Seiyuu appreciation post: Toriumi Kousuke

In case Makai Ouji fans didn't know, they're holding another Nico Live Event tonight at 9:30pm (JPN) at http://live.nicovideo.jp/gate/lv146463292. The hosts include: Terashima, Matsuouka, Toriumi and Yatsumoto. Be sure to tune in!

Game Day blog #1

My bus rides to Uni are fairly long, often taking over an hour. So today I decided to pick up the old PSP 3K and play some Dissidia 012. I've yet to finish the campaign, but I've been casually completing it chapter by chapter.

Dissidia is one of those games that just doesn't get old. I love the style of the combat and just the way the battle flows around the stage. For those unfamiliar with the Dissidia games, Dissidia is a action based fighting game featuring various characters from games of the Final Fantasy Franchise. Many references to those games are featured in attack animations and dialogue within the game. The combat is flashy and fast, and they can get very tense. Dodging and blocking attacks becomes second nature while playing this game, as it requires fast reflexes in order to best your opponent. In combat, damage is determined by the amount of bravery points, which you accumulate by having your "bravery attacks" connect with the opponent. You can then use a HP attack, which are generally slower and need to be timed just right, to deal damage to your opponent equalling the amount of bravery you have at the time. Using a HP attack, however, consumes all your bravery and it will take a while for it to recharge back to its base amount. This combat system allows for a wide range of strategies and combos, making each fight just as engaging as the last.

LIGHTNING!

My favourite characters would have to be Lightning, Garland, and Gabranth. Lighting is actually quite overpowered, with really quick dashing attacks that are followed by devastating combo attacks. Almost all of her attacks send her opponents flying, which allows her to sit back and wait for her next opportunity to strike. Garland's sword is amazing. His attacks have a nice weight to them that I like. Gabranth is both gimmicky and awesome at the same time. His special tactic is to quickly charge up his EX gauge and go into EX mode frequently. In fact, he can only really do damage in EX mode. Outside of EX mode, his moveset is pretty much limited to only bravery attacks. Being able to use my special attack constantly is a ton of fun.

Well that's all I got for now.
Rhycen

No Free! episode but something else special...?

I woke up early (as usual) to watch Free! only to remember that there is no Free! this week. :(
However the Free! website updated with something special, birthday messages from all the boys to Nagisa!
Since there's no Free!, enjoy some Free! cosplay instead.

Cosers: 青春 + Sun Cho

Cosers:淺倉 燿+梓官 

Coser: 奈琴

Taking a look at the Nvidia Shield

Hey all!

I was just browsing around the webs and I came across this IGN article about the Nvidia Shield. As it is, the Shield is more of a prototype for what I hope is the future for gaming. I'd love to one day be able to play my Steam games while sitting on the bus.

That's all for now.
Rhycen

Links: http://au.ign.com/articles/2013/07/31/nvidia-shield-review

[Lyrics] 14 to 1 (Full) - Brothers Conflict ED song

I promised I would translate the full lyrics of 「14 to 1」 when the full song is released and when I got my (fangirl) hands on the lyrics booklet. So here it is!

I still wince at the "Ohayou, Oyasumi, Arigatou" section every time I listen to this song; the lyrics are so silly and out of place - Why are my onii-chan's greeting me Good morning, Good night and Thank you? Also, I think that the key change was unnecessary. They could've just ended the song at the 4:38 mark. But this song does have a pretty funky piano accompaniment.

Edit: OMG I just realised what the "Ohayou, Oyasumi and Arigatou" section mean!! In the chorus they've always been singing/repeating "Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!" (only THREE kisses) and then they sing "Good morning, good night, thank you", giving the THREE reasons for the kisses - a good morning kiss, a good night kiss and a thank you kiss.

What I did enjoy from this CD is the cast comments, each of the 14 males spoke (in character) the first line of the the chorus [My sister めちゃくちゃにアイシテル！ やさしいだけの　キスならいいのかい？// My sister, I've fallen madly in love with you. Is it alright to give you a gentle kiss?], and then they proceeded to thank you for listening to this CD. Suwabe (Kaname) is cheeky and added a kiss to his message, which he also did for his Jinguuji Ren cast comment for UtaPri. *faints*

Description: Kanji lyrics, Romaji lyrics and English translated lyrics of 14 to 1 (full), the ending song of the Brothers Conflict anime.

Note: Any lines not colour coded means that all the bro's sing. I deciphered the colour code by ear; they never specified who sang which line in the lyrics booklet. The parts in brackets ( ) in the English translation are there to help the meaning flow smoother.

「14 to 1」 (Brothers Conflict ED) single takes rank 19

It's report card day for JMusic and the BroConf ED single 「14 to 1」 takes rank 19 on the Oricon charts on its first day of release. Furthermore, Trignal's (formed by seiyuus: Eguchi Takuya, Kimura Ryohei and Yonaga Tsubasa) second single, Summer Magic, takes rank 20!

You can download Summer Magic here. And you can download 「14 to 1」 here.

Seiyuu appreciation post: Namikawa Daisuke

The Humble Deep Silver Bundle

The Humble Bundle is back! That's right, here's another chance to pay peanuts for a handful of amazing games.

For those that don't know, The Humble Bundle is a sale that comes along once in a while with a bundle of games or books or whatever their selling at the time, and you can pay whatever you want! Donate above the average amount, and you unlock a couple of additional products. You can choose where your money goes, whether it's to various charities, the game developers, or directly to The Humble Bundle, to support future bundles.

This time, the folks over at Humble Bundle HQ are bringing you a collection of six triple A titles
from developer Deep Silver. Included in the pack is Saints Row 2, Saints Row: The Third, Risen Waters and Sacred 2 Gold. If you choose to pay above the average price, you will also receive Dead Island GOTY edition, and the full Saints Row: The Third DLC package. But wait, there's more! Paying over $25 will also unlock Dead Island Riptide.

What are you waiting for?
Visit The Humble Bundle website now!

Brothers Conflict - Episode 5 [v.P]

Hey Bro! It's that time of the week again!
Conflict 5 - Flood/Inundation
In a nutshell:

1. Timeskip from last ep's December to March. 
2. Ema, Masaomi, Tsubaki, Azusa, Wataru and Natsume go Cherry blossom viewing. Ema goes off to buy drinks and she bumps into Subaru by coincidence; when Ema and Subaru returns to the group Natsume gets all jealous of Subaru being with Ema. Wataru wanders off to see the ducks in the lake, and then in order to save Wataru, Natsume falls into the lake. Change of scene to back at home, Natsume tries to confront Subaru again about him taking basketball seriously. [End first half]
3. Ema returns home from school, to find out that Subaru usually does the cleaning of the house. Iori shows up and gives Ema a red tulip, which is a confession of love, and Juli goes spaz. Ukyo and Ema spends some intimate time in the kitchen with Ukyo teaching her how to cook, only to be busted by Hikaru and Juli.
4. Ema attends Subaru's basketball match. Natsume finds Ema at the match and is surprised (jealous) that she came only because "Subaru asked her to". Subaru wins the match by throwing a buzzer beater (rip off Kuroko no Basuke). Subaru hugs Ema and tells her "It's all because you came to cheer me on" that he was able to win the game. He then confesses to Ema and asks her out, only to be busted by Natsume. 

Rhycen has entered the game!

Hey there, remember me? No? Well I guess that's to be expected. I've been quite "busy" (read lazy), so I haven't posted here in ages. Well, I'm back and ready to rumble!

What will I be posting this time? Well, I'll be posting gaming related stuff that happens to matter to me. I'm not really one to look up gaming updates constantly to get the latest scoop as quickly as possible, but if anything is particularly interesting to me I'll be sure to post it here. Other than that, I'll post my gaming activity; games I've been playing, interesting experiences I have while gaming, and other stuff like that. I'll try to be frequent in my posts, and I hope you read them all. My life is just so incredibly interesting after all!

I'll just briefly bring you all up to speed on my gaming so far:

• Due to recent sales on Steam, my game library has expanded yet again. I've yet to even start a lot of my games. 

• I bought Civ V, which I've been enjoying with friends. 

• I just started playing Final Fantasy 7 on Steam, and I'll be playing that pretty regularly. 

• Bought FEZ and started playing that. It's such an amazing game and so well made in every aspect. 

• I recently installed Dark Souls on Steam, and I'm looking forward to getting into that. However I need to work out some controller issues first before I can enjoy it properly.

• Outside of Steam, I bought into the Cube World alpha, and it's been very enjoyable. For an alpha, it's very well made, and I'm very excited about future improvements and updates.

• I haven't played League of Legends regularly for a couple of weeks now, due to my over abundance of other games to play, and also because I hate that god-awful game. However I occasionally play with friends if I happen to be in the mood for a game or two.

• As for my greatest love, Starcraft 2, I have been out of the game since the beginning of the year. I had a 5 month long LoL phase, which left no time for SC2. Also, I have almost no friends that play SC2, and almost all of them play LoL, so that's how I justify my abandoning of my favourite game. I'm always looking for opportunities to get back into the game so hopefully that'll happen some time soon.

• I'm looking to start playing Tera Online soon, since it's now free to play. For those who don't know, Tera is an MMO with a focus on action oriented combat. It was initially released with a subscription model, but has since become free to play. The combat is quite similar to Monster Hunter, but more fantasy MMO-ish. It's the kind of game I was looking for when I started playing Guild Wars 2, so I'm pretty keen to start playing. That'll be sometime within the next couple of weeks.

Due to my studies, my gaming will become less frequent in the next month or so, so please bear with me.

That's enough from me for now.
May all your games be noob free!
Rhycen

Seiyuu appreciation post: Tetsuya Kakihara

I'm in love with Kakki's voice, especially his appearance in Hakkenden, Makai Ouji and Kamisama Inai Nichiyoubi.

Serah's Toons #1: Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox

Well it's been awhile since I got back into watching cartoons, so what better place to start than DC and Marvel? Ofcourse TJL is strictly a DC creation and is waay to OP in my opinion, though I guess the playing field is evened since everyone is OP.

So Flash, this 80min film obviously about him. Without giving too much away, it has to do with alternate realities and time travel; a good ol' sci-fi traditional. Unfortunately as with many time travel alternate timeline themed books and medias (cue Steins;Gate, MIB 3, Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox) , it kind of plays out the whole "I woke up and it was all a dream" scenario.

This film is pretty good in my opinion; though it does use the tried and true the-odds-are-against-us-everything-is-hopeless-sudden-epiphany/personalsacrifice-of-hero-everything-is-fine-now-lesson-learned theme that seems to occur in every other superhero movie it manages to make up for it by answering some of the what-if questions. What if Bruce Wayne died instead of his parents? What if Superman's time capsule landed in the middle of a thriving metropolis as opposed rural farmland? What if Wonder Woman became a class A cow? Anyhow it was a pretty good film and managed to dive straight into the story line with just barely enough depth for all the important characters. It also may have contained a touching ending scene that may have made me drop a tear or two.

Superhero movies are almost always cliche, and this one is no exception, but of course that's the appeal isn't it? Mankind's quest to overcome our limitations, to be something more than what we are. Even if it's not possible now, these movies keep us hoping that someday we can do the same as our heroes.

When winter gets cold

I bought a Shark (lap) blanket. (/don'tjudgeme/) It's cute okay?
Reasons for buying: 90% because it reminds me of Rin from Free! + 10% because it's cute.

「Believe My Dice」 Profile Icons and Banner version

Since I'm super happy with my latest fanart (I'm pretty sure I drained a whole month's worth of art juice/inspiration with that piece of work), I decided make profile icons and banners out of my art. Feel free to use them!
Edit: I also made a banner of my Brothers Conflict art.

Pumpkin's Palette: Believe My Dice (Makai Ouji)

Stepping out of my comfort zone, testing out Chibi style.
Inspired by the opening song of Makai Ouji, "Believe my dice", I drew the six main characters in Makai Ouji each holding up a number from 1 to 6, for each face of a die.
You can print this out, cut it out and paste the side tabs together to make your own Makai Ouji dice!

Lineart version:

No Free! episode next week, anime resumes in 2 weeks

Due to some "special programming", there will not be any Free! next week. The next Free! episode will be aired in one fortnight, on August 7th (Wednesday).
Source: official Free! website

Free! - Episode 4 [v.P]

ginger: So pumpkin, where's your weekly Free! post?

pumpkin: mhnnm, *shuuurp* Nnnn. You said something? Sorry I'm too busy licking my computer screen. 

Thank you KyoAni. Just what I needed.

-spurts noseblood-

This anime is turning out to be another ridiculous comedy. At least they didn't cut short on the muscle fanservice. ;)

Want more finger lickin' muscles? See inside.

Serah's Plays #1: Portal

<warning: sort of plot spoilers>

Welps people, Rhycen finally managed to persuade me to make a steam account about two or three weeks ago and one of my first purchases was the much reknowned Portal. My first impression was that it was an amusing first person adventure-ish puzzle game. The sort-of narration by the GlaDOS system was funny in a morbid sense but quickly got more sinister with the advent of the little killer robots with their creepy cutesy voices.
"In dangerous testing environments the Enrichment center promises to always provide useful advice. For instance, the floor here will kill you - try to avoid it"

Avoid murky looking suspiciously puke-green floor. Got it.

You average gamer has no fear of failure or death, the most that can happen is respawning after forgetting to save which is annoying but certainly not fatal. Unfortunately I have yet to reach that nirvana in which you realize and can actually apply the fact that video games have no bearing whatsover on your personal character or life in general. Therefore the next levels after the escape where stressful to say the least - enter GLaDOS being a creepster constant voice in the background and tense background music = a very stressed out Serah.

"I'm not kidding now, turn back or I will kill you."

Of course once again, to your average gamer these threats are amusingly obsolete. To me I actually felt a sense of threat to my bodily self which was rather silly but present nonetheless. When I finally arrived at the boss chamber I gave in and watched a youtube playthrough. T'was surprisingly easy. But according to Rhycen, I probably completely ruined the game for by looking at all those guides and things. I therefore vow to play Portal 2 without looking at a guide! Unless you know I really get stuck... urmm I can't actually promise that since I've already had a peek at a guide for Portal 2 ummm...I shall endeavor not to look at anymore guides!

Probably...

Maybe.

Till next time~

Seiyuu appreciation post: Suzumura Kenichi

Please. He's mine. Don't you dare touch him.
Got it? Okay. Good. XD
Started watching Starry☆Sky and I'm in love with my bishies. Of course SuzuKen is in it.

Miku touch typing music game

Test your touch typing skills with this Miku game! You must not let Miku stop running!
http://aidn.jp/run/