Anime Theme Songs

by Jenn on Thursday, January 12, 2012

Asking For It

I’m a little scared to do this. I mean, I know I asked for it at all, but I’m the first to admit that my musical tastes are waaaaaaaaaaay out there! Whether it’s opera or jpop or dance or whatever, I’m all over the place. Anyway, initially I was going to post a mix of both your responses (from twitter and G+) but that was gonna be huge. Instead, here are my picks that don’t cross over with any of yours, and I’ll talk about your great suggestions tomorrow.

The list below contains a ton of songs that I actually haven’t seen the series for. See, way back in the day, I used to follow a zillion different Anime MP3 share sites. Obviously they are all long dead. How it worked was that people would pick 3-5 songs, stick them on geocities for a week or so, then switch it up. It was huge for me as a kid since these most of these people also spoke and wrote Japanese and were thus able to tell me about series that I didn’t have a prayer of watching. Nowadays fans have it ridiculously easy with all the amazing sub groups out there, cable internet, etc. So these songs were a window to a world I wanted to know more about, but didn’t have the time or the means to experience firsthand. The majority of these songs are old. What can I say? The songs you hear as a kid tend to stick with you deeper than the more recent stuff! ^_^

In no particular order:

Nazca – Ai No Fugue
This was one of the rare songs I got off Napster, again, way back in the day. Searched for ‘anime’, picked something at random, was totally blown away. I’ve never seen the series.

Uta No Prince-Sama – Maji Love 1000% – ST☆RISH
Yes, I absolutely loved Uta No Prince-Sama. It’s ridiculous, the girl is meh and has hypnotoad eyes, and I totally don’t care. The guys are fun, the teachers are hilarious, the principal is psycho, and the songs are fun. I don’t even want to say how many times I’ve listened to that closing theme. The opening is all well and good, but it’s the closing concert that I adore. Woo, UtaPri!! =D

**** this is not the best version of the theme. The good quality ones seem to get stomped out on YouTube pretty fast. You can watch the official upload if you have Nico Nico Douga account. <3.

Kodomo No Omocha – Shinohara Tomoe – ULTRA RELAX S2 OP Full
This is a weird one. Haven’t seen the anime AND I worked backwards to find the actual title of this song since I only know the Evangelion version. Neither make any sense to me, but it’s bouncy and happy and I continue to enjoy it!

Di Gi Charat – 「only one, No.1」
I’m a huge Di Gi Charat fan. I remember being on dial up internet babysitting a download all night long so I could watch two very fuzzy episodes, barely subbed, encoded in Real Media. Ya rly. I’d love to watch the whole series these days. It’s on my To Do list, for sure. It’ll be tough since my expectations are pretty high due to my fond memories! I own some of the official music albums and an art book that I bought of the internet as a teen. I wonder where they are right now…

Revolutionary Girl Utena – Revolution
This time I HAVE seen the series, but that doesn’t mean I have a clue about what the hell happened. The movie even played in Toronto, but I was super sick and my best friend had to report back to me what happened. The best he was able to do was “Car wash?”. I love the music from the series and also bought an album off ebay for it. It’s crazy for me to think back and realize I made better money as a teenager doing sports camps than I do now. Didn’t see that coming, lemme tell you.

Silent Möbius – Kindan no Panse
I can’t remember if I watched all of the series or just a couple of episodes and then the movies. Either way, I liked the theme more than the actual story.

Steam Detectives – 君、微笑んだ夜 Kimi, Hohoenda Yoru (The Night You Smiled)
I’ve not seen a single frame of animation from the series. I got this theme from a geocities site that promised it was fun to sing along to. They were totally right. Though, now that I’ve looked it up, the series seems neat, too.


Soul Hunter – Will – Chihiro Yonekura
Basically same as above! (series)

Infinite Ryvius – Dis
Same as above times a hundred. I really dig this song. I have several different remixes of it, too, from sources unknown. (series)

Violinist Of Hameln gets two mentions here.

Magical Labyrinth and Kizu Darake No Tsubasa. I don’t remember who let me borrow the series, but I remember going “holy crap this was not what I expected!”. I loved the music, but I recall the series being much darker than anticipated, especially since all I had known about the series previously was the pretty light SNES game!!

I could honestly make this list triple size with no effort (except for all the formatting work. That DOES take effort), but I think that’s more than plenty for now ^_^

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This time, no horsing around!!

by Jenn on Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Wait, no, that doesn’t work at all. The majority of OpenAlpha depends on me horsing around, so, uh… This time MORE horsing around!!! Yeah. Much better ^_^

Oh, and I’m going to Sweden next week. You might want to pop over to OA to see why.

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3DS Ambassador Program

by Jenn on Thursday, December 15, 2011

You can accuse Nintendo of many things, but rarely can you claim that they are in a hurry. This is often quite infuriating. Case in point: the 3DS Ambassador Program. First announced almost 6 months ago, they promised 20 free games by the end of 2011 to us early adopters. So far we’ve got 10 NES Virtual Console games to show for it.

Super Mario Bros.
Donkey Kong Jr.
Balloon Fight
Ice Climber
The Legend of Zelda
Metroid™
NES Open Tournament Golf
Wrecking Crew
Zelda II – The Adventure of Link
Yoshi

The official site has listed 5 of the remaining 10 SNES Virtual Console games.

Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3
Mario Kart: Super Circuit
Metroid Fusion
WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$
Mario vs. Donkey Kong

At long last, with not a lot of time before the promised ‘end of the year’, the news is out that the remaining games are:

F-Zero: Maximum Velocity
Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Kirby & The Amazing Mirror
Wario Land 4

Friday, December 16th is the date people are throwing about, but I don’t know if that’s just for the Japanese eShop or all around the world. I have to give them some credit here for giving us high quality games and I am looking forward to downloading the lot. I was initially pretty sore at how fast the 3DS price dropped, but I should be used to that by now thanks to, you know, every electronic device ever. That said, I’m not likely to buy a PlayStation Vita at launch. I haven’t missed a launch system in a while, but this time I’m happy to sit on the side to wait & see. It’ll cost me some work since I won’t be reviewing games for it, and it could bite me in the butt if the early units prove far easier to hack than later version, but I’m just not excited for it at this point in time. From a technical standpoint, could be sweet. From a game standpoint, there’s not enough there for me. Heck, there still aren’t enough 3DS titles that are I NEED THIS NOW!!!

Also, you haven’t seen me on Xbox Live or PSN lately not just because I’ve been bouncing around places lately! I’ve rediscovered my PC gaming love, including first person shooters, and I’m having a blast.

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Humble Indie Bundle 4

by Jenn on Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Humble Indie Bundle 4

There’s just no shortage of bundles these days, eh?

This one, I should note, is pretty solid. Pay whatever the heck you want and leave with Jamestown, Bit.Trip Runner, Super Meat Boy, Shank, and NightSky HD. Pay even a penny more than $5.37USD (as of writing) and get Gratuitous Space Battles and Cave Story+* as well. Oh, and it’s good for Windows, Linux, and Mac. And there’s the Red Cross and Child’s Play. DRM Free. Are you still reading this? Probably not. All gamers know the spiel by now, but I figured it was worth writing just in case you didn’t :)

In short, get all these games for less than it would regularly cost for one of them. Though you cannot separate the Steam codes to give away the ones you already have – - you get one code for the base five and another code for GSB & CS+ – - it’s still worth buying/re-buying the pack and convincing your friends to do the same. Amazingly, there are still some people that think indie gaming is just a wankfest of poor graphics and overwrought storytelling. This is the bundle you should beat those people over the head with give those people to help change their minds!

*linking to the Steam Store site because the official one is really not great.

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