For better or worse, Crypton Future Media has just announced the third installment in its Character Vocaloid series, featuring the young lady you see and hear in the above video. Her name is Megurine Luka, and she's voiced by Asakawa Yuu, probably best known for lending her talent to Love Hina's Tsuki no Gotoku. Interestingly, Luka is purportedly bi-lingual, with a full set of English syllables available right out of the box.
I will admit that I like the character. She's designed by Kei -- the same artist responsible for all the other official Vocaloids -- and his work is always delightful, even if the same can't be said for the voices it might represent. (*cough* Kagamine *cough*) Luka has an almost steampunk look to her with that brown and gold color scheme, and is suspicously reminiscent of Aigis from Persona 3. As might be expected, Pixiv has already begun sprouting fanart, mere hours after the announcement.
As for the voice, it's too early in the game to say, considering even my angel Miku's demo was less than impressive. Crypton's recommended genre for Luka is Latin jazz-pop, and it'll be interesting to hear what the Vocaloid masters out there will be able to do with that. You can check out her rendition of Amazing Gracehere. I'm going to make an early personal prediction and say that she'll fall into the same club as Meiko for me, as one of the "eh, not bad" Voices. We'll find out for sure after January 30th, when the new program is set for its Japanese release at 15,750 Yen. What do you guys think?
First releases of the new year, and what a great start this year gets. Unlike weeks of yesteryear, we have a large number of releases, and a lot of great titles being released as well. Gurren Lagann, Lucky Star, Ouran High School—seriously, all bases are covered with just these three releases. Though just imagine if they combined them all into one anime. Dai Gurren Dan Host Club, featuring Meito Anizawa; ah, I think I just squeed a little.
Manga doesn’t have it as good as anime, though it would be really hard to beat that dream team. Though there are some good titles, like Fate/Stay Night volume 2, Hunter X Hunter volume 24 and some old school Dr. Slump. Go spend money my children! Check out the entire list after the jump.
This sh*t is bananas. There's no two ways about it. Various national leaders battle it out in games of Super Mahjong in order to determine the fate of their countries. This is the stuff dreams are made of, along the lines of Dance! Kremlin Palace!, but with. y'know, a lot less gore and Stalin -- although a guest appearance by Stalin or Brezhnev wouldn't be too bad.
Who comprises the lineup of this All-Winners Squad, you ask? Why, it'd be the title character, Junichiro Koizumi, along with Taro Aso, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Kim Jong Il, and Vladimir Putin. I can only imagine how the battles must go, and the underhanded trickery that no doubt takes place as Kim Jong Il distracts Koizumi, or Taro Aso fakes a pain from an ulcer or such.
The manga is by Oowada Hideki, who does a bunch of gag manga work. I'm impressed with the art style, it reminds me a bit of Highschool of the Dead. I'm looking forward to picking up the volumes at Kinokuniya or from Amazon Japan. Oh, and according to Canned Dogs, "the story continues in Kindai Mahjong Original where the Pope has made his appearance too."
Len has already welcomed all of you into 2009, and so now's a good a time as any to talk about what we're expecting from the anime and manga companies in 2009. There are certainly a lot of expectations, what with the interesting year 2008 has been.
Between the fall of ADV and Geneon, and FUNi solidifying itself as the Lordgenome of the anime industry, I'm curious to see if anyone can climb up the ranks and pose any sort of threat to FUNi's market share. On the manga side, we've had the fallout of Tokyopop matched with the creation of Kodansha USA -- something that we're still waiting to see the fruits of. Oh, and there's the eternal question: When is the next Yotsuba&! coming out?
So, we've got a list of suggestions for all of you companies out there. I know there's some magical formula that helps along your choices for licensing, but we've got all of the staff's suggestions for what titles you should make your top priority in the licensing war. We'd also like to hear from you readers as to which titles you want to see licensed. You never know who'll license things because of what you say...
Without any further ado, let's get into the staff's "DO WANT" choices for 2009.
I tend to find the photo compilation videos on Nico Nico Douga to be a bit lackluster, but here's one that caught my eye. It's a collection of photos showing a fairly wide range of cosplay done by us Westerners. While this is best viewed with the Nico Nico Douga comments, it's interesting to see which photos they selected to present to the larger Japanese audience.
First, I was happy to see that they selected mostly flattering cosplay shots, because Lord knows there's some bad cosplay photos out there, or even just unflattering ones. The only laughable ones were meant to be that way -- ManFaye and such. Second, I was glad to see the diversity amongst our cosplayers. This is something I notice at cons all the time -- American cosplayers don't necessarily follow the trends of what's current, so people go for what they want, and that usually means less overlap. Not so much with the photos I see from Comiket and CharaHobby. Third and finally, the comments from the Japanese have been fairly positive.
Glad to see they don't look down on us as some sort of wannabes.
Seriously, my nostalgic goggles are sometime so powerful that they can make even ugliest thing even better if given an 8-bit makeover. Hopefully it’s just not me; hopefully things really do become more beautiful if transformed into a bunch of pixels and bleeps. Like the above video, an 8-bit, and 16-bit interpretation of Idolm@ster; that’s if Idolm@ster was a bunch of other games mashed into one.
I have a great collection of videos for you this week. Really, if these videos were people, I would probably be able to open up a Taco Bell/Pizza Hut combination store with them. Yes, that great. Check them out after the jump.
Melancholy
of Suzumiya Haruhi
