Chronicles of an Anime Audiophile: Those Damn FLACs

Posted on by
9

Any excuse to post Mio fanart.

I’ve always been a bit of a videophile. That’s why I’m unable to abide the terrible video quality on Crunchyroll. However, I recently discovered my anal-retentive pickiness also extends to music. I recently became dissatisfied with the audio quality of my cheap, $10 Walmart earbuds and decided to spring for a fairly inexpensive but high-quality pair of Sennheiser around-ear headphones.

Almost immediately, I began to notice problems with my music collection. A lot of my anime soundtracks, particularly the ones with lower bitrate encoding, now sounded vaguely flat and lifeless. My iPod sounded cheap and tinny. The problem wasn’t in the headphones themselves, since high-bitrate music and videos with FLAC audio sounded absolutely amazing through them. No, the problem lay elsewhere.

Without even realizing it, I was becoming an audiophile.

Continue reading →

Review – Space Battleship Yamato

Posted on by
6

Although I’ve never seen the original Space Battleship Yamato anime, nor it’s American incarnation Star Blazers, I’m always a sucker for a good sci-fi action flick. My particular interest in this film was piqued when I saw the trailer; it almost seemed as if the Japanese film industry was trying to make its very own big budget popcorn flick in the vein of Star Wars. As one of Japan’s premier sci-fi franchises on par with Gundam, Yamato seemed like the perfect film to receive this kind of pseudo-Hollywood treatment. However, it was a big gamble… most live-action adaptations of anime created thus far, whether by Americans or Japanese, have been a disappointment. Could Yamato break this trend?

I’m happy to report that the end result is a flawed but fun high-octane sci-fi action film. Although it suffers from all the pitfalls inherent to Hollywood-style blockbusters, it also does an excellent job of playing to its strengths. It is, in every sense of the word, a popcorn film… and a damn entertaining one at that.

In the year 2199, the Earth is under siege by an unknown race of aliens whom humans have named the Gamilas. Although humanity was successful at resisting them initially, the aliens’ technology evolves at a rate faster than humans can match. Now the Earth has been rendered uninhabitable by constant meteorite bombardment, with only a handful of survivors living underground in squalor. The United Nations of Space has refitted the old, scuttled Japanese warship Yamato into Earth’s final star cruiser, intending to evacuate as many survivors as possible. However, a message from the planet Iskandar in the Large Magellanic Cloud offers humanity aid, promising them a device that can cleanse the Earth of radiation and make it livable again. The message also contains schematics for a powerful Wave Motion Engine, which will allow the Yamato to make the journey quickly using warp. As humanity’s last hope, the Yamato sets out on a desperate journey to find Iskandar, dogged by Gamilas attacks along the way.

More after the break.

Continue reading →

Aquagaze’s Summer Anime Guide, Part Two

Posted on by
10

Why random Mawaru Penguidrum art? Do I hear anyone complaining? No. Good.

The Summer Guide turned out a bit long, so I had to split the thing up in two parts. Here’s Part Two, where the fun really starts! We cover the two new noitaminA shows, Kami-sama No Memo-chou and Mawaru Penguindrum. As usual, since my opinion isn’t worth all that much, I get four more people to nuance it a bit.

Are you ready guys? Put your guns on!

Continue reading →

Aquagaze’s Summer Anime Guide, Part One

Posted on by
6

It's summer, so let's stay inside all day and watch some anime!

The summer season is often associated with subpar anime, one-cour stuffing made by lesser studios, but this summer season is one hell of an exception. I found at least 8 shows I’m interested in and of course, I’m obliged to share my thoughts. However, because my opinion isn’t worth jack, I got some of my friends with higher standards to nuance it a bit.

Find out after the break!

Continue reading →

Bakacast – The B-Team

Posted on by
29

iTunes | Direct Download | RSS

BEHOLD! I, the mighty Jon, have returned from my hiatus and taken command of Bakacast once again! And just in time to review all the exciting new summer season anime!

Because of the sheer number of new anime we had to review, we skipped our usual introductory segments and went straight for the sweet stuff. Next week should be a lot less hectic though, since we’ve already dropped over half these shows.

We review the new anime in roughly the same order they appear on Random Curiosity’s summer preview guide, in case you want to follow along.

  • 2:05 – Gosick #24 (END)
  • 8:48 – Steins;Gate #14
  • 13:02 – Double-J #1
  • 16:32 – Blade #1
  • 20:10 – Ro-Kyu-Bu! #1 (DROPPED HARD)
  • 22:55 – God’s Notepad #1
  • 29:34 – Uta no Prince-sama #1 (DROPPED)
  • 31:41 – Sacred Seven #1
  • 36:44 – Ikoku Meiro no Croisee #1
  • 43:40 – Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel #1 (DROPPED)
  • 45:23 – Yuru Yuri #1 (DROPPED WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE)
  • 50:01 – Kamisama Dolls #1 (SNORE… I MEAN, DROPPED)
  • 54:33 – Nyanpire #1
  • 55:16 – Bunny Drop #1
  • 1:02:30 – No.6 #1
  • 1:07:29 – Idolmaster #1 (DROPPED)
  • 1:13:30 – Blood-C #1 (I PITY THE FOO WHO DON’T DROP THIS)
  • 1:19:15 – Mawaru Penguindrum #1
  • 1:28:07 – Morita-san wa Mukuchi #1 (DROPPED)
  • 1:28:32 – My Little Pony #7 & 8
  • 1:36:35 – Listener questions

If you would like to submit listener questions for a future episode, you can email them to bakacast[at]projectharuhi.net, @reply them to Project Haruhi’s Twitter account using the hashtag #bakacast, or leave them in the comments below.

Announcing SaiRetro

Posted on by

The International SaiMoe League is a lot of fun, but we here at Project Haruhi noticed that some classic anime girls didn’t make it past the nominations round. This is understandable, as SaiMoe is more focused around the last decade’s worth of anime, but we feel these oldschool beauties deserve some love too. That’s why we’ve decided to set up our very own niche version of the SaiMoe tournament.

Read more at the SaiRetro website.

Anime Character Rescue Project: In Soviet Russia…

Posted on by
3

Stop drooling, capitalist pigs!

Master Jon has commanded the entire Project Haruhi crew to shamelessly rip off Karen’s idea and save some anime characters from shows that don’t deserve them. Dustin already gave you his ideas yesterday, but my contribution took a bit longer to shape. I’m not the type to watch terrible anime long enough to stumble upon a character that I actually like, so I had to look at it from another angle.

My original idea was to subject Kirino Kousaka from OreImo to the twisted world of Waita Uziga and change the title of the anime into My Little Sister Can’t be This- Wait, That Is My Little Sister?, but that would have only ended in utter terror due to my knowledge of Mr. Uziga’s works being limited to:

  1. They exist
  2. They’re gruesome

But enough sidetracking. Instead of Kirino, I decided to pick someone a little more… feisty. And Russian.

Continue reading →

Anime Character Rescue Project: Sexy Sengoku

Posted on by
14

Back when she was writing for Japanator, Karen wrote a couple funny posts about taking good anime characters from terrible shows and putting them in anime worthy of their presence. These articles came up during our Bakacast pre-show banter, where Karen, Glen, Larry and I lamented the fact that shows like AnoHana and Hanasku Iroha had some genuinely fun characters in them but, sadly, were painful to watch. So, with a little cajoling from Master Jon, I decided to continue Karen’s benevolent mission.

In the first installment of the Rescue Project, I reference an anime only three people have seen, remember a time when noitaminA aired good shows, balance out a sausage-fest and increase a certain super-robot show’s cougar-count by 100%.

Continue reading →

Bakacast – Melodrama Meltdown

Posted on by
19

iTunes | Direct Download | RSS

The end of the spring season is finally here, and Karen and Larry join me to give it a swift kick out the door. Sadly, Glen could not be with us because he overslept was busy fighting alien invaders.

In any case, we were quite happy knowing we’d never have to watch X-Men, AnoHana, and Hanasku Iroha ever again. And yes, I know HanaIro didn’t technically end. A season finale is good enough for me. Steins;Gate is fantastic as always (if rather cruel), but [C] tragically fumbles its finale. Oh well. Maybe the two noitaminA shows coming out this summer will make up for the past four that have been on that block. And no matter what happens, we’ll at least have My Little Pony.

In the news segment, we briefly touch on the Thundercats remake and Warren Ellis’ involvement with the crummy Marvel adaptations. Then we answer a couple of listener questions and close out the episode discussing what summer shows we’ll be watching. Try and guess which one we’re checking out just to mock. It shouldn’t be too hard.

We cover:

If you would like to submit listener questions for a future episode, you can email them to bakacast[at]projectharuhi.net, @reply them to Project Haruhi’s Twitter account using the hashtag #bakacast, or leave them in the comments below.

Bakacast – Hate-chan’s Counterattack

Posted on by
8

 

iTunes | Direct Download | RSS

This week, we bring in Bakacast power-listener and Universal Century super-fan Hate-chan to help us discuss the Mobile Suit Gundam remake. Continuing the mecha theme, we then wonder how many people will actually be crazy enough to buy the phenomenally overpriced Evangelion wine.

Then, in the “Whatcha Been Doing?” segment, I talk for far too long about video games, as is customary. It’s about The Witcher 2, though, so at least it’s a game I enjoy this time.

In the reviews segment, we have our first “proper” review of Soft Tennis courtesy of Karen, Larry and Glen; Gosick makes us scratch our heads even more than it usually does; Steins;Gate ends with a literal bang; and [C] goes all Madoka Magica on us. Also, we begin our retroactive review of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic season one. Our conclusion? It really sucks to be an Earth Pony, and Princess Celestia is a troll.

We cover:

If you would like to submit listener questions for a future episode, you can email them to bakacast[at]projectharuhi.net, @reply them to Project Haruhi’s Twitter account using the hashtag #bakacast, or leave them in the comments below.