Thanks for the sweet memories Leslie!

It has been while since you have left, after all this year is your 8th anniversary, since your ultimate departure from life. April 1, what a damn day of recollections. Of course this is told from a EST time, since the demise location is in Hong Kong. So I can only imagine of some moments of remembrances for you held in Hong Kong. All right time does go on, but as a fan just watching moments of your career, just has me thinking of good and bad times. Leslie Cheung  (張國榮).

He’s known as as a singer and an actor, so if you pay attention to Hong Kong Cinema as I grew up with. Leslie has been a big part of my viewing pleasure as I grew up. For lots of westerner audience, they may have seen him in Farewell My Concubine or Temptress Moon, since I know them as having English releases.

There’s just so many great songs that Leslie have produced, but since I have been on a bit of a schedule.. just leave up this clip. There’s English subs for the parts when he speaks, but overall his singing is in Cantonese.This is from a 1997 concert he did, with two songs. “When the Wind Blows.” and “This Life”

Zipperhead Movie Screening

Just this past Friday, I made my way to 17 Frost, amidst the incredibly snowed covered parts of Williamsburg and attended a performance to the movie screening of Zipperhead. This is my third time seeing the show, and I definitely enjoyed myself with every time I see this multimedia show. I wrote about this show way back when it was initially shown at Monkeytown.

The movie is going to be made into a DVD, with more commentary. Settling into the cushy black seats, I found myself back in Andrew Sarchus’s tormented journey again.

Prior to the video clip staring, heard some opening remarks from Steven Pacia, on the movement for 17 Frost to having more multimedia show experiences. Personally I definitely would love to hear more from Sineparade. I like Demon a lot from Zipperhead, but here’s a Here’s a movie clip shown during the presentation of Zipperhead: “Closer Now”

Snowbound, and Ayumi.

All right.. mostly NYC has been cold.. and really cold.. dreary even, with the amount of snow and slush that has happen. So what to curl up with, in spite of my waiting for one more shipment of manga from RightStuf…. is listening and comparing different versions of Ayumi Hamasaki’s Days on youtube. A friend loves to sing this song at karoke, so I happen to fall back into listening to more of Ayumi’s songs. She also recently got married, so that was a surprise.

Days is a great song on a one sided love…. so of course I have my preference in watching the original, unfortunately that song is only half complete on Youtube….

Where as the acoustic orchestral version got the entire version of the music video up. It is okay, but it doesn’t leave me with the same feeling as the original. (sighs)

But never fear.. there’s the live concert version, which is a little off.. since Ayumi is crying in this one. It was quite interesting explaining this to an obvious non-J-pop friend of mine, who asked why the guy was half naked… and I explained to fan on the enthusiasm of the screaming fans.

Thoughts on fan’s love and music artists..

One of the things I am always quite tickled by is how much appreciation or not aritsts can show for fans at their concerts.

Personal experience in my mind is of when Hikki said at her In the Flesh concert last year, on if she can’t remember the lyrics, then she can always have her fans remind her of songs she has composed..since a majority of audience were singing back the songs.. myself included.

Same for when Toshi was singing Endless Rain, at their new york concert. I was pretty choked up.. so you can only imagine what type of concert videos I appreciate a lot of.

1. The fans must know lyrics for the songs, the artists sing, otherwise it is grasping for air, as I did see in a set once.
2. Artists must show an acknowledgment..

Those two points make me sound really obnoxious, it probably does. I don’t really go to a lot of concerts, but, I do find utter pleasure to see artists pleased and enjoying themselves. So in the end if both parties enjoy themselves, then that translates to a good concert, in spite of how much venues of this nature can go up to.

These days I have been on a continual kick of listening to a lot of Cantonese pop… not the new ones.. but of the old ones.. got to say that I love Youtube for having videos and showing me these moments.

You don’t have to know the lyrics or the meanings for the songs… but first is Grasshoppers’s “Break up Garden”..what cemented this video in my memory is from 1:19.

Then another is Beyond’s “Under a Vast Sky”…. This is a encore, but the emotions of the fans and singer are riveting.

RT Secret Santa 2010: Do You Rememeber Love

Intro/Background

This is my first year participating in the Reverse Thieves Secret Santa Project, this is a cross-anime site blogging experiment that is started by the Reveres Thieves, to promote anime titles that may or may not have been seen by various bloggers participating in what appears to be a second year project for the Reverse Theives.

Each blog initially submits an application with an up to date anime series list on MAL or any other website listing agent. From that list, the blogger is given three anime choices by their secret Santa to see in a two month period. Around the holiday season, put up a review for a chosen anime series.

Initial Reasons

For my choices I was given, Banner of the Stars, Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love? and Basilisk. Two science fiction and one historical series… yes two genre I barely touch, one even more so than the other. Basilisk though, I will watch on my own time, but it does reflects a time where the world is filled with themes that I am inherently not too fond of. Banner of the Star is supposedly the sequel to Crest of the Stars.. forget about it! I tried watching Crest of the Stars in college, and it left a confused yet sour taste in my mouth. So unless someone ties me to a chair.. Banner of the Stars is a complete no no.

That leaves Macross: Do you remember love? Several reasons that bumped this choice up.

1. Prior conversation with @hisuiRT
2. Macross is a classic series, that I want to watch try and sample at least to know more.
3. Music is a huge draw for me.. I heard the theme song before I saw the movie, so I finally have it in context.

Review

While I have certainly cut back on my anime watching, in favor of manga reading. This was a good break from reading. So I sat and watched Do You Remember Love… and it was a good movie to sit through, if someone wants to cover their basis to watch a title that made famous the idol singer concept, and is an anime classic for many mecha fans. It should be then a primer material for what fans should watch.

In a post-apocalyptic world where mankind is living in a space ship, they become target of two warring alien civilizations. Hikaru Ichijyo, a space fighter pilot rescues idol Lynn Minmay, and a relationship form between these two. The movie spins off with the mention of a love triangle of Hikaru with Misa, and a race to rescue mankind.

This is a movie that is apparently different, from the original tv series of Macross, and as the animation goes – the art is quite dated. Themes in the movie are also quite dated. There was more of a lesser defined role for females other than several, one being a warrior, two a female devoted to their career giving it up after marriage. I found the target of this movie obviously meant for male viewers.

So other than the fact that there are some themes, that I wasn’t as pleased with. The main thing I obviously found quite attractive to this film is the main theme song, Do You Remember Love (愛おぼえていますか). The descendants of man has forgotten how emotion can affect people, so to just keep this in mind. With suddenly hearing lyrics and the depth of the emotion this song convey, can definitely lead to tears. I have stated my opinion that I liked this song, and a later version of the song sung by the actual singer..

Hearing this song over and over again, makes me realize how much I love anime songs, it is just like listening to JAM Project, and of countless other songs on my iPod devoted to sections of music inspired by or of anime songs.

The mecha aspect thought I am still confused by, so I may not be a mecha fan from this film, but to finally place a context to this song is something that I can place some worth in.

Oh and also since this is my first exposure into the Macross series, I can obviously mention that while it was an okay one. So other than the song, and the movie plot line, I am not motivated. I am reluctant to start watching any more of Macross on the same reason why I never started in the first place. Too much time commitment, and I don’t want to end up stressing myself over it. In spite of how popular, latter seasons of this series is, I know my own bias, and that is to watch everything, so as to understand the series.

CD Review: City Hunter Sound Collection X and Y

Recently I was staring at my lists of drafts, and a majority of those entries are things I began when I was in Japan. One of these years, need to finish writing about my Japan trip.. even a loot entry is eventually fine. Well Japan trip is going to be started after I finish ever going through all my images on Flickr. For my sporadic updates or not, probably people should count that as an abandoned entries or images right. But for me, those are memories I wish I had more motivation to finish through. But enough about blog/writing complaining.

For classic anime fans, they should know this title. City Hunter, which is a series that was popular during the latter part of the 80’s and early 90’s. Jackie Chan and  Michael Chow did Hong Kong live live action remakes of this title. I also know that South Korea brought the rights for producing this work, although not sure if the project began or not.

I was able to pick up Sound Collection X and Y during my trip. Sound Collection Y- I found in BookOff was what set it off, and Sound Collection X is something I ordered from Amazon.co.jp, and it got to me pretty fast. I have seen these cds in NYC Kinokuniya a long while ago, I lost the opportunity to purchase them, so you can say I snatched them up when I was in Japan.

Sound Collection are both are two-disc cds editions. There are some duplicates if you ever picked up any of City Hunter’s cds/soundtracks. But I found as a collector, that these two cds actually summed up the music of the anime series pretty well.

Sound Collection X has all the openings and endings of all of the anime, and movies vocals. Listening to this soundtrack reminds me of  a similar feel in older music, a majority of the tracks had a action beat to them. Like Angel Night~天使のいる場所~(PSY-S). Some are pretty tracks, no other words to describe it. The lyrics are quite pretty. A majority of them are also great listening music. I really like ~MORE MORE しあわせ(荻野目洋子) which was the theme for Million Dollar Conspiracy. They are also pretty dated, since the music at the 80’s to 90’s was pretty techno-ish. SUPER GIRL(岡村靖幸) or ~SMILE & SMILE(AURA) or ~STILL LOVE HER(失われた風景)(TM Network) fit into that category.

Sound Collection Y, has a majority of the insertion tracks. There are instrumentals, English vocals. My favorite would have to be Nina, since it was part of the.357 Magnum movie, which was my first encounter with this series.

I still have to collect Sound Collection Z, which is a drama cd. I will leave you with a youtube clip of Nina to listen to.

X Japan appearing at Otakon 2010

Just as the time comes for Otakon 2010, well just a few weeks before Anime Expo 2010, when this Japanese fan was all but wondering just wondering which Japanese guests are going to be Otakon this year. (drum rolls)

X Japan…. well X Japan Members Yoshiki & Sugizo are going to be appearing at Saturday’s Masquerade on July 31, 2010. I can only imagine what the lines and the news would be like for the X-Japan fans on the East coast that is. Till then, I am going to go and dig back on old cds for their music…..

Becca’s American release of I’m Alive

Slightly not trying to do a dance, since for one am a klutz, and another no space, my book stacks will probably fall on me, but if you didn’t know Becca has her American release of I’m Alive in the U.S. for physical and digital release on March 2. Her personal Twitter/Facebook confirmed it, so yes Fans ought to be jumping for joy.

Just made some realizations on other things also I guess if you stalk me on Facebook, you’ll probably see it like a 100 tweets back. Just kidding.. just trying to make plans, and messing up. Need to pack. >_<

Anyway ever since Becca mentioned in last year at Otakon, and the fact that she is going on a tour is making me quite excited. Most probably news of her U.S. tour is going to be on this Pure Volume website, since I see that she is going to be performing after Portland, she would be hitting three locations in Texas.. lucky Texas fans to see her! Her official website is slightly dated, so I think the best spots to know of her updates is either Facebook or Twitter. Her MySpace is also updated with news from Becca personally. There’s only so much social media one can hit before.. I am still waiting on a hash tag to spam on Twitter regarding about Becca’s information. Probably should start one up.. Checked under #becca an that is not really getting that good of a results.. maybe #becca_alive or #alivebecca

I am very excited to listen to any new stuff that Becca has, but it is getting confusing from the advertisements, on whether every music from her I’m Alive is the exact same cd of her import release? No matter.. having duplicate cds are always nice. I look at my 愛内 里菜 cds and think mah mah.. import prices dup or triple over since I have original cd, best cd and singles if I can manage it. >_<