Old 97's: "The Grand Theatre"

So I spend most of my time here at RTQ talking about anime and manga, occasionally about something else involving cartoons and comics. But today I'm deviating slightly from my normal model to talk about music. As far as music goes, I have a very eclectic taste that cecenters in the realm of Rock and Country. I grew up on, primarily, what my parents listened to. I am lucky in that both of my parents have amazing taste in music.

When I was in middle school, my mother discovered the Old 97's. This discovery was passed on to me, and both of us have been huge fans ever since. I have an oddly distinct memory of sitting in my middle school cafeteria humming "Jagged" while I waited for the rest of my table to come off the lunch line. Mom and I have seen the Old 97's, and Rhett Miller solo, several times when they've been in New Jersey or NYC and have loved every show we went to. We still reflect fondly at the absolutely stellar show they did at Styuvesant High School in June 2006.



Recently, the Old 97's released "The Grand Theatre: Volume One". A friend of my mom's gave it to her, she brought it home, I burned it onto my laptop, and listened to it on one of my train rides up into the city for class. Since the Old 97's are so near and dear to my heart, I thought I'd cover this newest album here and hopefully spread word of them a little further out.

The Old 97's started as an Alt. Country band out of Texas and have gotten progressivly more "Rock" over the years, thus their appeal to me. The opening track, "The Grand Theatre", really reflects how much Rock has infused into them over the years. But even as soon as track 3 and 4, "The Magician", there's a bit of a throwback to the rock-infused-country energy from earlier albums, and track 4, "You Were Born To Be In Battle", and track 6, "Let The Whiskey Take The Reigns", hold a lot of their old country spirit that proves that they haven't thrown away their roots but have simply grown from them. They even pay a bit of tribute to their Texas roots with "A State of Texas".

Favorite tracks include "The Magician" and "Champaign, Illinois", which both seem to echo a bit of what I loved about earlier albums. Least favorites include "You Smoke Too Much" and "Love Is What You Are". They're both still great songs, but they'd drop to the bottom if I were to rank the tracks from favorite to least favorite.

Over all, "The Grand Theater" is a good album. Not my favorite, but still very enjoyable from start to finish. If you're already a fan, it's a great album to add to your collection, and if you haven't heard them yet it's a good place to start.

"Bakuman" episode 1: Starting strong right out of the gate!

Ah you guys!!! I just got through watching the first episode of the "Bakuman" anime! I've been excited about this for months, and the last few weeks my friends and I have really been building up to it. This morning I watched raws of the opening and ending sequences, and a little bit of the episode, then decided to wait for fansubs to watch the rest!

I was confused when I started and got the opening for "Super Hero Legend", in my mind I recognized what it was but I kept wondering if I was watching the wrong thing by mistake. But when it faded to a young Mashiro reading the manga for "Super Hero Legend", I laughed.

Then the real opening sequence began...



I instantly fell in love. Especially given the context of the early story, which focuses mostly on Mashiro and Miho, I felt that this opening was really appropriate. It focuses mostly on Mashiro and Miho, with a backtone of Takagi and Kaya. It really sets the tone for the start of the story, and I am just in love with the song, "Blue Bird" by Kobukuro.

So far it's pretty faithful to the manga. The "Death Note" joke was retained, and that was great for me. As of episode one, I have no complaints about how the anime is following the manga. Still, this is episode one so it's a little hard to tell just what direction the anime will roll in.



As for the visuals, I'm about 75%. I like the way Mashiro and Takagi are presented. They feel very natural and they look like themselves. Takagi pulled out some really great expressions, though as of now some of the comedic faces don't seem to have come through in the anime. I'm not sure how many really showed up this early on, so I'm hoping that they just haven't gotten a chance to really make those expressions yet and will pull through on it in the future.

But the girls... The girls are my sticking point right now. Kaya doesn't feel like herself to me at all. Of course we've seen almost nothing of her, so it's hard to really say what the problem is. But as for Miho, it's her eyes. In the manga, and even in Mashiro's drawings of her in the anime, Miho's eyes are very wide, bright, and expressive of the fact that she's a very hopeful, dreamy character. In the anime, her eyes don't always express that, and it's a little disappointing to me. I hope that as the anime progresses I lose this feeling and Miho's eyes begin to feel more natural to her character for me, because I really love Miho and those qualities about her.



The voice acting completely wins my support. My favorite is Takagi, who is being voiced by Hino Satoshi. I'm not familiar with any of his previous roles, even though he's had some major ones. But he really gives Takagi the energy, cunning, and personality that the manga always made me believe he has.

I'm really excited about some of the other voices (which are all listed on one of Wikipedia's "Bakuman" articles) for supporting characters who haven't appeared yet. Fukuda is going to be voiced by Suwabe Junichi, who voiced Grimmjow in "Bleach", and I feel like this is a perfect fit.

The background music is hard for me to comment on, as I tend to lose track of it while watching. But I suppose that is a good thing. It makes me comfortable watching the things going on and doesn't jar me or pull me out of the story at all. It feels natural to the events occurring while it plays.

As for the ending sequence, I'm just as in love with it as the opening.



Here we get to see a lot more of the backbone of what "Bakuman" is and will be. We get to see our supporting cast done up in manga panels, showcasing their personalities. The song is "Bakurock: Outline the Future" by Ya-kyim. The song has some drawing puns in it, which I think is fantastic, and the tone of the song just really fits the overall tone of "Bakuman".

Out of the gate, "Bakuman" gets a solid "A" from me, and I'm really really looking forward to episode 2 next week! I'll do my best to follow through with reviews on each episode if I have time and remember to!

Blogging about everything today.

Yeahhh.... I've been slacking off this week guys. Sorry. I've been out doing things pretty much every other day, so it's understandable right? But while I've been at ti I've watched more K-On, some clips from Hetalia, listening to the soundtrack from "The Road to El Dorado", and started reading "Yankee-kun to Megane-chan", which is absolutely hilarious. I'm still a long way from caught up, but it's fantastic, so far so I'd recommend taking a look at it if you've got some time to kill. I also went to a family reunion in there somewhere.

In pokemon news, we got another new pokemon revealed -- Yanappu.



A grass-type monkey is a weird combination to me, and I'm not totally sold on the broccoli growing out of his head, but I suppose he could be an interesting grass-type to work with if you're into that sort of thing. However, he's probably not going to be on my B/W team.

This pokemon isn't actually a reveal so much as a confirmation. We got a picture of a figure of this pokemon back in July, but up until now it wasn't confirmed as an actual pokemon in the games.

I've been playing SoulSilver again, finishing up some things that I've left hanging, such as chasing down roaming legendaries and doing the spiky-eared Pichu event. Suri's been helping me shuffle pokemon over from my copies of Platinum and Diamond to help me finish my pokedex. I also got a Japanese Wigglytuff over the GTS that has pokerus, so I've been infecting my pokemon with that slowly but surely. This is the first time I've ever had pokemon with it, so that's kind of exciting for me.

On a complete shift of subject, this week's "Bakuman" reminded me just who the team working on this was -- The pair who did "Death Note".

Mashiro and Takagi are currently planning a five-chapter story are in "Perfect Crime Party" that involves a rival trying to expose the club. Listening to them plan it out, it sounded a lot like the rivalry between Light and L, but with a lot less murder. Not that this is a bad thing. "Death Note" was written very well, even though I never finished it. I'm really excited to see how the next chapters play out and if "Perfect Crime Party" can beat Iwase and Eiji's crossover between "Crow" and "+Natural".

Image via Wikipedia

If you're not reading Bakuman yet, now is the perfect time to start. VIZ's translation has just hit stores, so the first volume is available. Go pick it up, and then catch up to the scans. then in November we can all go out an pick up volume 2. Especially if you're into the process of making comics, the physical volumes are worth picking up because VIZ has thrown in a little something extra for us -- Ohba and Obata's thumbnails for some of the pages! Getting that little something extra between chapters really sealed the deal for me. With how important the thumbnails are for Mashiro and Takagi within the story, getting to see Ohba and Obata's made it all the better.

Ahaha, I guess I managed to write a decent blog entry after all. I'm pretty impressed, since I didn't intend to. I'll try and do another update soon. It will probably be about Scott Pilgrim since I need to finish reading that and go see the movie.

Its like one of those "Breaking News" stories, except no one but me really cares.

THIS HAD BETTER NOT SUCK. IF THIS SUCKS, I'M GONNA GRAB MY SHIRAYUKI AND STAB A BITCH. IT WILL BE IRONIC.

- Me to Suri about 5 minutes before watching episode 230 of Bleach.

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This is something that I never thought I would be talking about here -- the Bleach anime.

As much as I love the manga, I declared the anime dead to me months ago after the "replacement captain/lieutenant" filler arc in which Sora form Kindgom Hearts was the new Captain of the 3rd division (It was a fucking keyblade, goddamnit.) and his lieutenant was the bastard offspring of Sosuke Aizen and Szayel Apollo Grantz. no matter how untrue that statement may or may not be, that's how I feel about it and I lost all desire to ever go anywhere near the anime ever again.

Aizen is the daddy and Szayel is the mommy, and together they spawned this horrible abomination against God.

I'm not a big fan of Bleach's filler arcs. The Bount arc didn't do much for me, but it did bring about the line "Everything it touches turns to snakes!", which has lead to some great moments hanging out with my friends in which we've randomly shouted that out in public. But the latest filler (Which, according to what I've heard, will only be four or five episodes?) is focusing on one of my favorite aspects of Bleach -- Zanpakuto.

For those not familiar with Bleach's cosmology, Zanpakuto are sentient swords belonging to the shinigami. They are spirits born from their master's soul and are the force of power behind all of the sword's abilities. There are a few other things that were brought up in the second movie that I think are bullshit because Hitsufag likes to make up his own rules, so we won't go into that.

But I've loved this concept from the beginning. I've been absolutely fascinated by the idea of learning what the appearances of everyone's swords were. And as soon as we came out of the Soul Society arc and were shown Sode No Shirayuki, Rukia's Zanpakuto, in action for the first time, I fell head over heels in love.

So when it was announced that the Zanpakuto would be the focus of the new filler, I became intrigued. I still had no real plan to watch, but I was curious, and a little excited to see what might become of it. The idea that the zanpakuto were rebelling against their masters interested me. And the nest part was that we would get to see them, even if they were all forced into humanoid forms. But there was one thing I was worried about...

I've always had a very clear mental image of what I believed her to look like. Anyone who's read the short CLAMP manga "Shirahime-Syo" may remember the story "Hiyoku no Tori" and the Heron woman in them. That woman has always been my image for Sode No Shirayuki. Would this arc, shatter my perception of her?

Left: Heron ("Shirahime-Syo") // Right: Sode no Shirayuki ("Bleach")

Surprisingly, no! Sode no Shorayuki is presented here actually very similar to how I pictured her to be. This helped a lot in getting me to want to keep watching. I was very worried about this, because I am resistant to change and didn't want to have to rethink my entire perception of her as a character.

So I torrented the episode, sat down, and watched...

My opinion so far is pretty neutral to the story as a whole, but as for the characters, my head is racing around trying to keep all of my perceptions of them in line.

Haineko was the most hilarious little bitch in the world. I loved when she shoved Rangiku aside and told her to get out of the way. I'd love to see her also have a more kindhearted side to match Rangiku's but I think she is perfect. and oh my god those pants. Wut.

I like Suzumebachi's appearance (especially that she's so fucking tiny), but I can't say I'm too thrilled with her personality. She is way too bubbly, happy, and excitable. Even before Soi Fon was an angst bucket, she did not act like that. Zanpakuto are meant to share many of their master's personality aspects and Suzumebachi doesn't act like Soi Fon at all. 

Kazeshini... I have never liked Kazeshini. Ever since his shikai was revealed and it was shown that he was a dual wield, I've hated him. It was established in the Soul Society arc that the only dual-bladed shikai were Katen Kyokotsu (Kyoraku Shunsui) and Sogyo no Kotowari (Ukitake Juushiro). I refuse to believe his shikai was a secret, since he's a lieutenant. It's possible Kubo hadn't thought it up yet, but for the love of god, Kubo, stick to your rules.

Anyway, the zanpakuto arc has proved that Kazeshini is a dick. this was hilarious to me because I just dislike him so much and how his personality just fell into me continuing not to like him. I'm not a fan of Hiyorinmaru either (gay Chrsitmas trees, wut?) for various reasons, but all he's done so far is stand around and stare at people so I can't really judge him yet.

But oh man the opening and ending? Hot shit, yo. I actually watched the opening twice before I started the episode because Iw as just so fascinated by Orihime and Rukia dancing. I want to dance with them so bad. XD Also everyone was just hanging out and being really hot. What the hell? SDid everyone suddenly realize how sexy they are?

The ending was fantastic. I'm completely addicted to "Mad Surfer" now. that's the kind of song I will hang out alone in my house and dance to in my underwear. I liked the kind of retro feel to the visuals and how it really depicted the personality aspects of all of the zanpakuto.

My big worry about this arc? That it's going to end up focusing on Hitsugaya and Hiyorinmaru. With the way they were introduced in the first episode of the arc, they seem to be getting special attention, and I'm really worried this is going to be another one of those instances of undeserved attention for them.

So I guess there will be followups to this as the arc progresses, because I anticipate having very strong feelings on this. We'll see where it goes.

The first of many posts in which Sono blathers about music.

[EDIT: I went back into this entry and put most of the songs in so you can know which song I'm talking about when I'm talking about it. You're welcome.]

Well I'm gonna start this blog of by scaring away about half of our potential reader base by making my first post here about a topic very dear to my heart --

Music from the Sailor Moon anime series.

There may be a followup to this, as I've suddenly realized I haven't sat and listened to any of the background tracks for, literally, years, but I think the best place to start covering bases would be the theme songs. Granted there aren't a whole lot of these because Sailor Moon, unlike most series, stuck with it's same opening theme song for 3 out of 4 seasons.

So where else to start but the beginning? "Moonlight Densetsu". This is probably the song everyone knows best, because they used the same musical track for the english version. Granted, that version of the song was very very different lyrically. I'd like to call it "terrible", but it did it's job of getting 6-10 year old girls watching it so... I guess good job, DiC.

Moonlight Densetsu - Sailor Moon

None the less this song is very very catchy and to this day I know what I'm hearing right from the opening notes, even if the 8 year old in me still starts singing the english version at the top of her lungs. Then the 21 year old version of me tells her to shut up and get it right.

Then there was "Tuxedo Mirage", which is a gorgeous song. I still have the translation of first few lines memorized, and when ever it comes on to play on my iTunes I just cannot turn it off. Actually, hearing it come on was what inspired me to write this blog post. Another line that I keep translating in my head every time I hear it is the end of the refrain, "Motto motto aishiteru, Tuxedo Mirage" (I love you more and more, Tuxedo Mirage.) I don't know why that has always stuck out to me but I just love that one moment when you first hear it in the song.

Tuxedo Mirage - Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon S

I don't have much to say about "Kaze mo Sora mo Kitto". But it's a catchy little song and I remember being fascinated watching the "puzzle" of Princess Serenity come together while it played while watching the ending credits.

Kaze mo Sora mo Kitto - Mizuki Arisa

And now the song that I could talk about forever (I'll try to restrain myself), "Sailor Star Song". This is easily my favorite song from the series. I didn't know until recently that Takeuchi Naoko actually wrote the lyrics to this song for the last season of Sailor Moon, and it only made me love it even more.

(SM_MBox-06)-02-Sailor_Stars_Song-TV.mp3 -

"Makenai" (Don't give up!) has sort of become my rallying cry over the years because of this song. Times when I was depressed, I'd listen to this and feel better for one reason or another. Maybe it was because Stars was my favorite season (no Chibiusa or Mamoru), or because I'd remember hanging with my cousin Rachel as a kid and watching Sailor Moon, or maybe it's just because it's a really happy song. But this one is catchy and uplifting and I just love it to death.

So now that I've covered the theme songs, I guess I'll move on to some of the other songs from Sailor Moon. One that I have always really adored was "Kaze ni Naretai" ("I Want To Be The Wind"), one of Haruka's songs sung by Ogata Megumi.

kaze ni naritai - ogata megumi

For the life of me, I cannot remember what this song is about, but I'm going to take an educated guess form the title and say it's about Haruka admiring the wind and wanting to be like it? None the less, this is another song I can never turn off when it comes on.

And on a related note, there is Michiru's "Fate Is So Beautiful", which for some reason doesn't seem to be in my iTunes anymore. I never liked this one as much as Haruka's, but it was an interesting song to listen to. I think it was a lot darker sounding of a song than it sounded.

And I suppose, even though I will be gutted for it, I must write about the english Sailor Moon tracks because I actually kind of liked, and still like, a lot of these songs. "My Only Love" is very very campy, but it was the first (and one of the only) song I ever learned to play on the piano and I still think, ins piste of how dumb it is, it's pretty romantic.

"The Power Of Love" is about as campy as they come but I will love this song forever. This, along with "Nothing At All" represent a time in my life when I got to see my best friend of a billion years on a more regular basis. And believe me we were as nerdy as they come. But it was fantastic and these songs, and Sailor Moon in general, were a big part of our friendship.

The Power of Love - Sailor Moon

Nothing At All.mp3 -

Though one thing about the english tracks that kinda of irked me was that they were sort of thrown into the dub of the anime with very little care as to where they were put. The best example is "Give Me The Strength To Carry On", which was in the original battle against Beryl, and also was used in the first movie even though it had very little to do with that battle.

Carry On -

I think the last song I'll talk about is "Sanji no Yosei" (3 O'Clock Fairy) from the Super S movie. this is the catchiest goddamn song on the face of the earth. After more than a decade, I can still sing the translation of this song.

The Three Oclock Fairy - Pupurans_Flute

Though it bothered me that DiC or 4Kids or whoever it was that dubbed the Super S movie was too lazy to dub this song. So for the first like 2 1/2 minutes of the movie, you have these kids singing in Japanese, with no subtitles, and no idea what the hell is going on. Especially with hoe much foreshadowing this song provides. This song and the resulting pied-piper-esque sequence pretty much sets up the entire movie. So... Epic fail.

So I guess that does it for me rambling on and on about music as if I actually know what I'm talking about. I may come back and talk about Sailor Moon in general and it's affect on me one day, but that's and entirely different animal.