Desu ex Machina

Recently, Japanese teenage pop group SCANDAL covered K-ON!’s wildly popular and recognizable ending theme Don’t Say Lazy to commemorate their third anniversary. It’s quite fitting because simply, SCANDAL “lived the life” glorified by K-ON!, going from a completely unknown group of high school girls, to giving live performances, balancing schoolwork with the labors associated with being in a band, to (ok, maybe they went a little farther than K-ON! did) becoming a smash hit and going on international tours. Every teenage kid who picks up a guitar and starts a band in their garage has this dream of ascension though the indie scene in their minds. Stateside, punk-rocking, hormone driven teens may not exactly be thinking about K-ON! and SCANDAL but the basic idea is the same.

I like the cover. The rearranged some of the instrumental parts and the girls’ voices is distinctly different from Hikasa Yoko. Most noticably, SCANDAL has four vocalists (all the them) while Houkago Tea Time has one (either Toyosaki Aki (Yui) or Hikasa Yoko (Mio)). While Hisaka’s voice is of a richer quality, the SCANDAL girls, particularly Haruno Ono, render the song with a much more dry-cut almost punkish feel. The improvisations from the original in the cover were creative and gave the song a good new feel while still remaining very loyal to the anime original. The energy is definitely there, but which way it rubs you depends on, well, you. A touch more bass also couldn’t hurt.
Regardless of what one may think of K-ON! as an anime, the majority agreed, before the season even started, that the ED kicks serious ass. The cover is pretty cool and I recommend you all check it out. I kindly threw the YouTube up at the end of the post. You can grab the high quality source off Tokyo Toshokan

I would like to point out here they they should not be all genki and smiling. If they really wanted to stay true to the original they should all be staring kinda into space with no expression on their faces, just like in the ED animation. Oh well, you can’t get always get what you want.

And as promised:

*ding dong*

Oh, hi there. Thanks for coming to Desu ex Machina in your annual costumed pagan inspired candy run. Dasaku is a decent neighborhood of trick-or-treating, but only if you know what the good houses are. The old man at Mega Megane Moe, the house down the street, never answers his doorbell. Cokematic gives out cans of soda, he’s that strange man in every neighborhood that thinks soda-pop constitutes as a treat, and that house around the corner is kinda scary. Definitely wanna hit up the house across the street, however. Xephfyre gives out extra candy to Fate/Stay night cosplayers and even copies of Together with House-Husband. Yes, books on Halloween. How many times have you seen that. The dude at the house all the way at the end of the street is psyched for Halloween, with decorations and everything. He’s handing out eroge, so I’m not sure parents want their kids heading over there.

Before I continue, excuse me. This is obligatory.

I am actually tempted to watch Umineko for Maria. Horie Yui voicing a crazed loli? Whom I happened to be 100% pedo for? Perhaps sometime down the road after the whole show has aired and after a night of drinking. Maybe.

What has kevo done for Halloween weekend so far? Well, given that it’s Saturday night Halloween and I’m at home blogging, I’m not exactly going crazy. I did get to go see Tiesto last night. It was intense. I live in Minneapolis, not somewhere cool like Malaysia where I can go to see Chihara Minori and steal her water bottle. Regardless, I like electronica and Tiesto is the best in the business. Imagine like 1000 people squeezed into a cramped nightclub jumping to the beat of Escape Me and I am still trying to figure out how my limbs are all in tact. My ears are still ringing, however.

Watched the new episode of Toaru Kagaku no Railgun today. Ever since K-ON, I’ve slowly begun to really like Toyosaki Aki’s voice work. She has that cute, sweet, airheaded vibe. Railgun is doing around 200 times better than Index so far. The episodic, scenario-based structure is working well to explore the wonderfully interesting characters in the Indexverse. The problem with Index was how it focused on characters no one cared about and threw it’s main cast almost to the curb. Plus, the pacing was terrible for a show that wanted to convey some kind of plot. Railgun will do well to just keep it up at this pace and it will be one of the most solid shows of the season.

Second Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann movie is gonna premiere in San Francisco in November. In English subtitles, no less! I like the movies as supplements to the series, as you can never get enough TTGL and the little changes they make are cool. It’s like a quick rewatch of the whole series. I’m excited to see what they changed in the second movie, as the second half of the series was fucking epicsauce. Oh right, no candy for you if you don’t like TTGL. I hope the DVD will be on sale soon. Unfortunately I won’t be able to get to San Fran because I have neither time or money for a pilgrimage. Regardless, Gurren Lagann the Movie 2: The Lights in the Sky are Stars, opening at Viz Cinema on November 17. If you’re in Cali, go for it. (sauce)

What? You want candy? Fine, here have some. Kids these days…

Art courtesy kohaku (pixiv)

I know you instantaneously clicked in as soon as your read the title. Who wouldn’t? It’s the divine combination of Naruto and hardcore rap, dawg. It’s a tad old (a few months ago) and I found this on a forum and I thought I would share. Did I mention this is a combination of Naruto and rap?

Shit son, these tracks are tite, yo!

I love how the track is not processed or mastered in any way so the “s” sound and other sharp sounds literally hurts your ears. Definitely exacerbated on my performance headphones. I know, I know, I shouldn’t make fun of this. This is technically doujin music! The doujin community is the crux of the anime community. But I can’t resist pointing out that the in footage in the “music video” you can see fansubs. This person didn’t even bother finding raws.

This, however, is legitimately funny good (embedding disabled, sorry). Soulja Boy Naruto parodies by law cannot be bad. Now, I complement Eddie Rath on his… creativity and his dedication to umm… anime. I can choose to make fun of him a bit more but I’m not that much of a jerk, so and if a picture is worth a thousand words, then three YouTube videos should be worth over nine thou- *ahem* a million. If your eyes ever lay upon these words, Eddie, may your Naruto inspired musical drive prove fruitful.

Support the artist! Buy his album!