Andrew Monkelban

**Before continuing, I highly recommend that you read my Shin Megami Tensei post, or my review of Persona 3 Portable, so you have an understanding of the terminology used. I will attempt to explain thing below as best as possible without going on and on, but…

Persona 4 was released for the PlayStation 2 on 2008.07.10 in Japan, and 2008.12.09 in North America (and 2009.03.13 in Europe). This became one of my favorite PS2 games, and because of this, when I first heard that there was going to be an anime series, I was really excited. However, I was also cautious due to the fact that there was previously an anime series based on Persona 3, entitled Persona -Trinity Soul-, which ended up being nothing like what we were hoping for, in a bad way. The P4 anime has premiered already — in Japan anyway — and how is it?
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I first heard of Bunraku back in early 2008, when it was announced that GACKT would be in it. I didn’t expect the film to be out until the following year, so I put off my excitement until 2009. However, even that year passed with little news about the movie, as did most of 2010. Bunraku finally made its western premiere in September of 2010, at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Bunraku is a difficult movie to categorize, but if I had to, I’d call it a Western/Martial Arts film. I don’t know if I would call it an “all-star cast,” but it definitely is star-studded. The film stars Josh Hartnett, Demi Moore, Sugata Shun, Woody Harrelson, Ron Perlman, Kevin McKidd, and GACKT.
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Skills: Everybody has some, although they vary from person to person. Some people are good at writing, while others are good at drawing or music. Before, people who could not do something either were out of luck, or they learned how to do it. However, thanks to technology, anyone can do anything they want. People can publish books on their own or make their own songs using Vocaloid. Now software called ComiPo! has been released to assist people who want to create comics, and now it’s in English.
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I made the following using DSpeech. Now, I’ve tried to fix the pronunciation, but some things are still not how I’d like them. Especially the timing and intonation. However, I have to work within the limitations of the program.

These are my thoughts on the newest Power Rangers series, Power Rangers Samurai.
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Yay… More deaths…

On August 24, we lost another great mastermind, Kon Satoshi. The famed director of such works as the psychological thriller Perfect Blue as well as Tokyo Godfathers, and Millennium Actress, lost his fight with pancreatic cancer.

Satoshi is survived by his wife Kon Kyoko. He was 46-years-old. The good ones always die young. He was working on his next movie, Yume-Miru Kikai.

Trailers for his works, below:
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Movie adaptions rarely live up to the epicness of their source material. The X-Men, Super Mario Bros., and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies are some examples of this, while the Lord of the Rings trilogy is something that has lived up to the source material. How does The Last Airbender fare — does it blow you away, or is it just hot air?
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Peter Keefe, best known as the producer of the 1980s anime, Voltron, passed away on May 27, succumbing to throat cancer. He was only 57.

Voltron was an adaptation of two different anime series — Hyakujuu Ou Golion and Kikou Kantai Dairugger XV, redubbed and edited. I’m sure some of my fellow writers probably grew up watching it in the mid-80s. I watched it a decade later.
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Felicia Day’s award-winning webseries, The Guild returns for a third season. The series tells the story of a local guild and their adventures both in and outside of the game. Following the troubling conclusion of season 2, tempers flare and a rival guild shows up. Things escalate when the rival guild starts terrorizing the Knights of Good in-game and out. Will the Knights of Good survive the trials and tribulations, or will anarchy reign supreme?
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I had previously mentioned the musical voice synthesizer, Vocaloid. However, you didn’t get to see, or rather hear, the full extent of what you can do with the program, because I focused on the March 9 concert. I plan to rectify that with this post though. The Vocaloid program is so versatile that it can be used to produce or reproduce any number of songs, including “Fleeting Moon Flower”/”Setsugetsuka”, “Fate: Rebirth”, GACKT‘s “RETURNER ~Yami no Shuuen~”, and “Phantom of the Opera”.

I’ve heard many a Vocaloid song within the last 2 months or so, some good, some bad. The one thing that still surprises me though, about the good and even the mediocre songs, is how professional they sound. For the most part, I even forget the voices are synthesized.

Last March, Japanese newspaper, Asahi Shimbun uploaded a 13:35 news special about the Vocaloid, Hatsune Miku, to its YouTube channel. Much like my previous article, this special, which I just found while working on the list below, explains what Vocaloid and Miku is, how popular “she” is, as well as Miku Miku Dance and other video programs.

Narrowing the list down to these 10 (or 12) was very difficult, because there are so many good songs. In addition, I tried to find English subtitled versions so you can understand the lyrics (I even found an English subtitled version of the news special), but I digress. Here are my top ten Vocaloid songs, that are on YouTube:
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Back in 1993, a TV show known as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers premiered on Fox Kids. Little did anyone expect that it would explode into one of the biggest TV phenomenons of the 20th century. Now 17 years, 15 series and a metric ass-ton of merchandising later, the current holders of the Power Rangers rights, Disney/ABC, are airing the original series, newly “remastered” with visual and sound effects on ABC Kids.
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