I went to the Toranoana main store in Akihabara today and picked up some artbooks as well as the CD catalog for Comiket 76 which I’m going to, hopefully… I decided to also take pictures of other things I got recently, like my new subnotebook. You can pretty much tell what the artbooks are by just looking at them (yay English.) The two games that don’t have English titles are Ryu ga Gotoku Kenzan and Nobunaga’s Ambition Kakushin.

The single for “Kiseki,” by NIRGILIS, came out today. “Kiseki’ is the OP from the new season of Tetsuwan Birdy: DECODE. I’ve been waiting for this single to come out for a while now. Out of all of the OPs from this spring (or is it still winter?) season of anime, it’s probably the only OP I particularly like. It’s a very energetic song.

This is actually the only song I’ve heard from NIRGILIS before. The PV is pretty interesting, for the sole reason it uses people to anime some of the lyrics. As in, at a certain point, the people use their own bodies to combine into romanji.

The PV of the song uploaded on youtube a couple of weeks ago. It’s embedded below. You can get the single at the usual places.

NIRGILIS’s website

I got my replacement PS3 last week and have been out on a honeymoon with it. I’ve missed playing Folklore and Pixeljunk: Eden. It’s a shame that I couldn’t finish either of the two before summer ended. I doubt I’ll be able to play them very much during this semester.

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Atlus finally got the preorder bonuses to Amazon, which means they could finally get the bonuses to the unhappy preorderers such as I. It was kinda worth the wait. Because of it, we don’t have to deal with the material being bent to conform with the DS box.

This makes me wish Romantic Fool did more art for games… and more art non-featuring the creepy, injured one-eyed girl. I rather like his art featuring …uh… melons instead, if you know what I mean. Anyway, feel free to take a peek at the melon filled mini-poster below, as well as the reversible cover for the game.

Romantic Fool

Yup, this Studio BONES production is only available for PSN. It costs $2.99 to rent an SD episode and $3.99 to rent an HD one. In my opinion, those prices are a little high (they sound more like, buying prices than renting prices.) It’s unfortunate it’s priced so high. I probably won’t be watching it for that price.

Source: IGN

And I’m not talking about ecchi fanservice either. I’m sure this is evident to anyone watching the series. And, of course, I’m sure that no one minds either. The most obvious piece of fanservice in the show was probably in the first couple of episodes when they explained the history of mankind (which included a picture of some of the original cast from Macross.) I should say, that made me a bit giddy.

The most memorable piece of fanservice was probably the whole episode dealing with the movie based on Macross 7 (and by 7, I really mean Zero,) which wasn’t subtle at all. They even thanked the Macross 7 team in the credits of that one.

The most recent piece of fanservice was the ending song for the latest episode. For those of you who watched (or never watched but watched a couple of scenes from it like me,) Macross: Do You Remember Love?, you would notice that the ending theme was from Minmei’s song from the last battle of the movie. For those who haven’t seen it, I’ve included a video at the bottom of the post. It’s very well animated, I might add. It wasn’t the same version as the one in the movie. They actually used it for the Deculture edition of the first episode of Macross Frontier. It’s good to hear it again, though.

Found by one of the neoGAF members… It’s too bad that I don’t quite get all of the Metal Gear jokes since I have yet to play a single game…

So, I finally got my order of Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis on Wednesday of last week. I’ve hardly gotten a chance to play it, however, since I have this SSBB tourney to participate in and have various other schoolwork to do. Oh, I like how I listed them in that order >.>

Regardless, since I did get the premium box set, I decided to upload pics for you all. Please enjoy them below. Before anyone asks: yes, I totally did take these pictures on my laptop becuase I have no other empty space in my tiny dorm room. -_-;;

Initially I didn’t want to post until I’d gotten all of the loot, but since the stuff is arriving so slowly, I decided to put it into two posts. I actually got more stuff than usually at the winter comiket. I still don’t think I got everything I wanted though. Darn deputy service and its deposits and bidding limits. T_T

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So, I finally got the chance to watch Gunbuster this week. I had been planning on watching on watching it for a while, but never really got a chance. Now that I have Netflix, I just decided, on a whim, to rent both Gunbuster and its sequel, Diebuster.

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I made a post last week highlighting that Mediaworks had just released a sequel artbook to Guren called Kaen. Well, I received said artbook a couple of days ago and now have my impressions of it.

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I actually got this a few months ago, but my computer was having problems and some things happened and I never got to use my scanner on this book. Eventually, I gave up and decided to go with a few pictures (please forgive the uber poor quality of the first pic, I suck with cameras.) Anyway, this artbook features the work of Kozue Amano, the artist behind ARIA (which I’m sure you can tell from the over.) The full title of the artbook is Cielo: Kozue Amano Illustration Works III. Yes, this is his third book. Unfortunately, his other books are uber rare now, so good luck at finding them for anything below twice their original price.

One of my favorite things about the book is its build. As you can see from the first thumbnail, the book comes with a hard plastic cover, which leaves only the book’s binding exposed to the cruel outside world. The book itself is hardcover, which is nice. If it’s one thing I hate, it’s bent binds in softcover books. Annoys me to no end. It’s a surprise that this book only costs about 300 yen more than the average softcover artbook. I’m sure they could’ve gotten away with a bit more. This artist seems popular. At least, popular enough for all of his previous books to have sold out.

The artbook is split into six sections: Aria, Roman Club, Crescent Noise, Short Stories/Extra Works, Aqua, and Monochrome works. I must admit, I’m very unfamiliar with his work. I have yet to read a single chapter of ARIA or AQUA. I’m not sure if the work in this book is new or not. Usually, in these kinds of books, they’re just reprints of earlier released art (telephone cards and such) but usually the sources for the artwork are noted on the page. In this, they are not. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. The art in the book is excellent regardless.