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 26th December 2020, 10:32 AM
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#21
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 I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,422 User: 12,929                 |
Vtubers Hololive Indonesia (ID) Indonesia is a very cheap and easy market for Japanese companies to expand into, so while it seems a little weird that one of the first big expansions (and after English and Japanese, the only currently extant expansion The most common misconception is that you won't understand them, because while dedicated weebs may know Japanese, there's no reason to expect most non-Indonesians to know Indonesian. It's a misconception because all of the Indonesian girls are fluent in English and switch pretty evenly between talking in Indonesian and talking in English, sometimes even talking in Japanese as well, most of them have at least a good knowledge of that third language, which makes them all doubly impressive. They're also very known to do off-the-wall sorts of things. Currently there are six Hololive Indonesians. Three, from generation 2 debuted at the start of this month. Those are Kureiji (Japanese transliteration of 'crazy') Ollie, a zombie girl who is ironically the most energetic and hyperactive Vtuber in the whole of Hololive, Anya Melfissa, a personification of an Indonesian dagger, the kris, and Pavolia Reine, a *yes, you heard, yes, they're ignoring that she'd have to be male to have all the pretty feathers etc. Ayunda Risu  As her Twitter bio states, Risu is a 'chaotic squrl vtuber' and pretty much lives the chaotic squirrel life, occasionally switching from her upbeat personality to 'Ayunda', her more emo alter-ego, for say, singing a rock song, as far as music taste goes, the squirrel goes the hardest, continuing the Hololive trend of subverting your expectations wherever possible. My experiences with her have been a number of very different things. Her genuinely great musical talent is matched with her occasional divulging of life advice, which comes off as among the wisest and most mature of all of Hololive, such the time she scolded people for calling Vtubers 'fake' because as far as she's concerned, they spend so much time talking publically, how can they not let their true selves slip through? Or alternatively, the below, which is very wise and a good reminder for me to not be edgy or a hipster because it's cool, I talk about the things I like because I genuinely love them: The thing Risu is probably most known for though is her Nonstop Nut November, subverting THAT tradition with a nicer one, where she released a short daily video every day of November teasing people with nut innuendos. She followed it up with DDD, Devour Doughnut December, which is still going on, I occasionally check those out and they're really great pick-me-ups. Pretty sure she also pioneered the trend of Indonesian girls doing their college homework and calling it "Keyboard ASMR". Hoshinova Moona  shameless flirt Moona is, in every way, a dark horse, representing a normal human girl (unusual in Hololive) who is also a part-time moon goddess of some description. As the clip above shows, she got quite attached to Pekora (who I am preparing a very long paragraph about for later) and the thing most know her for is her friendship with the rabbit, which started in a very lovely way in, almost as it were, fate. I first heard of Moona, and indeed the entire existence of a branch of Hololive Vtubers outside of Hololive Japan, when Pekora came across a member in the Minecraft server who didn't speak Japanese and so Pekora had to break out her English to communicate, just about, to extort her junior for a bunch of lapis lazulis, which Moona happily gave to her as Pekora promised to "next time help you". Meanwhile apparently Moona's chat were warning her about the "crazy rabbit" who would pull her into a trap. Moona is excellent at Minecraft and after this would occasionally hang out with Pekora whenever the latter shouted "Hey Moona" at her and got her as a recruit for Pekora's Minecraft construction company (hired out to build projects for the other girls, front for a yakuza operation etc.). Eventually, after Moona worked up the courage to ask her senior colleague for an official collab, the result was one of my favourite streams of the year as both Moona and Pekora, not knowing all that much of the other's language, had a really fun time breaking down cultural barriers through basic communication and building their rabbit + moon-themed construction office. A real friendship that encouraged each to start learning the other's language in earnest, a friendship that would have never existed if not for Hololive. As many people pointed out throughout and at the conclusion of this months-long arc, Eastern folklore often depicts a rabbit living on the moon, and best of all, the mineral that Pekora asked for out of necessity, lapis lazuli, when gifted, is known as "The Stone of Truth and Companionship", the friendship stone. Outside of making the Japanese girls realise that it's time for English class when she logs onto the Minecraft server, I've also appreciated Moona's lack of chill in saying whatever's on her mind, making her one of the more entertaining girls to follow on Twitter, she'll admit that she streams without pants on (hey, it's hot in Indonesia!), will start making innuendos out of literally nothing: basically she's like an embodiment of a thirsty introvert, the sort that seems pure and nice until they deliver a smackdown of a pick-up line, and I'm here for it and her otherwise normal, quiet calming voice. And she's not bad at comedic timing herself, accidentally showing up for the Kiara (also to be talked about, oh my god do I have a lot to say about Kiara) and Pekora Minecraft collab and fake-acted as a spurned lover trying to attack Kiara... on the spot, and when told by Pekora to 'put dawn sord', obliged and brought out an axe. Airani Iofifteen  an alien who loves to paint and her name is a corruption of Area 51, how can she be interesting? Iofi is, as the clips above show, the emotional centre of Hololive Indonesia, while she's a very good artist and a fun girl to listen to, I have nothing but the utmost respect for the way she handles herself and cares for the rest of her branch - shown so well as she comforted a crying Moona (over Moona not having the courage to reach out to Pekora) in a stream, a fantastic free talk stream that started with Iofi on her own, when Moona showed up and admitted she was feeling emotional brought her in to talk, and then Iofi brought in Risu to finish the stream on a happy note - watching that whole thing made me tear up several times myself. Her voice is perhaps one of the nicest I've ever heard and perfect for chilling out, accompanied by some hypnotic background music, she knows even more than the rest of them that the world is in a place where people need comfort and that's what you get whenever you tune into one of her streams, a calming girl who is amazing at reaching out to people in other branches of her company, vtubers from other companies, no matter the language they speak. I don't have as much to write here as I have about Moona or Risu because she doesn't provide as many funny or clippable moments, but while all of the Indonesian girls, in the limited time I've managed to spend with them, are very good people, I think I have the most love for Iofi. She has the least subscribers out of any of Hololive's female streamers, not counting the three newbies, but has gone on record saying that she doesn't mind (not that her subs are low at all, they're stupendously good for an Indonesian YouTuber and a Vtuber in general), she just wants to have fun with everyone. She's this talented artist and polyglot that always has good and encouraging words for people and she is one of the best sources for streams to either learn things from or to wind down before bed. She may be the gateway to South East Asian culture that's always passed me by a little even though I am sort of interested... ~~ (so you know I do have a structure and an end goal in this: 4 more Vtuber simping posts to go, about 15 more anime and music posts to go each, a few more game posts to go, in whatever order I feel best and once I've finished I'm planning on using this all to make an edited collection of these posts for my blog. Yes, Buzzjack, you are my draft writing pad) |
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28th December 2020, 05:51 PM
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#22
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 Buy yourself a car, and a house in Devon
Joined: 6 May 2016
Posts: 23,905 User: 23,247 
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Interesting picks from Eurovision! Fai Rumore was pretty nice but unfortunatley YES was a bit too much on the cheesy side for me. I can't actually remember Tears Getting Sober so listening to that again, I can see why I passed it by at the time as it's not as instant as some of the others but it is very well-produced and fantastic vocals.
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30th December 2020, 01:31 PM
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#23
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I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,422 User: 12,929 |
Music
purity ring - stardew This was one of my early picks for song of the year, what with Purity Ring being a longstanding favourite of mine, for the uninitiated in my ways (though my Grimes love hopefully also shows it), maybe it seems like I don't like pop music all that much but when the pop is electronic I absolutely do, in fact it's probably one of my favourite types. I got right back into their previous two albums at the start of this year, and that was just in time for 'stardew' to drop. Obviously my first though was 'Stardew Valley, that's a good game' (from the approx 3 hours playtime I have in it), but that alone of course wouldn't make a track. 'Stardew' is musically superb and honestly, challenging to be Purity Ring's best ever. And that's no mean feat with 'Obedear', 'begin again', 'stranger than earth' in their collection. This is one of those tracks where listening to it is like having a river of beautiful sound wash over you, where it never stops, until the track finishes, at which point you want to go listen again. Kind of similar to CHVRCHES' 'Clearest Blue' in that regard, and that comes to mind because 'Stardew' is Purity Ring strident and confident, at the clearest and most determined they've ever been. Kishi Bashi - Violin Tsunami (2019) Speaking of music washing over you like sonic water, this is from the last year but Kishi Bashi is someone who I've been keeping a close eye on for, well, ever since that wonderful BJSC entry of his back in... whenever it was, song is from 2012 but I'm pretty sure it was a 2015-16 entry(?). He's far more than just 'Antichrist', 'Philosophize In It! Chemicalize With It!' has got to be a psychedelic classic by now. And basically he's one of the artists in the same sort of sphere of indie pop that is making stunning music. A bit like a less well-known Sufjan Stevens is the closest comparison I can think of and well, there's a big post I need to make about Sufjan coming later. For 'Violin Tsunami', it's my pick off Omoiyari, his latest student, and it is just as wondrously filled with a musical representation of what it's like to drown in a sea of string-led cacophony as that title would lead you to believe. The opposite of a disappointment. It's a lot of string-filled noise and is like nothing else you'd have heard. And the video is pretty devastating ('History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes'). I listened to this so much this year to escape into the noise. However, if you're after more comparatively normal stuff then 'Penny Rabbit and Summer Bear', the lead track of that album is also highly enjoyable, as is most of Omoiyari. More people come back to Kishi Bashi please. |
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30th December 2020, 02:07 PM
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#24
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I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,422 User: 12,929 |
Anime
B Gata H Kei (2010), and my admittance to liking Ecchi shows  Ecchi - the Japanese word for 'H', which is often used as shorthand for... <REDACTED H WORD> (i.e. in a story that has those things interspersed within, they'll be called H-scenes), though any anime 'Ecchi' shows will always be called as such to denote the ones that skirt the boundaries but specifically aren't porn like <REDACTED H WORD>. So before I get started on my post on B Gata H Kei, which is barely even an ecchi all told, only making it for me because of its frequent usage of really explicit jokes, I'm choosing this one to put it in because of the H reference, I will admit one thing, this year I stopped having this weird hang-up in my brain about not watching ecchi shows. For various reasons before, I didn't really watch shows like the aforementioned Interspecies Reviewers at all. If I did I would often decry them as the worst thing ever. Because I would get really defensive with ghosts in my head that were saying things like 'degenerate weebs watching shows that are just there for titillation' and 'liking attractive anime girls is problematic' and I wanted to show... well, nobody but also the few people I talk to about my anime watching how REFINED I was in my appreciation of le holy eastern culture (cringe). I wanted to be the hipster weeb. The sort that goes on talking about Serial Experiments Lain or Legend Of The Galactic Heroes all day, has Evangelion analysis videos queued up in their Watch Later, and often opines about how The Tatami Galaxy is an underappreciated gem (I know it is, still need to get to it)*. 2020 made me stop giving a shit. I watched plenty of ecchi shows this year. Some of them were enjoyable for what they were. Now, most of them weren't very GOOD and so I'm not talking about them here, but that's another matter. Interspecies Reviewers and this are the only ones that I think are worth the time to talk about. Honestly the problem was with most, especially High School DxD, often regarded as the king of 2010s "get the naked anime girl bodies on display" was that while its sexual comedy was genuinely really good and very funny, and its characters, both girls and boys are some of the most attractive, at least at baseline art level, in anime, the actual plot outside of that was dogshit and genuinely very painful to sit through. I hear that's also often a problem with <REDACTED H WORD> but I wouldn't know as I've never watched any. But anyway, I may well watch more in the future and if they are good I will recommend them and oh my god society stop being prudes already, I'll definitely filter out the really problematic ones. Promise. ~ ANYWAY, conveniently enough, B Gata H Kei is this comedy anime about a girl who is too perverted for her own good. She, Yamada, wishes to be an absolute player in high school, wants to bag 100 guys before her high school time is up (an adorably precocious if worrying goal, as in, I could see many teenagers making that same calculation because it SOUNDS cool), settles on this average looking guy as her first one but is far too nervous to make any sort of moves, hijinks ensues. It's mostly territory that has been done before in anime and in comedy but sometimes what works, works. I have a soft spot for misunderstandings-based comedy as long as the reactions to the misunderstandings say comedic and not dramatic, and they do here, before getting really sweet towards the end. Actually, yeah, why did I say this was an ecchi? It's notable in that it gender-swaps the romance story a bit, following the perspective of the girl, always helpful to be empathetic to girlish romantic struggles, deals with insecurities and unexpected situations, is economical with its presentation of reality, which is a fine thing to do in a comedy, if you want one of your characters to be that stereotypical UNIMAGINABLY rich transfer student with a big f***-off house and a celebrity older brother then you do you, anime. Also the experience of cheering the main couple on every time they got closer has turned out to be something I really enjoy doing - see later anime entries for more like this. eh, saying I don't care if people think the anime shows I watch are sketchy has turned me into a romance addict. *this isn't to say that all this is bad, I think elitism like this is fine and those shows are also sometimes good, sometimes not so good, the point is I'm not going to let other people's opinions on what is best to watch influence what I watch. |
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2nd January 2021, 09:53 AM
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#25
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I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,422 User: 12,929 |
Music & Anime
Chelmico - Easy Breezy A revelation at the start of the year and an easy contender for best anime OP of the year, which I think it would have had no problem seizing had not a certain franchise favourite of mine had a remake, chelmico provided what seems to be an annual tradition. One (singular) anime opening from a middlingly popular anime will not be a normal J-pop-rock opening sung fantastically by a deep-voiced Japanese pop singer, but will instead switch it up and come out with something a lot more tailored to Western music tastes. It'll immediately be noticed by the anime community overseas and will be for many the easy OP of the year. In 2018 that was Flashback from Kokkoku, in 2019 I'd say it was Carole & Tuesday's 'Kiss Me' which received a lot of praise although it's not exactly my thing, in 2020 it was 'Easy Breezy', which is a stormer of a pop-rap track. An unlikely rap duo who complement each other perfectly, the duo, Rachel and Mamiko had done a few things before that but got a big break with 'Easy Breezy', attached to an anime with some very eye-catching visuals in the opening sequence. Gorillaz-like, but definitely Gorillaz on major happy pills. Though it's very hype and upbeat, as its name suggests, Easy Breezy gives off a very cool feeling. It started off my big rap appreciation this year and it ended the year as my joint-2nd most played song overall (reminder: I am doing this way 'out of order', just talking about whatever comes to mind next), no doubt helped by it being a success in BJSC and actually competed for (big up Seven) because of how swag it is. And of course, it is the opening to the following show: Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! (2020)  The other Yuasa-directed (Japan Sinks 2020, Devilman Crybaby) work on this list, Eizouken! was the highlight of the winter 2020 anime season for me at the start of the year, no doubt helped a lot by Easy Breezy, but also because the rest of its subject matter was so passionate and forthright about the love of creation. Back up a minute, Eizouken (meaning "the motion pictures club") is principally an anime about how brilliant the process of creating an anime is. It's author Owara and Yuasa's love letter to the joy of creation and it really shows, well. Set in a rather Cartoon Network-style futuristic town and high school, it follows Asakusa, a head-in-the-clouds style backgrounds artist, her long-suffering aspiring capitalist friend (best girl) Kanemori and their new friendship with a young model/dork Tsubame, who is trying to draw anime characters on the down-low away from her overbearing parents. They set out to create an anime, against all the budgetary limitations that creating animation has and forces (like the student council, always the student council) working to stop them creating anime, putting their respective ingenuities to work to overcome obstacles. Rather than avoid certain anime clichés, Eizouken embraces a few of them full throttle and retains a very positive and fun atmosphere throughout in the journey to create an anime. It's a must watch if you've ever struggled with creating something yourself before, I enjoyed it a lot because of that, but also because it's one of those shows where everyone has fun, the art has a style that you won't see anywhere else, the backgrounds are inspired retro-futuristic masterpieces, everything about it is high-class, arthouse loveliness. Maybe at times it gets a bit meta and a story about making an anime doesn't have the same punch as adapting a legendary manga about a devilman but you can tell that the people doing this are writing what they know, exactly what they know, and that's what makes things just GOOD sometimes. |
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2nd January 2021, 12:20 PM
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#26
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I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,422 User: 12,929 |
Music
100 Gecs - 1000 Gecs And The Tree Of Clues (Remix Album) xXXi_wud_nvrstop_ÜXXx (99jakes Remix) after having 100 Gecs arrive as one of my last revelations of 2019 (following brief exposure through BJSC entries), I was very much into the idea of spam-playing them everywhere in 2020, because they represent the future of music and what it should be, taking and destroying good taste boundaries in a fun and supportable way. Zoomer music that aims to be annoying and ironic as possible that actually unironically sounds really good. I get bored easily of repeated styles of music without any new innovation in them, and new sounds are very highly valued, no matter how unusual and noisy they sound, if it all comes together well, and 100 gecs' stuff does. It's chaotic (but jokes on you, I'm into that shit) and it's also sonically exciting and that's what we need from new music. So 1000 Gecs is unironically one of the best albums of the past two years, so when there was a remix album announced ('1000 Gecs and the Tree Of Clues') I was rather interested. Very interested in fact. Lots of big names, and for the most part they provide a decent alternative take on the songs from 1000 Gecs if not ones I've gone back to loads. The reason it's here is because of one particular track, the 99jakes Remix of 'xXXi_wud_nvrstop_ÜXXx', a good and probably underrated track from the original album in its own right but the 99jakes remix makes it come alive. It's a glorious cacophony of every possible sound in the world packed into one music track, it is relentless, it is unforgiving, it demands that this and nothing else is listened to when you start listening to it. If we were to ever Fukuyama music, the end of music is this track. There's nothing beyond this. until someone finds a way |
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3rd January 2021, 12:19 PM
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#27
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#38BBE0 otherwise known as 'sky blue'
Joined: 27 October 2008
Posts: 16,173 User: 7,561
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QUOTE(Iz �� @ Dec 30 2020, 01:31 PM)  Kishi Bashi - Violin Tsunami (2019) Speaking of music washing over you like sonic water, this is from the last year but Kishi Bashi is someone who I've been keeping a close eye on for, well, ever since that wonderful BJSC entry of his back in... whenever it was, song is from 2012 but I'm pretty sure it was a 2015-16 entry(?). He's far more than just 'Antichrist', 'Philosophize In It! Chemicalize With It!' has got to be a psychedelic classic by now. And basically he's one of the artists in the same sort of sphere of indie pop that is making stunning music. A bit like a less well-known Sufjan Stevens is the closest comparison I can think of and well, there's a big post I need to make about Sufjan coming later. For 'Violin Tsunami', it's my pick off Omoiyari, his latest student, and it is just as wondrously filled with a musical representation of what it's like to drown in a sea of string-led cacophony as that title would lead you to believe. The opposite of a disappointment. It's a lot of string-filled noise and is like nothing else you'd have heard. And the video is pretty devastating ('History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes'). I listened to this so much this year to escape into the noise. However, if you're after more comparatively normal stuff then 'Penny Rabbit and Summer Bear', the lead track of that album is also highly enjoyable, as is most of Omoiyari. More people come back to Kishi Bashi please. I loved “Summer of '42”, it made 44 (not number 42) in my T100 of 2019 but I'd never heard of him before - maybe his BJSC entry was before my time or I just simply missed it. Wait, was it that period that Lee Wallace was cheating and I had compeltely abandoned the competition in protest? I love obviously the historical context of it, but the strings are gorgeous - I shall definitely have to investigate him further. QUOTE #044 Kishi Bashi “Summer of ’42” Debut: 7th April 2019 / CR: 42-27-17-10-05-05-07-09-12-19-27-36-48 (13 weeks) |
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3rd January 2021, 12:28 PM
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#28
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I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,422 User: 12,929 |
QUOTE(Doctor Blind @ Jan 3 2021, 12:19 PM) I loved “Summer of '42”, it made 44 (not number 42) in my T100 of 2019 but I'd never heard of him before - maybe his BJSC entry was before my time or I just simply missed it. Wait, was it that period that Lee Wallace was cheating and I had compeltely abandoned the competition in protest? I love obviously the historical context of it, but the strings are gorgeous - I shall definitely have to investigate him further. Actually yes, it was that exact contest where Lee got banned that had his more well-known BJSC entry 'I Am The Antichrist To You' come 5th, almost definitely the song I've held onto most from that one. (statisticians would have me recall that he was entered twice, both times by Singerpurear, but the second time DNQed) It's a fantastic piece of emotional indie pop, also with good strings, though a lot more subtle, that has aged extremely well, and while I'm at it, I'll link my other favourite of his that's a lot more upbeat and psychedelic. Most of his songs can be picked up as favourites though, I can see why 'Summer of '42' came through for you. |
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4th January 2021, 02:51 PM
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#29
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I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,422 User: 12,929 |
TV SHOW and GAME'
The Queen's Gambit & Chess This is rather on my mind right now so it makes sense to write about, I'm not even sure what other live action TV shows I'd give rights to this year, I know I definitely watched a few but outside of various catalog favourites (Star Trek, The West Wing, seeing their naive liberalism occasionally get dunked on by the twitter socialists I follow, particularly the latter) I forgot to keep track and it's in the murky past of my lockdown haze back at the start of the year. I'd watch a TV show if it interests me, and I know there are some good ones out there I need to get around to, but generally they're twice as long as anime, half of them are edgy Netflix creations and I tend to see people recommending anime in my spheres far more. All of which is to say that The Queen's Gambit was a revelation to me. For anyone reading this that I haven't boasted about this before, I was real good at chess when I was young. Nationally good, even. In that I went to a national chess competition twice. I went on and off with it and didn't really get much of a chance to go to tournaments at my secondary school though I did ensure inter-school tournaments kept running and was a threat in most of them. I just kind of stopped though. I wore out the few chess books I had, I didn't really advance my game into the (now, I realise) more fun theoretical stage and left it behind at uni - god, I wish I'd searched out the chess society there. Anyway, a Netflix show that reignited my childhood love? That promised, through tournaments and character growth to explore one of my favourite sports in the way I've been HOPING for an anime to do for years? The reason for that by the way, is that anime are often so good at making niche interests look majorly appealing through a story following "the world's GREATEST at... rock climbing" or whatever, and while there is a shogi anime (shogi = Japanese-style chess, with completely different rules), that one is more about personal struggles where the game is more of an outlet, and it's not the chess I'm familiar with, so I'll get to March Comes In Like A Lion some day. Uh, the show itself. Beautiful to watch from start to finish, the sort of fictional tale you wish was somehow a real story, because it fits so well into the time period of the 1960s, there's constant references to classical chess players from Morphy - who the main character is often compared to - down to Alekhine, it feeds into the Cold War era because of the strength of Soviet players, the whole backdrop of the show is a tremendous setting, no doubt in part thanks to the novel it was based on. Beth Harmon, as the lead, a chess prodigy who found comfort in it in an orphanage is a great protagonist, confident in her ability, prone to addictive tendencies that make you concerned for her as the show moves forward, also adding a lot of doubt as to whether she will perform, but also a person with fire in their eyes and a determination to succeed that makes her easy to root for. She's described as playing beautiful attacking chess that stuns her male contemporaries, and very fittingly, a lot of the show is about how standout she is in a game that has unfortunately been considered a man's game for far too long. It's a great watch and a great story in 8 episodes and I don't really see any other challenger for my favourite (live-action) TV show of the year. And so I've started playing a lot more chess on chess websites, revitalising my rating, sinking down as I ran across people I was too rusty to face, relearning a bunch of opening moves (there will be a time when I come unstuck with it but at the moment I am in love with the London System), taking a break from writing this post to post in the Chess topic about it, redeveloping my eyes to see a number of moves ahead, playing occasionally chaotic, occasionally measured games, watching Hikaru Nakamura, one of the living greats, stream it and make it into an esport, I think chess has a bright future and for a while at least, I'll be very into it. (one of my goals for when I move back to the UK is to find and enter real tournaments again if I can, obviously can't do that right now but for now, playing on chess.com is a great substitute) |
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4th January 2021, 08:55 PM
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#30
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Buy yourself a car, and a house in Devon
Joined: 6 May 2016
Posts: 23,905 User: 23,247
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Giving that 100 gecs song a listen now (I won't try and type the title out
 ), it certainly is an adventure! Lots of different sounds which somehow come together to make something which I can enjoy listening to.
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6th January 2021, 06:14 AM
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#31
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I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,422 User: 12,929 |
Vtubers Hololive English This is the first of what I hope are the big 5 Back in August as I was moving my life around, I heard that Hololive English was forming. Now, at this point, I'd been steadily following Hololive idols after seeing a bunch of Pekora and Korone clips, I'd subscribed to a few others like Shion and Towa but basically expected that I'd rarely watch those and was focusing on instead, the two that I found the most entertaining and the ones that I'd found the most broken English clips and chaotic game moments from. I still hadn't watched a full stream. My Japanese also wasn't as good back then. So that's understandable. However, learning that Hololive English Gen 1, otherwise known as Hololive Myth (as all of the girls are representations of mythical creatures - a Grim Reaper, a phoenix We were wrong. Completely wrong. The English girls debuted on September 12-13th, I managed to catch the first bit of the first girl, Mori Calliope, and thought she was okay even though she had a VERY American voice, though it wasn't brazen, and quite nice to listen to, but it was a very busy time and I didn't watch the other streams. It was so busy that I didn't even see at that time that Calliope had released a full rap album just before her debut. Then I started seeing them on Twitter, saw a bunch of my timeline getting very excited about the shark girl, and from there everything spiralled from clips to full, unstoppable Hololive fandom. As a group, the English girls are pretty close, regularly doing full collaborations and in duos. I don't see many people make this comparison but they and their characters line pretty well up with a set of Spice Girls - Ginger (Kiara), Scary (Calliope), Posh (Ina), Baby (Gura) and Sporty (Amelia), or idk, plug other comparisons into your favourite girl group. I think that's a good one though. They do split down the middle a little bit with the two that are in Japan at time of writing, Kiara and Calliope often acting as a pair, and the three that are located somewhere on the North American continent, Gura, Ina and Ame, often working together. Naturally of course, with similar schedules and all. The rest of this post will be about my experiences with the latter Ninomae Ina'nis  "What happens when we squish your squishy hair? I'll bonk you. With a crowbar. Don't do it." yes there is a tentacle girl let's get that observation out of the way x Hololive loves playing with preconceived expectations and throwing them out of the window with regards to character. This character's backstory is a Lovecraftian mix of a girl who picked up a book left by the Ancient Ones and transformed into a monster with tentacles like an octopus. In contrast, Ina is probably the most refined and normal out of the English-speaking bunch, she's certainly the one to put on when you want a relaxing stream, whether that's in the background or just to watch her play Minecraft intelligently and calmly. Her big talent is art, she's an incredibly accomplished illustrator, she designed a part of the Hololive EN trailer herself (IIRC correctly she did the shot of all 5 members at about 1:20 of the video at the top of this post) and also draws things like this: This all comes together in drawing streams which are fun to pop in on once in a while, I imagine they'd also be useful if you had any interest in drawing, I may eventually given how much I flit from talent to talent but it's not normally something I do. She also seems to have a taste in video games that seems to, outside of Minecraft, consists of playing 'that indie game you've heard only good things about'. Personality-wise, I, as I said, really find her relaxing, and the dark horse of the English-speaking girls, in that while she is by some distance the quietest of the 5, particularly in collabs, her sense of humor and comic-timing is possibly the best of them all, specialising in puns, dad jokes and very witty yet friendly deadpan. She is very much a good vibes streamer and with how comfy she makes it my favourite two Ina moments that are coming to mind are both in collabs, but that's just shows how she plays so well off the other girls: 1. She and Kiara were watching the Japanese girls have their 3D concert at the end of December, Kiara is a well-known fangirl of Pekora, and Ina happened to be a few seconds ahead of Kiara, so when Pekora came out on stage the following exchange went down. INA: Oh, I'm going to take my headphones off for obvious reasons KIARA: You're taking your headphones off for obvious.. what... AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! *piercing chicken scream* 2. She gifted Calli, who out of the 5 girls, plays Minecraft the least, a horse in Minecraft (which you can use to get places faster, build a horse collection etc). Calli was very touched and promptly took the horse on an adventure, almost immediately getting in a minecart without undoing the horse leash, and the horse fell to its death. Calli was very upset and spent the next hour of the stream making a grave for the horse, while Ina, who was playing the game off-stream, surprised Calli at the end with a new horse. Because she's an incredibly kind and nice person. and also quietly skilled at most of the games she plays it seems, which is quite a contrast from the sometimes headless chickens (pun intended) that the other girls get into. also this is going on long and if I do Amelia and Gura as I was planning to in this post then it'll be unmanageable. |
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6th January 2021, 01:42 PM
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#32
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I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,422 User: 12,929 |
Vtubers
Gawr Gura "a" (her first tweet) Never let it be said that I watch average gamers playing average games just because they're behind a cute anime figure, some of them are really good at games. Like Gura, the shark of Hololive, who is an excellent rhythm gamer and well, that's not normally my type of game but I have to respect the skill there. What I can also hugely respect is just how good she is at attracting attention. Let's put this in perspective. At the time that Hololive English, and Gura, debuted, the most subscribed Hololive youtuber was Fubuki, with around about 850k subscribers. Fubuki was clearly going to get the 1 million first. Nailed on. Except, well, she wasn't. This is what I mean when I say that Hololive EN was a success beyond what anyone thought possible, because Gawr Gura, a memey little shark girl got to 1 million in the space of just a single month, becoming the first Hololive vtuber to reach a million, and to this day is sitting 500-600k subs ahead of any of her senpais. She went mainstream. Or at least found a huge new audience that wasn't Hololive's existing audience. You can see why, Gura is built to attract an audience of younger people more interested in funny memey shark girl than necessarily enjoying anything anime, and the thing is, she's only able to do this, attract and keep an audience better than nearly any Vtuber, hell, most Youtubers, on the planet, because the girl is a natural-born entertainer. And pretty fantastic singer too, if her covers are any indication, she's incredibly good at covering Japanese city pop and given I dabble in that sort of fandom sometimes... Whenever I've dropped into one of her streams, her tone of voice is like its constantly about to drop a joke on you, watching her play near enough anything is more about hanging out with a shitposter who'll say off the wall randomly funny stuff, and always doing her best to look like an innocent cuddly shark. Smol silly shark if you will. I mean, she coined "shrimp" as a corruption of "simp" and apparently now "shrimp" is a common way to refer to... that practice. I don't have all that much else to say about her (except to worry that she handles the pressure of being FIRST okay moving forward) because knowing that she's infectious and funny is pretty much all you need, but she's easily the most accessible of Hololive English for a general audience and probably one of the most likely to make you laugh no matter what she's doing. Even if I have no interest in the game she's playing, I know it'll be worth putting her on. Amelia Watson  (posted when Youtube went down briefly in December) I've watched this fine lady play Portal 2, find the white gel that creates Portal walls and subsequently spend over 5 minutes spraying white stuff all over the area while laughing like a maniac The final English member to debut, and one that has already appeared in this thread with 'Pop On Rocks' (which I believe was clipped from one of her very very long talking streams), Amelia was clearly Hololive's attempt to go for the international appeal of Sherlock and have some sort of lore-based anchor for their Myth generation, as the one among the 5 that "investigates" the Myths. Of course that isn't actually mythy enough so early on she also revealed that she is a time traveller. Basically the partner-in-crime of Gura, I find myself naturally watching Ame a bit more than Gura or Ina if only because I share much more of a game taste with her, she's interested in puzzle games, which I am also, and even with the odd FPS game, though that's more to watch her get humorously bloodthirsty or get into a toxic gamer rage. I can't help but like the sort of person who makes games funny to watch and shows up everywhere to support all the other girls when they need her help on stream (I believe she stayed awake watching all of her genmates debuts in the hours-long relay they had such that when it came to her debut stream she was barely awake to function). She's also clearly in love with what she's doing, spending ridiculous hours in games to the point where it's unusual if one of her streams is under 3 hours long. Jacob can thank her for me getting interested in Outer Wilds (as I know he loves that game and now he's got it for me I need to play it more when I'm less busy), because her feats in that, spending an entire hour solely devoted to what I believe is an unnecessary achievement of landing directly on the "sun-station" after being told it was impossible and eventually succeeding shows the sort of determination I really admire. Recently her working her way through Portal 2 has been something I've really enjoyed watching all the way through because that's the sort of game where seeing a playthrough and in effect seeing someone else experience it help make what is unfortunately a limited experience and yet a great story become fresh again. Honestly, the reason I've watched less from these three than Pekora, Calli and Kiara, who are my three favourites and will be getting their own posts is simply timezones - while my internet is often too slow to keep up with livestreams, it can sometimes, and seeing a stream is live is a great reminder for me to go back to it later. Gura and Ame almost always stream while I'm asleep or working, and Ina only ever seems to stream at the absolute worst times for me at 4-5am - though that is actually prime-time Europe time and what with 90% of Hololive in Japan there's barely anyone covering that part of the world. (it's also her birthday at time of writing this so fitting x) But they're great, they're very entertaining and are very necessary to make the Hololive English experience feel more rounded, encompassing all types of games, skills, tastes and musical abilities. |
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6th January 2021, 02:26 PM
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#33
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#38BBE0 otherwise known as 'sky blue'
Joined: 27 October 2008
Posts: 16,173 User: 7,561
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I've never been really good at chess, we had a chessboard at home but I could never really get my head around it sadly.
That said - I thought that The Queen's Gambit was a brilliant watch this year. Throughly enjoyed it! |
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8th January 2021, 12:05 PM
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#34
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I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,422 User: 12,929 |
QUOTE(Doctor Blind @ Jan 6 2021, 02:26 PM) I've never been really good at chess, we had a chessboard at home but I could never really get my head around it sadly. That said - I thought that The Queen's Gambit was a brilliant watch this year. Throughly enjoyed it! Glad to hear it resonated well even with people who don't play chess! ~ Vtubers Usada Pekora  I decided to get the Vtubers all done and dusted in the next 3 posts before resuming normal things. Already fearing my future self with how much I know I'm going to write for the Mori paragraph, and the Kiara paragraph probably also. I mean, at this point, any normal person who may be nervously glancing at this thread might be finding it all a bit STRANGE. And I'd completely understand that, what person would write novel-length paragraphs about the antics of streamers with a cartoon avatar? APPARENTLY ME, let's do this. Because what we have here, is I am going to tell you an origin story. For me. And it definitely involves that rather cute rabbit girl with a laugh that can only be punctuated by many arrows, see callback here: QUOTE(Iz Rink @ Dec 14 2020, 09:01 AM) , but most of us just found our way in through seeing an iconic clip of something one of the Vtubers did in one of their games, like I did with some of the ones I'm going to talk about later. And once you're down the rabbit hole*, there is no escape. *HA↗HA↘HA↙HA↖HA↗HA🐰 The first time I ever watched a Hololive streamer, the first time I knew there were anime girls streaming on the internet was seeing this... enigma of a tweet find its way onto my Twitter timeline: I follow a bunch of weebs, what can I say. But the thing is, that video was one of the best things I'd ever seen. It was of Pekora, who, bless her, her English isn't the best (though she has been getting a lot better because of her friendship with Moona), was working her way through an INCREDIBLY surreal English test and laughing uproariously all the way through at its absurdity. So that was a really good bright spot at a time that I was stuck indoors and unable to go anywhere. It got me introduced to Pekora, who ends sentences with 'peko' and seems to get herself into all sorts of trouble streaming games. Then I got recommended more Pekora clips and you know how it goes, I found out she plays into her chaotic persona by regularly switching between being a Looney Tunes protagonist (yes, you might think Bugs Bunny, but just as often she's going to be Wile E Coyote) and a sadistic war criminal in games. Her Usada Construction videos are gold standard chronicling her ethically questionable construction company's builds in Minecraft, ranging from creating a TNT-cannon in Minecraft to terrorise a raider base, to setting fire to other Hololives' work, to conducting trafficking experiments to NPCs, to her finding parts of her builds blown up through her own hubris, she somehow has this way of attracting entertainment to her in Minecraft and indeed most other games, where in collabs she is the Loki-esque trickster that the other streamers must never trust, and alone she ends up keeping the viewer on side with her zany way of approaching and attacking enemies and obstacles. Her unique way of laughing is fantastic, especially as it's constantly represented by translators and dubbers as having arrows in it. For a long time I was only wanting to search out Pekora clips as I knew she was clearly the entertainer of the bunch and so much of my year has had some crazy rabbit girl laughing off to the side that I needed to do this. The thing about Pekora that gets me so hard is that from what I know about the times she's talked about her real personality on stream, is that she's one of these people where the fact that she is streaming behind an avatar is the only thing that allows her to truly be herself. From accounts ranging from her mother to other members of Hololive, she's really quiet and polite when not in crazy entertainer mode. To be fair, that comes out a lot in collaborations anyway, I think one of my favourite moments of the whole year was Kiara telling Pekora how the former watching Pekora managed to get HER through a hard time, because it resonated so much with my own experience, and Pekora returning that with a "that makes me very happy!" (in Japanese) just felt so sincere and reflected so much for me just how GOOD this whole type of entertainment can be when it's built on a bunch of people being nice to each other - ferocious in gaming against each other, but best of friends all the same. That Pekora is so obviously such an introvert who can come alive in a performance setting, well, firstly, it makes her very relatable to me because that's exactly what I'm like with my job and my activities outside of my job. It also just says to me that without this, without the virtual being able to hide some parts of the physical and allow for some confidence to be built, someone who clearly has such a natural talent for entertainment likely would have never gotten their big break. It's not just me saying this either, there's so many metrics that measure Vtubers, though we don't REALLY like competition here, but Pekora performs so strong on all of them, subscribers, money donated, sponsorships, youtube views, memeability, and especially live viewers she's quite possibly the biggest all-rounder that Hololive has and it's so heartening seeing her get all of that success. She recently got 1 million subscribers, and cried on stream saying thank you to everyone who supported her - again this is another reason, this machine of Hololive takes content creators to the point where they are among the biggest-earning internet figures in the world and the thing was, she still hadn't told her parents (who she still lives with, we don't know any of the Holos' age for sure but most of them are likely around early-mid-20s). A few days later, she did a coming out stream to her mother, which got nearly 130,000 people LIVE watching her at its peak, as a shy and decidedly non-war-crimey rabbit girl explained to her mother that she was a million-subbed Youtuber live on camera (mother represented by a generic cartoon woman of course) and that she played a rabbit girl online, to which her mother replied "Sou-peko" (I see-peko) and then to the stream chat, going at lightning speed, "Arigatou-peko", causing beautiful cringe from Pekora. I believe she and her mother did a follow up stream where they drank some of Pekora-branded plum wine, which is actually a thing, and is sold out within seconds of being put up for sale. Even now with so many more that I'm following, I always like to see what she's up to and I know I'll get a lot out of her playing a game and it's probably due to watching long streams from her (and to be fair, other Japanese streamers like Botan) that my Japanese has gotten to the point that I'm starting to pick up vocabulary in a natural way rather than endlessly struggling to remember basic words, she recently played Doki Doki Literature Club which was as great as you'd expect from two internet memes meeting and seeing her laugh at the silliness of a bad game is almost always a better experience than actually playing the game yourself. bless this dictator-like bunny with so much success in the future, I owe her final tweet, to show how her English has improved (well, her spelling still needs work, but she's got the spirit) and the PekoMoona friendship which is still one of the best friendships to live vicariously through: |
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9th January 2021, 12:04 PM
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#35
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I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,422 User: 12,929 |
Vtuber
Takanashi Kiara  Kikkerikii!!! (her stream opening signature call, the German onomatopaeia for rooster) The other half of Mori Calliope and the fourth member of Hololive English I'm writing a long paragraph for, I really didn't expect to be doing this when they debuted, to have this much love for all of them, but to tell you the truth, it's the most surprising to myself-from-September that I'm doing it this much about Kiara, the phoenix-chicken who runs a fast-food restaurant (known as KFP, Kiara Fried Phoenix of course). Her fans are her long-suffering employees. It is absolutely not a cult. I have no way of measuring this but by hours watched, I think the Hololive member I've watched the most is Kiara. The first stream I saw from Kiara was her Fall Guys stream, her second one that she did almost immediately after debut, and I didn't know much about her, my first impressions was that among the bunch, she stood out less than the rest, and well, that stream didn't really show off her skills. She wasn't particularly good at the game and I was still in the mindset that in order to enjoy streaming, I'd enjoy watching people succeed at games. Having said that, around the same time I really enjoyed seeing Pekora fail again and again at the same game so what's instructive here is that I just wasn't familiar with Kiara, and she wasn't quite yet as experienced with streaming - she was really trying her hardest to live up to her specialty as the English member who speaks the best Japanese by speaking so much Japanese that it almost felt like she was taking twice as long to say everything. So there were struggles with her at first, but that she kept with it and managed to grow on me, it's made me enjoy her content all the more. See the thing about Kiara that I love so much is that.... Well, all of Hololive English resonate with me particularly well because they started a new job where most of them struggled with imposter syndrome and early setbacks at the same time that I was doing the same thing with a new job of my own, so seeing them grow into their new position at the same time I was also growing into my new position is helpful, but, like with so much that Kiara does, it was amplified so much more with her. Part of the reason Kiara got imposter syndrome was she felt her skill of languages didn't stand out so much, but well, it drew me to her. She's the only member of Hololive English to not be natively English speaking, she's from Austria (and a phoenix, I made the Eurovision connection a few weeks ago and I hope she eventually references it, though she normally calls her home country Australia), and she is trilingually fluent when all of the other members of EN have varying Japanese skills but not fluent. Which makes her the MVP in communicating and doing collabs with the Japanese branch, and one show she does that I always tune in for is HoloTalk, where she hosts a talk show featuring one of the Japanese talents and asks them questions in an effort to communicate information about them to overseas fans that Youtube translators don't always capture that well. And really, while she worried that there wasn't anything special about her, and even discounting her fantastic skill at languages and her not insignificant singing ability, the thing that is special about her is herself. She's really good to the fan community she managed to When she shared that she had been in Japan on a once-in-a-lifetime visa and that when COVID locked down everything she had planned do on her year there, it made me feel so reflective on my own position. Had I come to where I am just a year later, I wouldn't have had my amazing Japanese holiday last year, I probably wouldn't have been financially secure during the lockdown, I wouldn't have had the experience to find a good job out of the ashes of COVID and it made me really sympathise with anyone (she certainly wasn't alone) who made the big leap that I made in 2018 this year. COVID hit during the first year in my adult life that it wouldn't have completely destroyed my plans. I was hit bad enough in the first wave of lockdowns, and so her aforementioned watching of Pekora was, well, I did the exact same thing. She then saw the audition call for Hololive, applied, and became one of the kindest Like her inspiration Pekora, she is chaotic, but she also leans into lewd humour far more - and plays off the dynamic of her friend Mori Calliope in the duo Takamori, where Kiara is, as a phoenix, constantly in love with Calli and chasing her, but Calliope, as Death, is eternally frustrated is that Kiara is the one thing she can't kill (at least that's the lore, the reality is that Kiara is the silly comedic lead to Calli's NORMAL PERSON which really works well in collabs, their offline collab is springing to mind, as is their recent playthrough of co-op game A Way Out. And of course they're really good friends as the two EN members actually in Japan, and it's going to hurt a lot when Kiara moves back home in two months). Oh, and also lots of shipping talk, her Sims 4 stream, a screenshot pictured above, was, well, it was very, as Kiara fans like to say... bottom left. Early on, the Hololive girls rated each other on a chart, where top-down was purity to lewdness and left-right was smarts. Kiara expected to be top right, but all the other girls agreed she was definitely bottom left and she's since played into that a LOT, particularly the... bottom part. It is like hanging out with that really funny friend who will bring up things you'd never thought of and will manage to keep conversations going for hours, she certainly has a talent for that. Also a talent for doing all sorts of things to keep her audience, from reading fairy-tales in German (big fan of those, even if they're pretty niche), to being animals accompanied with German onomatopeias, from frogs to snakes, to getting into all sorts of trouble in video games, and man, I rarely find someone who I'm this comfortable just putting on in the background and wanting to support (even if most of Hololive do fit). In early December, her channel got deleted unexpectedly from Youtube. That was the moment when I saw her character on full display. She had no idea why it was happening (it was a mistake), but she took full advantage of the situation to create a meme contest on the associated subreddit, played it into her lore of a phoenix to revive and created a second debut stream where she pretended to have amnnesia, forget Calliope, call everyone her seniors, be part of 'Hololive EN 2nd gen', and very successfully directed what could have been a session of fan anger into positive energy, fun and extra parts to the mythology and character of Kiara. brief interlude for MUSIC Takanashi Kiara - Hinotori This beautiful anime OP was Kiara's first original song, her Phoenix, and it sounds very much like the theme song to an anime or a jrpg, which is fitting as she plays JRPGs a lot. But it has a way of sticking in your brain (I suppose it would if you watch hours upon hours of her streaming and catch at least a few times where she sings this or plays the instrumental as BGM, but it does feel like the theme of someone who has overcome a lot, and Kiara certainly has from what she's shared. Ultimately, she is one of the two Hololive streamers whose schedule I will always check to see what she's doing every week now. She often streams very long so I dip in and out a lot, even if it's a game I don't really play, but it's very easy to do that, and feel part of the big and dedicated fanbase she's managed to cultivate. I haven't gone too much into the money side of things because I normally wouldn't be about unhealthy spending habits on internet streamers, but while I haven't bought a membership to her yet, the reason is not because I don't want to or I can't (lemme just say "VPN struggle" and leave it at that), she's certainly given me enough entertainment to warrant something when I can. The next post will be about the other... her partner, |
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10th January 2021, 05:45 AM
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#36
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I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,422 User: 12,929 |
Vtuber
Mori Calliope All ya really gotta do is sign on the dotted line It's probably fine, right? Sike! Your soul is mine It's all good, being a Dead Beat's got benefits We'll be "best friends, " that's the end of it Then I get a rush of adrenaline, I think I like you! Wanna feel my five-foot scythe inside you I would die for you!!! And that adorable scream Curious, would you die for me? Mori Calliope, "Dead Beats" WATSO U ARE SUDS Mori Calliope, 2020 Why do you end up gravitating to celebrities, other people, content creators online? I'd say it's normally because you recognise something of yourself in them. You like yourself, I assume. It seems natural to me that I'd end up enjoying spending time (even parasocially) with a person who I've discovered shares an alarming number of qualities with me, reacts to things in the same way I do, doesn't let something seeming uncool stop her doing it, and that's Mori Calliope, Hololive EN's Rapping Reaper, a pink haired personification of a grim reaper. And I don't think it's an exaggeration from me to say that by doing so and seeing her be herself I've gained a lot more self-esteem for being who I am. She was the only one of Hololive English whose debut stream I watched, at least part of, and through that I discovered that they were going for the music by hiring a really talented rapper to be one of their streamers, and also that she was, is and remains a gigantic dork. She, more than any other Vtuber, commits to her character in a way that I think at first was out of nervousness but has evolved into being one of her defining traits. She doesn't live in Japan (as one of two EN streamers who in reality does), she lives in the part of the underworld directly under Japan. She didn't use to work at a teaching job, she used to work at 'scythe-swinging lessons' - and this little tidbit makes me think it was very likely she was working the same job I am, if only because that's one of the most likely things for a 20-something American woman to be doing to stay in Japan. It's 'the reaper family' she talks about missing, her old boss is "Death-sensei" and someone who constantly revved up a motorbike outside of her old (? I think she moved) apartment is "Ghost Rider". Her music is definitely one of the biggest appeals but I will be doing a separate post for that because some of you have heard it and I need to share it more widely than just burying it in a Vtuber post. This'll just be what I've watched from her on stream. She also ends up using outdated slang and capitalising words Like This, cringe but in a way that's endearing, as I said, dorky. And that's kind of why I like Calli so much, this attitude is that of a lovely woman who is just being herself, a normal, relatable person who is a little bit awkward at times but never stops doing it and just owns who she is. Seeing someone live unashamedly like that is inspiring, indeed she's inspired me to be a bit more forthright about just acting in a way that feels natural while not apologising for it, as long as doing so is fun for everyone else. It's also seeing her clearly enjoy herself so much that works for me. She's someone who has in her entire streaming career been working incredibly hard and constantly tiring herself out what with keeping up her other commitment (she's constantly said she has trouble saying "No" to people asking her to do stuff and I absolutely know the feeling, I already take on too much work as it is and often have trouble giving myself free time, though I think we're both doing a bit better at it lately), has clearly worked hard to be successful and seeing her live the dream is very cool to see. I think what made me start watching her fully, after seeing her appear in real-life on a prominent anime podcast (with clever camera work to super-impose the character over her actual self), rather than just listening to "Excuse Me, But Could You Please RIP" over and over again, was this comment she left on the video of her new song "Cursed Night". It's a song with some pretty depressing lyrics and I guess she wanted to make sure it wasn't misinterpreted.  It signalled a couple of things to me, as said, that she was really having the time of her life being able to broadcast her music to such a huge audience of people having never really gotten the chance before, and that she is very into the cognitive dissonance of letting out negative emotions in ways that can bring enjoyment to other people, through music, or on stream where she may try and act edgy and tough but quickly melts into adorable cuteness because she can't keep it up effectively. And knowing this, I knew I wanted to spend more time watching her and supporting her however I could - not yet maxing out my credit card for her because that'd be unhealthy but what I can. Basically, like me, she was a child of emo music, as evidenced by one of her karaoke streams where, having the ability to sing anything, she sang not one, not two, not three but SIX My Chemical Romance songs over the course of an hour and a half, five of them from Black Parade. I kept a video that clipped her cover of Welcome To... in my sig for a while because it was such an impressive cover. What I have now is a cover of the Haruhi song God Knows, also a highlight, nearly every song she chooses is an anime or mid-00s classic. As an example of how hard she works for us (too hard, many would say), when she wasn't feeling up to do a karaoke stream at the scheduled time, she moved it to a few hours later AND scheduled in a second karaoke stream for the following day. What with Gorillaz (the original Vtubers!!!!) love, Eminem, Linkin Park, she has the absolute best music taste - which makes her karaoke streams the best in Hololive. I was very relieved when she quit her 'scythe-swinging job', as like Kiara she's really grown into the role of streamer. They play off each other well but she's great at collabing with most of them, her collab with Korone on 'Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes' produced one of my favourite lines 'I am die, thank you forever' from Korone, and like with the Kiara/Calli relationship, Calli's excellent role in playing the straight man helped sell that very well. She's also clearly into internet culture at least a little bit in the way I am. One thing the vtubers do that I haven't talked about yet is watchalong streams, which I don't often catch unless I see them in advance and they're obviously best live when you can join in with the stream chat. I did watch 'Fight Club' with her on archive and that was fun enough but yesterday, I managed to watch the Wiseau movie 'The Room' and its follow-up 'The Disaster Artist' live with her and about 2,000 other people watching along with her, and it was an absolute blast. Seeing the chat react to the movie, especially its focus on people getting it on (I had the uncensored version and I had no idea there even was an uncensored version), taking part a bit myself with saying things like 'MY EYES' along with Calli creating autotuned versions of famous lines in the movie and hating Lisa along with us was a fantastic way to spend a Saturday afternoon at home, really felt like a group watchalong of a terrible movie, as it should be, which is something that, out here, I haven't really done for a while. Interesting coda: THE Tommy Wiseau actually liked a tweet containing a clip of Calli autotuning "You're tearing me apart Lisa" so, that's a nice bit of validation. Validation for my hobbies from Tommy Wiseau, I'll take it. She's aware of the weird things that fans ask her to do, has promised that "A-R-A, A-R-A" ("ara ara" is Japanese for "oh my", stereotypically said by sexually attractive women in anime) will only be said at 1 million subscribers, which she is REALLY near to, she has also promised to cover "Rap God" then finally which, well, I can't wait because her rapping abilities are very impressive. She often leans into her workaholic image to do cute sleepy reaper streams and one of these days, when she gets a working ASMR mic, she's definitely doing an ASMR stream, and I'm sort of here for all of it. She manages to make herself look very cute when she's sleepy, the avatar looks adorable with the bubbly misty filters she uses for those. She also moves her character around the screen a lot for humour, or plays the recorder or kazoo on stream as a ritual to thank superchatters, or uses lots of editing tricks to make it appear like there's two of her or, well, you can't predict what silly thing she'll do next when she's in the right mood. And now she's full-time, there'll hopefully be a lot more of those to come. From her ridiculous fever dream of a stream (now sadly deleted) where she spent an hour begging Atlus to be able to play Persona 3, to playing Minecraft in an endearingly nooby way, to singing all of my favourite songs at karaoke nights, to her generally rather good game taste in non-Minecraft areas, the bits she's allowed to do, to her great talking streams that are pick-me-ups, I love everything she does and I don't think I've ever managed to be captivated by a streamer quite like this before. Anime girl or not, she's helped remind me that there is nothing greater than being yourself and showing it off to the world when the sort of person you are is a lovable geek with great wordplay skills and filled with the sort of 'lowkey cultured' references (e.g. her blank New Year's resolution paper had Lorum Ipsum written on it before she started making resolutions) that I like to make and see no one pick up on. tl;dr she's near enough to me in anime rapper form and I like seeing that. this was sort of the main purpose I did an EOY thread this year as she's really defined the final quarter of my year as a regular part of my free time with all her entertaining antics as a normal person who made it big by being themselves. also I'm obsessed with her music. To confirm, we have now left the vtuber stage, so the thread is safe again, but the next post will be a comprehensive review of all 5 of her songs thus far and I would recommend listening to them because they are very good music. Lead at least, having a rapper in-house has allowed Hololive to pioneer the rent-a-rapper concept so she's appeared on a few other girls' songs as well. |
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10th January 2021, 08:43 AM
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#37
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I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,422 User: 12,929 |
Music
Mori Calliope - Dead Beats EP + Cursed Night It's not wrong to think about it, but I'll stop for tonight 'Cause we're immortalized forever in the songs that we write, ya' know? Mori Calliope, "Live Again" There are four songs on the Dead Beats EP, named after Calli's fanname, and they're all very easily repeatable bits of pop-rap. On release, Dead Beats was briefly #1 on iTunes WW, I spied her later release "Cursed Night" making its way into the top 100 in the US, and when she releases new music this year, I'm going to be watching eagerly to see where it shows up now she is starting from a fanbase - that these songs went so far when she'd just debuted was impressive enough! From featuring rather silly skits, at the end of them, to the more reflective ones sounding like an Eminem or The Streets ballad, they are great pieces of rap being done by a clearly very talented (and unfortunately rare) female rapper. I really don't think there are enough rappers like her, particularly given her interests, unlike most rappers, her... weebiness shines through as you get lines in Japanese running into English lines and yet still managing to rhyme like an expert. As they're being done in character, they do tend to make reference to her Grim Reaper persona as an anime e-girl and someone not knowing who she is might find that strange, but what good rap doesn't involve the personality of the performer? Excuse My Rudeness, But Could You Please RIP? I'm not asking for much: do me a favour and die Gomen shitsureishimasuga, shinde kudasai (lit: sorry it's rude, but please be dead) One of the first big things Calli did was host a remix contest for her signature song, which is also the song she plays at the start of most of her streams. Lots of people entered, as in, lots and the winner was Nhato (yes, that is a name I hope you recognise!), who got his rather fantastic remix used as the intro music for the next month of streaming. Since then she's been playing other remixes of it at the start, I really like the Eurobeat remix and I've seen a lot of people go creative in adding their fan touch to this song. It's obviously meant as an intro to Calli and well, it's a great intro to her character in one way and in other ways it isn't. She moved past this 'edgy killer' thing pretty early on and while bellowing out 'murder is so f**king kawaii' is the ultimate in cognitive dissonance, helpfully labelled by another line as 'fake-murder-shit' to stop you feeling bad, that's not really why I love this. Why I love it is that it is an ultimate fire of a track, breathing it in fact, in how well it manages to meld two languages together and make both of them sound absolutely breathless as she switches from one to the other. It makes sure to reference the starting aspects of Calli's character, that she's hard-working, takes no shit (lol, that lasted long), does a bit of rap posturing but mixes it up with quite a bit of self-deprecation that I've come to know her more often for. There's references to Kiara (Kusotori), references to Calli's overthinking nature, in that she puts down words that sound good into the rap, does it off the cuff but knows why they're there. The liberal sprinkling of basic Japanese words throughout works wonders, melding DIE with 'Daisuki' (love), using 'F**king Seiso' (Seiso being the state of pureness that idols are supposed to exist in), other words I barely notice at this point like 'shinigami' and 'kawaii', finishing the bridge off with that wonderful 'kudasai', the timely 'chotto henda' (that's a little weird) in the second verse. Actually, you know, I think I love every lyric in the verses. It's a perfect construction. The whole attitude and package of this song is one that demands repeat listens and while it does go a little basic in the 'hit it with the bass', there's enough pure hype, attitude and clever wordplay oozing out of this that I've never grown tired of it even when I hear it at the start of most Calliope streams I watch. Probably my second favourite song of 2020. or idk let's split this up and do the rest of the songs later because I'm still thinking of stuff to write for this help |
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11th January 2021, 10:51 AM
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#38
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I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,422 User: 12,929 |
Music
Mori Calliope - Dead Beats (song) I'll f*** 'em up, Gucci If you could say Calli's music has a sound, because it doesn't, each track sounds very different, it's a lot more consistently like 'Dead Beats' than it is like 'Excuse My Rudeness'. As in, it's not so much hyper-weeb nonsense with heavy synths (not that there's anything wrong with that!) but more like hip-hop with a great beat/soundscape and only if you're listening carefully to the lyrics will you pick up her theme. I sort of expect her stuff to be more like this in the future and I'm very here for it, while I love 'Excuse My Rudeness', I think this style has a lot more longevity especially when it comes to repeat listens and for future artistic exploration. The point of Dead Beats is to set a model for the connection Mori has with her fans, 'a blood price to be paid but I promise it's worth it' (sign over all your free time bitches), 'we'll be best friends that's the end of it' (no wifing) 'dead beats cheer for me and cheer loud' (self-explanatory), 'to die by the scythe, that's the highest honour' (she wants to reap us and take our souls to the underworld). Pretty casual fan-artist stuff. The thing is it also ended up showing me a lot of her character in the way that made me certain I'd like it. The hook line of 'I'll f*** 'em up, Gucci' is the sort of hook that's said by rappers but the way that Calli does it is, while sounds strong, definitely comes across more of the 'saying this to be swag even though I'm not' kind of way, and I do want to see that kind of rap. She gets a bit of humour in as well with a take that on autotune 'two clicks beep boop, sounds like music' - not that she's above using autotune herself of course. I mean, as the song ends with, everybody likes self, depreciating, rap *she stops as she realises how lame a line of it is*. It's all very self-aware despite how hard she manages to go throughout the rest of the song. And it really is another fantastic breathless rap, great flow, using curse words 'because I am an amateur', though it absolutely works here. The ending bit is... something you have to get used to but given the rest of the song is so good you will definitely get used to it, and it's also not worth spoiling because you have to experience that one first hand for yourself. Mori Calliope - Reaper か Rapper? So for any people buying, f*** it, welcome to Hell I guess The one dud track on Dead Beats, though it's still enjoyable in its own way, it's just that 'Excuse My Rudeness' does everything it's trying to do far better, and it spends far too long being an introduction to Calli's character, though given it's billed as an introduction rap that's understandable. It gets slightly better in the second half after she skits pretending her manager wants her to keep going with a very scuffed rap, but it never really comes alive besides two lines, the highlighted one above which is delivered a bit better than the rest of the song and the final stanza where she says a Japanese phrase and then begins explaining that although it means "it can't be helped", if you pronounce it wrong, as she just did, it actually means, "there is no salt". "There is no salt" has become an occasionally referenced line out of that and okay that's about all this song is good for, moving on... see I can criticise her, it's just a bit too much self depreciation Mori Calliope - Live Again It's not the end of your Mori, 'cause every closed door is just the intro of a brand new story The nostalgia track and closing track of the EP, Live Again is probably the best pop record on here and it hits hard. Calli uses it often as the outro track for her streams to say goodbye, and I think there is a very high possibility it will make me cry very hard in the future. Most especially at some point, I hope a long way into the future, when she stops vtubing, but also at any intermediary temporary goodbyes she does. I think you might have to like her to really appreciate it in full, but a lot of these lyrics are really applicable to anyone who's ever considered human mortality and the pain of our existence one day finally ending, with the limited chances at human contact we have in the interim. So perhaps there is a wider reach there. Most of the character references in this one are consigned to Japanese lyrics chosen for their rhyming prowess so it could definitely find some audience who is looking for a track about things coming to an end, whether that end is temporary or permanent. 'the pain that's coming on once my old soul's finally gone, it's not wrong to think about it but I'll stop for tonight because we're immortalised forever in the songs that we write' is something that I bet any musical artist has considered at some point, that their songs give them a shot at immortality, if you only truly die when the last person alive forgets who you were, then musicians are creating their mark on the world by making songs that are being passed down - and through this EP, Calli has pretty much immortalised herself, her artistry will live on, even if it's behind a pseudonym. As with any good track that tackles this sort of thing, it also has a number of lighter notes about the strength of making life last in the moment, that and 'mortality's what makes life sweeter to taste', that time together is refreshing, that things are made better when people share memories together - whether that's from her perspective of sharing fun moments over livestreaming, or her friendship/coupling with Kiara, or in a more general sense between friends. She even gets her introvert status in by talking about (in a verse mostly in Japanese) how human rituals like 'bye, see you later' make her die inside before she goes on to sound very earnest with delivering Japanese pleasantries. Throughout this, while the lyrics are very sad, it sounds so happy, as if to say that many ends are not the end, and this one is also not the end, that there will very likely be another day and finding the happiness within it all will follow through if you are surrounded by the right people. I love it so much <3 It's the sort of good flowing emotional trigger rap ballad that basically any rapper should have in their discography as a weepy moment and Calli finding it early is why I'm so excited for more of her work, particularly as her first followup track to the Dead Beats EP also laid heavy on the feelings... Mori Calliope - Cursed Night welcome to my constant state of mind, like could you knock first? I keep comparing Cursed Night to The Streets, not because of the rapping voice of course, but because the backing and feel to Cursed Night brings to mind the same sort of 'city night' that so many Streets tracks give off, as does the spoken word stuff that Calli does throughout, again showing off her versatility, while this is again an emotional rap ballad, it's definitely not a repeat of 'Live Again'. Released as a special Halloween track, because the reaper Vtuber couldn't not release a song for Halloween, it's the one that inspired that Youtube comment that Calli wrote and I screenshotted in her main post. Because, as you might guess from the title, it's not a happy song, though it's certainly great to listen to, talking about how the days are blending together, how she's mentally being overwhelmed, it's a song about someone trapped in a state of mental anguish and given we've just come out of 2020, that might hit quite close to home for some. It certainly seems like it was written as an ode to when she couldn't think of writing and turned to some rather dark place, she can't open up to others and is just isolated in her sorrow. The character part is that the reaper, lonely from taking souls and never being able to experience what it's like for them is both excellent lore and yet also feels very real. In fact, so real that I am thankful she posted that comment that she is incredibly happy now, and this was a vent, which I can absolutely believe. "Shut the lid tight, it's complicated, could you not look inside, it's complicated" is far too real a lyric, among many, to not have some basis in reality. It definitely seems to be based, at least in a general sense, night or nights that happened to the real Calli, lyrics like 'Drunk, lost CalliP, wandering Rengoku-shi' (purgatory, but the way it's delivered, you could imagine a district name in its place), a 'sunk cost fallacy' is her giving into alcohol - part of her character is her drinking red wine on streams, but she herself admitted she made too much of that out of nervousness and now only occasionally drinks it on stream, advocating for water (by which her fans are only too happy to oblige). And then there's the final element in this story for this song, the fact that kindness is offered to her and she has trouble accepting it 'why is it that your kindness is making my chest unbearably tight?'. Generally, in the Vtuber community, the fans are very aware that while what they see is an anime girl, behind it is a real person working hard to entertain them and they're normally very nice about it - to the point where they end up donating a lot of money through superchats without being prompted, in fact sometimes if the Vtuber is protesting against it, the more likely fans are to send money. Early on, there were a couple of times where multiple people would donate huge, eye-watering amounts to Calli because of how relatable she was, which, as someone not yet used to receiving such fan love, she was very overwhelmed by. That definitely confirmed to me the genuine nature of her character, even now when she's more used to it, she never encourages anything like that, she tells people to stop donating if it gets too much, tells them to stop 'buying tickets' to her free karaoke concerts (which normally just results in them sending more money) - while she at the start tried to read every message from every fan she soon found that impossible, she still now tries to read the ones not accompanied by money in quieter moments on longer streams. 'Cursed Night' tells of not knowing how to deal with that love when at time of writing, I don't think she felt like she deserved it. Every time I listen to it I am reminded of all the insecurities she tried to alleviate by throwing them into this song - it sounds like that it helped her, it also helped me a little. |
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13th January 2021, 01:53 PM
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#39
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I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,422 User: 12,929 |
Anime
Science Fell In Love So I Tried To Prove It (aka. Rikekoi, after a shortening of its similarly long Japanese title) (sketch between two of the side characters to show off the comedy) A big show for me early in 2020, Rikekoi is a rather funny comedy show that trades off one joke and one joke alone - that smart people are not good at talking about love or sex. On that idea alone, it rests its case, and it's brilliant. Most shows that tackle this do so while falling into the trap of laughing at the pathetic nerds, as unlikeable or pathetic losers who may be working top jobs in science, but don't know the warmth of human interaction and when comedy is mean-spirited these days, I turn right off (I think you all know which show is springing to mind so I'll save having to mention such awfulness in this paragraph). Rikekoi avoids this by setting the centre of the action in a university science lab. Every character on screen is at least an advanced masters student. No one is outside of the bubble of academia, everyone is at least a little bit awkward socially, and most of the humour is derived from eccentric characters showing off their booksmart knowledge in one area while acting completely oblivious in another area. The set-up is a lot like Kaguya-sama, as both of the main two characters are clearly in love with each other from the start, but because of the pride of the pair, they won't start the relationship, so it got a lot of comparisons to that, and honestly, Kaguya is still the master of this sort of misdirection love battle comedy. However, the reason that neither of the main two, Ayame and Shinya, here want to admit their infatuation is that they don't believe in emotional reactions and the reaction to a declaration of love is met with the panty-dropping line 'yes, but how can you PROVE you are in love with me?' Somehow, don't ask how, these... PhD students... manage to convince their supervisor to conduct a scientific experiment to determine WHAT IS LOVE to discover if they are in fact in love. It definitely relies a lot on jokes with a very similar setup, but I love the idea of clueless nerds quantifying romance through science and they really get some good material to that end (e.g. pairing up kissing, pairing them up with other characters to check heart rate reactions) throughout the show with a good range of side characters to play off. Out of which the best is most definitely the silk-tights-and-gloves wearing lethargic gamer chick Ibarada (also a PhD student, IIRC) who has great chemistry with everyone else because of how well she's able to make them all squirm. It's great watching nerds being nerds. The setting in a university with postgrad students is also a real rarity in anime and seeing a bunch of different character archetypes, and advanced academic discussions, because of the advanced nature of the literature does make this one stand out. Weaknesses were its ability to really evolve as a show when it came to its later parts, it didn't feel like there was much beyond its comfort zone, there's a character introduced later who is pretty much entirely the author self-inserting to be an author to write about their scientific findings, which is a level of self-insert even I wouldn't do in my writings, it also just doesn't fit here. And there's also this side-panel thing directed by the show's mascot where it, a bear, will explain scientific concepts used in the show to viewers who might not know them (e.g. travelling salesman or even something as basic as the scientific method to help ensure no one gets left behind), however in half of these the bear gets tired of explaining a few sentences in and tells you to go Google it, which, well, I respect the power move but it kind of defeats the point of helping people learn by watching anime which was something else it was kind of billed as. this opening theme does have some fist-pumping chords so it's notable for that |
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17th January 2021, 05:59 AM
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#40
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I'm a paragon so don't perceive me
Joined: 3 February 2011
Posts: 37,422 User: 12,929 |
Music
Alestorm - Curse Of The Crystal Coconut (particularly Treasure Chest Party Quest, Fannybaws & Zombies Ate My Pirate Ship) I enjoy Alestorm a lot and have done for years, though I started listening to them a bit more in-depth this year, not particularly because I was in a pirate metal mood but they are definitely your go-to if you want Scottish shouty sea shanties and you know, some times that IS the mood one is in when you can't actually reach the sea from where you're stuck at. Obviously BJSC people will know that I sent their most... anthemic... track 'f***ed With An Anchor' because that's addictive, though that isn't actually from their 2020 album Curse Of The Crystal Coconut, it's from their 2017 album No Grave But The Sea (and because it's a crime to let an Alestorm post go by without mentioning it, their INCREDIBLE cover of Taio Cruz' 'Hangover' is from their 2014 album Sunset On The Golden Age, they have good album titles x). Anyway, the quick way of describing Curse Of The Crystal Coconut is 'more pirate metal nonsense' as it is for nearly all of their albums, and most artists I'd berate for not evolving, but then most artists don't start from the incredible niche that Alestorm have carved out for themselves. And there is innovation here, at least some things on Alestorm songs I haven't heard before. I won't go into every song on the album but it's all good, starting with "Treasure Chest Party Quest", which is classical Alestorm, the main exception to that being an inclusion of the lyric 'get lit, talk shit', which seems a bit zoomer for them, but a bragging song about how they're only on a journey to have drunken fun is the sort of thing that's cringey when it's a newly minted pop or rap artist but is expected when you're a pirate, plus there's some nice strings in the middle 8 amidst that glorious shouting. Then there's 'Fannybaws', which seems to talk of a bekilted Scottish pirate if the rather racy (assuming you like ginger Scottish men) single cover is any indication, I almost entered this one to BJSC instead, to make all the Scottish members feel even more seen but I thought the anchor song would be more accessible in the end, and I was probably right. "Fannybaws, he's the scourge of the seas... plundering, pillaging, spreading disease' is... fun and the song itself really goes off, I can't imagine what it'd feel like if I were actually Scottish though. My favourite however is the more, ballady, if that's a word that Alestorm can have in their discography, "Zombies Ate My Pirate Ship". What with undead and pirates often going together in popular culture this is far from unexpected, when Alestorm album covers have a person on them it's always a skeleton after all, though it's the first time I can recall them alluding to the actual existence of zombies. It's quite obvious what it's about, but to give you more of an idea, the main line is "those zombies ate my pirate ship, they are a bunch of undead pricks". The most interesting thing though and why it's my favourite is that after the usual Alestorm antics w/anti-necroism and a comparatively slow build for them , a surprise female vocalist appears to sing the second chorus instead of the main Alestorm vocalist, Patty Gurdy, a hurdy-gurdy singer who's done work with other folk metal bands including Faun. She absolutely nails it and this sudden sound switch really helps the rising tension of the song before they bring it to an almighty finish. Alestorm are usually at least a bit scattershot with creating musically... sound songs, normally going for fun instead of rigorous composition and fun is what I usually listen to them for, but when they want to go for something more serious, they absolutely can do that, and "Zombies Ate My Pirate Ship" is, while built around a comedic situation, one of their best examples of that in their entire career. |
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