I’m almost out of onigiri senbei. It’s the last package of what yukkyyy brought when she visited. I want more =(

I haven’t really updated this site since before I moved out of my old apartment. I could say it’s because I’ve been busy, but in reality I’ve just been lazy. Let’s recap some of the interesting parts of the last few months!
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I bought a hot water dispenser from the best Asian market in Orlando recently. It’s pretty awesome; my tea consumption has tripled now that I have a lazy way to get hot water on demand.

The Japanese word for this appliance is 魔法瓶(まほうびん mahoubin), which literally means a magic bottle or pot. Japan has some pretty high tech ones, even more advanced than the 3 WAYS REFILL mine has!

So moving is kind of annoying. Yet despite how hasty this has all been, it’s coming together. A car and a new place. Interesting.

So! To kill the time until the actual move-in, in about a month, the Nuku Nuku CD scans I’ve been meaning to post are up at the end of this post.

PS: Zetsubou Sensei is getting better, Dennou Coil (Amasawa <3 <3) 11 is out in a few hours, Bokurano has the best OP this year and I hear Gurren is gureeto now too even though I am still on ep 3. Anime isn't sucking right now. Enjoy it while it lasts!
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I’m pretty sure this video proves McKenna’s novelty theory to be correct. Read the rest of this entry »

So a while back on that other site, I met a member named Basilica. We talked a bit on IRC about the one thing we had in common: an unhealthy interest in Shazna. We never really kept in contact, and just sort of met each other occasionally. Well, it turns out he now has a Shazna fansite as well:

http://www.meltychan.com/shazna/

Curses! His has a cute, catchy title: Melty Dream. The original design for this site had the title Pure Heart Memory, but I thought that was too obscure. Oh well. You should probably check his site out if you’re looking for some more thorough Shazna info, while I continue work on mine.

What? Updates are infrequent and unplanned? I’m moving soon, and life is keeping me busy. Soon, soon~

I’m a SHAZNA fan: the fact that I own the domain should give a pretty good hint at that. I’m a pretty big SHAZNA fan at that. However, after seven years of no new content from the group, I had pretty much come to assume they were gone for good, each having gone their separate ways while I reveled in past hits like Koibito and Raspberry Time.

Which is why when I found out they had gotten back together to release a single, the shock I experienced was pretty deep.

But apparently it’s true, and had been announced for some time! They did a concert in September last year and announced their new single, due out in May. You may ask why a big SHAZNA nerd like myself wouldn’t be the first person to know. The truth is, after the breakup, their separate works were of no real interest to me. I read up on them a little bit a long while back; the last I saw, Izam was putting out some pretty uninspired solo singles with a decidedly less feminine look, Niy was getting fatter and fatter and apparently AOI did some vocal work that I didn’t look into (although if his old live vocal collaborations with Izam are any indication, that must be simply horrifying).

So I’ve given the CD a good listen, and.. it’s good. For the most part. The title track, 心 (Kokoro), is about as classic Shazna as you can get. It may as well be a cut track from Pure Hearts. A bit slow, kind of ballad-y, but not really bad so much as predictable. However here, as across all the tracks, Izam’s voice is definately smoother, something his solo career undoubtedly helped with. A little deeper, alot more falsetto, and he doesn’t really go off-key at all anymore. AOI and Niy really sound about the same, but maybe I don’t have a good ear for their instruments. All in all, Kokoro is pretty ‘eh,’ but I have much love for track 2, [1/2]. The lyrics are a bit simple, but hey, it’s j-rock. Besides that, Izam is pretty catchy and AOI’s solo is pretty kickin’ rad too. The last track, 神風 (kamikaze), is a nice upbeat number as well that I like, but it didn’t quite catch me like 1/2 did.

Amazing. So I guess I need to quickly get the site up to par now, with actual Shazna content. I have alot, there’s just this thing called laziness…

I sure do love anime figures! From the myriad, cheap gachapon lining my desk and shelves to the heavy resin models, costing their weight in gold, I’m a sucker for a cute animu girl or badass pose. And what better way to reinforce their intrinsically useless nature than by taking still frame photos of them.

This sudden desire to photograph figures was inspired by Ana’s talk of it, as well as this post describing basic methods for lighting. So I spent a day off, with $12 worth of new light bulbs and construction paper.
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Still not alot of content, so time to steal more old LiveJournal entries. So here’s a recipe with a couple pictures for Chinese pork buns!

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Pioneer sure did love Tenchi Muyo, didn’t they? There’s enough audio and drama from the series to drive any normal nerd mad. Thankfully, I’m quite abnormal, and have taken to collecting all of them (or at least as many as I can).

Almost all of the CDs, especially the drama ones, are beautifully illustrated. Many (including the ones below) are drawn by none other than Kiyohiko Azuma, years before his success with Azumanga Daioh. I’ll be scanning some choice pieces of art from various CDs and posting them here.
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