Summer2010 First Episode Review: Highschool of the Dead and WD5

Highschool of the Dead
rating: zombies/10

So, if you couldn't get the hint from the picture and my rating, Highschool of the Dead is an anime about zombies.  There really isn't much more to say than that.  For a serious rating, I would probably give a 7 or 7.5 since the animation is really quite good.  Other than that, expect standard fare in terms of plot when dealing with zombie outbreaks.  Oh and expect boobs, the manga this anime was based off of is heavy on the boobs, as you can see from this picture from the OP.

Checklist: Girl with large boobs who uses a katana, check.  Zombies, check.  Genius girl, check.  Fat guy who knows about guns, check.  Guy and girl with some sort of childhood relation, check.  Well, that's pretty much everything you could hope for right?  Anyways, I have read what's out of the manga for this and I can say, it will get better even if this first episode seemed a bit on the mediocre side so yes, I will be watching this one too, what's that now...4 or 5 anime this season?  Well, enough of that, time for Weekly Discovery.

This week's Weekly Discovery is Kishida Kyoudan since they are the ones who did the OP to Highschool of the Dead.  Kishida Kyoudan is another doujin group, this time straight rock, who started with Touhou, a game, music remixes and arrangements.  The main vocalist is named ichigo and well, their sound is very distinctive.  When I heard the OP to Highschool of the Dead, I looked for a total of...2 minutes and found the right artist sitting pretty in my music library.  Here is a youtube link to the Highschool of the Dead OP and here's one for my crossfade of some of their other tracks.  Oh, you will also notice that a lot of places will list this artist as Kishida Kyoudan and the Akeboshi Rockets, but I really don't care that much and I'm too lazy to fix my music tags anymore.  I hope you enjoy and there is more anime to cover in the upcoming days.

--CsMiREK

Weekly Discovery: Week 4

Sorry, I really meant to put this up yesterday but July 4th is just one of those holidays that eats American's lives, something about fireworks is too appealing to not watch.  In any case, this week's WD is on the last of the 3 doujin Gothic artists that I am gonna talk about for now, Rokugen Alice (六弦アリス).  Rokugen Alice is a duo consisting of Anna Sakurai on vocals and who does the songwriting and 六弦A助 (Rokugen Asuke) doing arranging and background things.  In addition, on one album they had vocalists from other doujin groups like Alieson, Queen of Wand, and Ether as vocalists.  The sound is a bit different from MiddleIsland and Asriel.  There is a much stronger drum beat in general and in my opinion, the sound is much more fitting of the Gothic genre than either of the other two.  Another thing to note is the large amount of strings used, from violins to cellos while still having really strong guitar lines.  Something else that is interesting to note is that the order that I ordered these last three WDs is in the reverse order of when I first found each artist as Rokugen Alice was the first one I heard, a little less than 3 years ago now.  The crossfade this time is made up of 15 different tracks and is not quite as good as the one for Asriel, but also does not have the clipping.  So, I guess that it is up to you to say which one is better.  Their site is http://www.rokugen.net/ and has crossfades for all of their albums, if I remember correctly.  This is my crossfade of some of my favorite tracks.  Enjoy and stay tuned for the start of summer 2010 anime first episode reviews which will begin appearing today or tomorrow.


--CsMiREK

Weekly Discovery: week 3

So, it's been a month since I started this blog and if I'm correct there are probably only 10 or so people who actually read it.  I would be lying if I said I don't want more people reading but I do realize that the internet is a very, very large place and there is an astronomically low percent chance of this blog ever becoming widespread.  In any case, this particular post is on the next artist of the doujin gothic scene from Japan, Asriel.  Asriel is a duo consisting of Kurose K who is the composer and does some of the backgrounds while Kokomi is the vocalist.  Out of the three I'm talking about, Asriel is likely the most well known due to them having done the OP to the anime Monochrome Factor and the ED to the anime 11eyes.  While this is true, I won't say that they are the best out of the three since that's up to you to choose.  Regardless of that, here's a crossfade from 18 different tracks.

Asriel - xfade

I apologize for the sound quality as some of the tracks were quieter than others, when I tried to amplify some of the tracks I accidentally caused some clipping and caused some problems.  A word of warning, Kokomi's vocals are really strange.  They fit really well with the type of music but tend to be oddly pitched and quite on the really sharp and high side.  That said, enjoy the crossfade and look forward to the last in this group, Rokugen Alice next week.  Also, here is their website: http://asriel.jp/  Next post is a mid anime review of the soccer anime, Giant Killing.

--CsMiREK

Weekly Discovery: week 2 pt2

Here is the second post of the day on the group MiddleIsland.  To my understanding they started as a piano group and added vocals along with other instruments later on.  The vocals tend to change from track to track since they, like many other doujin groups barring Asriel, collaborate with each other to make their albums.  That said, the main vocalist has an incredibly "powerful" voice and is pretty distinct, especially in conjunction with the background music.  In addition, they make incredibly heavy use of guitar but also don't shy away from instrumental tracks full of powerful string sound.  While perhaps not rated quite as high as Asriel and Rokugen Alice in my books, they are without a doubt an interesting group that at least deserves a listening.  With that I will give you my crossfade made from 8 different tracks of theirs from multiple albums.  As I'm still getting used to crossfading and all that, it's not all too great, but at least it's longer than the last one.  Next up is likely going to be a mid-anime review of Kaicho wa Maid Sama or some sort of rant.

MiddleIsland-xFade

This is their site with crossfades of most of their albums: http://www.middleisland.net/
Note: While I don't endorse illegal downloading in general since having CDs is nice, these tracks are pretty difficult to find/get so if you want me to "direct" you, send an email or whatnot and I "might" place you in the right direction.

--CsMiREK

Weekly Discovery: week 2 pt1

This week's WD is again a music related one but this time we go from France to Japan, where most of the music related WDs are likely to live.  First however, I'd like to make some changes to my original post season review plan.  Since a few of the shows I am watching have been extended to full 25-26 episode long status or longer, I'll be doing a few more mid-anime reviews.  The anime in question are Giant Killing, K-ON!!, and RAINBOW so look forward to those really soon, most likely next week.  Anyways, back to the WD.

More than tackling a single artist/composer for the next few WDs I'd like to talk about a genre of music that I enjoy a little bit, maybe a bit too much?  This genre happens to be gothic metal/rock.  Now I don't mean to say by any means I'm that kind of person.  The thought of teen guys in all black and jeans much too skinny for them perturbs me greatly goes for teen girls too.  However, when it comes to music, I'm open to many, many things.  While the US has gothic bands, I'm generally not too interested however, some of the music I've found around the internet coming from Japan intrigues me.

In particular, I will be talking about 3 groups MiddleIsland, Asriel, and Rokugen Alice.  I will also be talking about them in order in 3 different posts.  The MiddleIsland post itself comes after this post since I don't like incredibly long posts and this one is more background than anything.  So for background, all 3 groups are labeled as 'doujin' groups.  This means that they are pretty much indie groups in Japan although Asriel has been becoming more mainstream lately with a couple of OP/EDs of anime.  The major events for these types of groups are Comiket held bi-annually in summer and winter, M3 a music convention held bi-annually in spring and fall, and Reiteisai which is a special convention held in the spring for a specific game (Touhou games) and fan-made things including music.  Of these, the most famous is definitely Comiket but I won't go into detail as there are quite a few questionable things to say about it.

Back to the music style, I would call it best as gothic metal/rock or symphonic metal/rock.  All 3 groups make heavy use of various string instruments, pianos, and guitar.  The vocalists are all a bit different, especially when compared to American music standards but that's something you'll find out quickly enough.  So without any more delay, the MiddleIsland post.

--CsMiREK

Weekly Discovery: week 1

So, if you've never been here or don't know me, I am someone who gets bored quite easily.  Perhaps this is apparent, perhaps not, who am I to judge?  In any case, from the depths of my boredom, I bring you this blog, whether it pleases you or not is not my concern.  Anyways, now that that's out of the way, I'd like to give you the first Weekly Discovery.  After pondering what name I should give, this is the best I could come up with, is that sad?  Perhaps, but again not my concern.  The posts labeled "WD" or Weekly Discovery are not necessarily new discoveries on my part, but perhaps they will be for you.  At least that's the reason why I'm doing this.  These posts will be highly random, ranging from music to anime to news to simply odd facts, but that's part of the fun, you'll never know what you'll get each week.  The same applies to me since well....I don't like to think that far forward, too much effort I suppose.  Anyways, from the anime posts it's pretty obvious that I like anime and with that, Japanese music.  However, this week's WD is a composer named Yann Tiersen.  He composed the soundtrack for a French film called Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain.  While, this post is about the composer behind the music, I also recommend watching the movie since it's actually a pretty good movie.  Onto the music, it's very....French, incredibly characteristically French if that makes sense to you.  That said, I crossfaded the first 5 tracks of the soundtrack together in this file.  I hope you enjoy it and this massive blob of a disorganized paragraph.  The next post is likely to be a Hong Kong post, but who knows, things never seem to go as planned with me.  Also, that's the first time I've crossfaded any music together so don't expect it to be done amazingly or anything.


--CsMiREK