Was just browsing online and going through several online articles on new exciting developments of giant robot shows going on this year. Especially there’s one upcoming in May.
Gurren Lagann.net recently announced their Gurren Lagann Parallel Works 2 Project are releasing their music videos to the public on 26th May 2010 since their trailer debut as below.
What is it is that it’s a collection all music videos that retell the story of Gurren Lagann in an alternate universe. And they did this previously back in 2008 when they first began the previous project as Gurren Lagann Parallel Works. (hence for the header image I have at the top of this post, which is not the correct reflection for this post btw!! ). See 2008 trailer below.
According to its site, there are about 7 music videos in the series. Here their are with their background song titles and characters.
The sense of wonder - Akemi Hayashi
Ore no XXX wa Uchū Hitotsu - Gekidan Inu Curry
Sayonara Dai Gurren - Shouko Nishigaki
Big Building - Ayumu Kotake, Shintarou Douge
Kiyal no Magical Time, Sanpun Mae - Satoru Yamaguchi
Gunmen Symphonia - Shouji Saeki, Shingo Abe
Kitan Zero - Sushio
If you want to find out more, check out the home page of Gurren-Lagann.net.
NB: All images above are sourced from Gurren-Lagann.net. They are not owned by me.
After reading this post in twitter, I started to think myself how can the guy in the video really want to take over with the world with this so-called giant robots. If you’re really planning to take over whole world with giant robots, then start working ahead towards being an actual scientist, rather than be a make-believe giant robot scientist wannabe! :-/
Saw this ANN.com post some months ago. And I thought I love to share this piece with everyone.
Japan’s latest wacky robot invention that not only can speak and move recently, but can also – I couldn’t believe it when I first saw this – cosplay and sing as well!!
The new HRP-4C robot model was dressed up as this anime character, known as Miku Hatsune, whose apparently a very popular anime character that seems to be taken a widespread appeal among the Japanese media enthusiasts and raise the industry watchdogs for quite some time.
Never heard much about her. However, according to Wikipedia, she’s a ‘product’ made by music instrument company, Yamaha, that produces synthetic music and singing of various popular songs by actually matching the pitch and vocal range of the actual singers when she started to open her mouth to sing. Really impressed.
Check out some of 80’s popular songs sang by her.
Miku Hatsune singing “Heaven is a place on earth” by Belinda Carlise in 1987
Here’s the original version…..
Miku Hatsune singing “Hard to say sorry” by Chicago
Was surfing around Youtube links for any sight of fascinating super robot links. And this is what I encountered. A Gameboy music game that focuses on honing your skill in timing your note-hits on popular songs or music. Which in this case it’s Getter Robo’s theme.
Not as bad as compared to the original theme (below). But definitely very ‘well-versed’ to make such a great copy of classical music theme.
I wonder if I could get a copy of this game in the market anymore, since it’s been out for a few years?
Macross: Do you remember love(DYLR)?’s founding composer, Kazuhiko Katoh, recently died. He died by committing suicide, hanging himself in his hotel department. Few sources of information suggest any strong reasoning why he’s motivated to kill himself. The only clue left behind by him are his two copies of a will on the table before he hung himself.
They mentioned that this man not only composed the unforgettable theme song, Do you Remember Love?(“Ai , Oboeteimasu ka?”) for the Macross film, but also responsible for launching a Japanese band to tour around UK in the 70s! The first of its kind.
This is the most distressing news indeed.
And many people in MyAnimeList forum were trying to figure out what and why caused his sudden ‘departure’ from this world of anime business he’s in. Especially his involvement with Macross as one of his outstanding achievements during his 20-30 year career!
It makes no utter sense why he had to go.
Do you really think, given his age, and after all what he’s done for Macross, that he oughta take his own life just because he found something ‘uncomforting’ about the will he read on the desk? Surely, the last step to take his own life was a bit too drastic to make a foregone conclusion….
Just as I was to put up another post today (starting to feel better now that mild cold is gone. Been dragging on for weeks, without end!), I bumped into my friend’s link about a dance tribute to Michael Jackson many weeks ago. And I thought myself “Michael Jackson Dance Tribute? What on earth could they be doing to pay tribute to MJ?” So I looked up his link, opened it up….
And here it is.
Apparently, it’s a group of dancers that were secretly practicing the dance moves from one of MJ’s killer Thriller’s singles, where MJ flips right hand outwardly, and then raised left and right arms exchangeably at the same his feet slide side to side. Sure enough the music opening sequence was sure a giveaway, so you wouldn’t need to second guess that it’s Beat It (see video below). According to the video, it took 300 plus dancers less than 30 minutes to learn the moves and prepare the dancing ’stage’ less than one hour! Not bad for that kind of training and choreography. Intensely well-timed! While I was watching it in utter amazement, towards the end of the video (spoiler warning!!) there’s a message saying the dance group encouraged the rest of the world to perform the same.
So I ‘youtubed’ it online further and heres what I uncovered…
Canada…
Taiwan…
Hong Kong…
Russia…
Germany…
UK…
OK! So the last one is out of the theme compared to the rest! But still it is MJ and it’s all about him and this tribute is taking everybody by storm to do everything what they can pay respect for the great legendary music icon of our time.
MJ, though you may have lived your life in what appears to be having gone the ‘wrong direction’, but make no mistake you’re still the man in making the music so memorable and spectacular. You’re just as irreplaceable as Princess Diana (died in a car accident in 1997) who also touched so many people lives and made such an ‘impactful’ difference.
It’s been over 25 years since Macross Super Dimension Fortress (SDF) appeared on our tiny television sets, broadcasting after school hours. And technology were not that advanced as compared to today’s.
It’s amazing to note while I was googling through web pages on Macross, I keep thinking back about the sweet melodic voice of the singer-actor who’s the one that made the series such a masterpiece worth the while to remember. It was the same strong reason why and how I got so hooked into super robot and mecha anime since then. The story, the action, the the drama, the planes-turn-to-robot sequences. Everything… I absolutely adore it. And so sure for other fans worldwide as well, including the ones from the unrelated disjointed Robotech series.
Japanese singer, Mari Ijima, the sweet 19 year-old-then girl, who lent such incredible voice when she went for the audition in the set of Macross to sing the main theme of the series as part of the selection process just like what they did with Sakamoto Maaya in Macross Frontier.
If you play from above clip, listening from beginning till the end, I would find it hard not to ever get tranced by its deep, soothing voice of Mari. It’s spellbound. Â In my humble opinion. And that’s the greatest winning formula that sealed the Macross series’ fate as the greatest anime of all time that’s ever produced in anime history. Shoji Kawamori pulled out all the best works into Macross franchise and having Mari dragged in seemed like it was the best investment he’s ever made. Have a look at this 1984 live footage of her singing “Ai Oboete imasuka (Do you remember love)”.
That was Mari in his her late teens before hitting major stardom.
25 years later, this is her now…
Okay. It’s quite an appearance change from her sweet 19 years of age to her today’s present form. She looks though as if she’s keeping up to the fashion trends of modern casual clothing (and she’s even wearing a sports beanie). Guess you’re never too old to wear anything that’s super trendy and fashionable of today, even for Mari. Come to think of it, looking at Mari Ijima in her new video clip, she hardly ever ages at all! Honestly, in general sense without sounding too stereotypical, asian women usually look younger than their actual ages compared to other women in from other races. That means her voice is still keeping strong and fresh as ever!
I say ‘Bravo’ to her! I’m glad she’s moving ahead in times and she’s handling very well. The above video Mari was playing a piano, was held at the Rock and Jazz Live Festival in 2008 where she gave her singing performances on all her songs, mostly in English, since she moved to USA many years ago to learn English. She moved so she could launch her music career in the hopes to find greater fame and fortune thanks to the success of Macross, which was responsible for making her life possible till now.
Been meaning to post on Saturday evening, however it became such a mission for me to upload the photos on my Wordpress online, I realised this is not gonna be an easy 5 minute job…. And finally here I am.
This is something I dont’ see that often. For the past 15 years since I live in the ‘land of the long while cloud’, anime was word that’s unknown to many general people of NZ and certainly the contrast was incredibly obvious between my adopted country and home country of Malaysia, where anime is seen as a common household product in the neighbourhood of 20 million plus people. Here, to get a manga book was certainly a rarity for these and the closest thing you can ever find them (which I vaguely remember) is from a Taiwanese shop that sells parallel imported goods or from Taiwanese high school friends I used to went out with, and they get the latest trends of manga imports.
Now fast-forwarding the clock 15 years later…. Things have changed. It has changed a lot.
Thanks to the introduction of Pokemon and Dragonball Z into the NZ youth market towards late 90s, the anime space was exploding that was never seen before. It broke all barriers and soon many new young New Zealand fans are spreading the word of ‘anime’ in the community like wildfire. They learn many things about manga, otaku, shonen, doujinshi, cosplay and the culture of Japanese animation so quickly. I feel like I’m no longer a visitor to my new found homeland anymore. Â Everything I do here is almost like being back at home! And what better way for them to get into this pop culture phenomenon, is to have our very own local anime convention centre in the Southern Hemisphere, right in the heart of Auckland City.
It’s probably our first anime convention centre ever in New Zealand’s history. At least, that’s what I found from this link at AnimeCons.com. So New Zealand has come a long way with this and we see a rising number of young fans that mould in very well in this array of ‘Japan-esque’ fun everything from dressing up your favourite anime characters as for eg Sailor moon to owning your very first 1/1 scale Mobile Gundam model! (I was kidding about the 1/1 scale part. Lol.)
Nevertheless, my curiosity for discovering the world of anime in New Zealand never dissipates so I decided to venture out on the quest to see just how much New Zealand as a whole learnt much about anime.
And after the first two hours of almost non-stop (well not really, I had to recharge my parking fare every hour (long story) so I had to rush out and rush back in) photo-taking, and a few hundred of photos later, and countless hours of uploading, here’s the entire album below. Â Broken into 4 categories.
Note: It may take you a while to get used with this photo navigation setup. As you click one of the categories, a screen will refresh and the album disappears (!!) but the link to the gallery is there that says ‘Show Picture list’. Click on the link, you will have the overview of some of the photos previewed. Â There’s an option for you to view the photos in a slideshow format, which is good since I have so many photos and it would be cumbersome to view the individually. Â If you want to see other galleries of the original album, you must click the orginal link of this post so the album gets refreshed.
This is great start for New Zealand. Â As I walked around the room, letting my curious gaze linger from one desk to another, prying on the marvellous artworks by these bright intelligent artists, who clearly show their desire and passion in drawing, I sense something’s good is bound to happen for these talented young guns. Â I asked every person I met on each desk about their age and how long they love to drawing, and you hear the same answer over and over. Â 14-18 year olds love to drawing since they were little kids getting their first drawing pencils and continue to excel their ’scribbling’ into great works of anime/manga art. Â They’re incredible, I tell you. Â (which you will soon see after you look into my album).
They got a number of cosplays going on there from Japanese high-school outfits to one guy dressing up as Vincent, a character from Final Fantasy VII.  Plenty of dances going on too (which I need to find the time to upload, if I’m lucky enough to be busy).  And last, but not least, there’s a section of all mecha toys and models that I could finally find (YES!!!) in our local shores, ie no need for E-bay buying anymore for sure.  Apparently, NZ market is actually small so having a NZ as a young market for youth products like this is a foregone conclusion.  There’s still potential for this before we could rival our so-called “big brother” of the Oceania region and their much bigger show of anime. (see Youtube clip below).
At the end of the day, I did not go home empty-handed, for I certainly did make lot of purchases, if anything not overtly-exorbitant like buying myself a 1/1 Gundam model and put in my frontyard! I’m planning to post this on another page as there’s a lot of great material including magazine of Japan’s wonderful world of modelling hobby.
Heard that an unofficial Macross fan club is planning to host one of the biggest Macross crossover singing concert in its history in Japan, spanning all the main actors/actresses/singers from Macross series.
Here’s the excerpt from Animenewsnetwork.com
F-Tama, the official fan club for the Macross Frontier science-fiction anime, has announced to its members on Saturday that it is holding two “Macross Crossover Live A.D. 2009×45x49″ concerts at the Makuhari Messe convention complex near Tokyo on October 17 and October 18. The “galaxy’s biggest crossover” will feature Mari Iijima (Lynn Minmay in The Super Dimension Fortress Macross), Yoshiki Fukuyama (the singing voice of Macross 7’s Basara Nekki), Chie Kajiura (the singing voice of Macross 7’s Mylene Jenius), May’n (the singing voice of Macross Frontier’s Sheryl Nome), and Megumi Nakajima (Macross Frontier’s Ranka Lee). This is the second event to mark the “first year of Macross” after the Macross “space launching ceremony” in February. (The first episode of the first Macross series aired in 1982, but its story was set in February of 2009.) The first Macross Frontier film will open in Japan on November 21.
Tickets are already available to people who join the F-Tama club between Saturday and July 25. People who joined the club before can purchase tickets between July 13 and July 29. The organizers plan to offer the remaining tickets to the general public on August 22, initially through the FamilyMart convenience store chain’s ticketing system.
The last time that this many singers from this many Macross series held a concert together was in 2007’s “Macross 25th Anniversary Live: Minmay meets Fire Bomber” concert. During that concert, Iijima, Fukuyama, Kajiura, Nakajima, and Nobutoshi Hayashi (Basara’s speaking and occasional singing voice) performed. (Since Nakajima had just been selected in a nationwide audition and Macross Frontier was months away from its television premiere, Nakajima had sung the “Voices” song from Macross Plus.) The last time that more Macross performers were on stage together was in “Macross One-Night Stand,” the 15th Anniversary Live concert in 1997. That concert featured Iijima, Fukuyama, Hiroko Kasahara (Ishtar in Macross II), Akino Arai (one of the singing voices for Myung Fang Lone and Sharon Apple in Macross Plus), and Yoko Kanno (composer and pianist in Macross Plus).
Kanno held a Seatbelts concert this month that featured songs from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Macross Frontier, Arjunaã€RahXephon, Macross Plus, Wolf’s Rain, Cowboy Bebop, The Vision of Escaflowne, Aquarion, Card Captor Sakura, and other titles.
