywhere outside of Japan)
Any non-shallow minded anime fans that don’t watch anime just to consume copious amounts of shite and fanservice should certainly give it a watch!
I’ll end the post on the best girl in the show……… Anna!
