Original Saku

man your words cut deep.
 
It's cool though FLCL is definitely not for everyone, I have noticed people who never seen it back in the day are more likely to not really enjoy the show from my experiences. Obviously as great deal of nostalgia comes into play as well with this show. I recently urged a friend who had never seen it to check it out in preparation for the 2nd and 3rd seasons later this year... and yeah he pretty much stopped after the second or third episodes and couldn't continue, broke my heart, but I understand what can be off putting about the series.
 
I still rank FLCL in my top 10 of all time shows though. It's just the perfect OVA  nothing has gotten close to the level of satisfaction and compactness and just overall quality since imo.

I am quite sure I am about to offend @YuyoDrift with this, but I absolutely loathed FLCL. If one anime was ever the cause for anxiety attacks due to sensory overload, it would be this one. What a nonsensical, ugly and ill-conceived piece of garbage. Whoever today still claims this to be a 'coming-of-age' masterpiece needs to straighten themselves out; there is absolutely no story, no plot and no secretive and underlying hidden meaning in this whatsoever.

3Gatsu no Lion might seriously be one of my favorite series ever....  this second season just raised my enjoyment of it to a whole new level. I can't wait for it to return. I urge people to please go try it, honestly one of the best shows I've seen in a very long time.

So I finally decided to switch from JAM to something new on my Desktop... Don't get me wrong I love JAM, but I felt that I wanted something a little more flexible on my desktop. I still have JAM installed on my laptop though, it's the perfect skin for laptops.
 

 

 

 

 
                  
 
Pretty satisfied so far with this skin, I still want to tweak some things, but for now it's pretty good

We have similar taste @Original Sakulol

 
 
 
 

NSFW
 

NSFW
 

Need to dev on Windows because of an issue with my wireless card on Arch Linux.
 

Perfection.

Perfection.

I went to the hobby shop by my parents' house recently and browsed through their literal walls of Gunpla options. I haven't built one in years, but it's always exciting to look through and marvel at the box art.

been working on a few online competition entries the past few months, here are some WIP photos.
 

 

 

 

| Old scars never fade, old habits die hard
 
Throw those DECADE-compilations out and replace them with this.
 
Let me be clear about one thing: those compilations were trash. The covers were ugly as sin and the track selection, despite sharing many similarities to Vestige of Scratches, gave the impression that the band spent a week figuring out the details because they forgot about their anniversary. They literally scraped the bottom of the barrel to come up with enough content - the fact that "audrey", a butchered version of "Deity", "Repetition of Hatred", and "Jealous -Reverse-" are on it is telling enough - and most of them felt like copy-paste jobs trying to hide the lack of effort. Most of all, it didn't highlight DIR EN GREY at their best and did the band disservice as a 'best-of'. It seems like the band agrees with me, because Vestige of Scratches is everything those DECADE albums wish they could be.
 
Before the hype train leaves the station, this compilation is far from perfect. Like much of DIR EN GREY's career, Vestige of Scratches is defined by its peculiar choices. Some are baffling, while others are smart. They come together in a frustrating combination that is uniquely DIR EN GREY. Let's start with the tracks that were chosen; we have at our disposal the single version of "脈" (Myaku); "罪と規制" (Tsumi to Kisei), the censored version of the remake of "蜜と唾" (Tsumi to Batsu); the version of "腐海" (Fukai) they've been playing live for some time (interesting); a new version of "THE IIID EMPIRE"; the reinterpretations of "羅刹国" (Rasetsukoku) [ew], "OBSCURE" [no], "かすみ" (Kasumi) [sure], "THE FINAL" [ok], "残" (Zan) [eh], and "霧と繭" (Kiri to Mayu) [ugh...]; the single version of "CLEVER SLEAZOID" [good!]; the choice to end the album on a reworked version of "Beautiful Dirt" out of all 200+ songs in their discography [wtf why]; the exclusion of "GARDEN" [what a tragedy]; and then minor adjustments to most other post-VULGAR tracks featured which work for the most part. We can already see this isn't the standard cash-grab version of a best album and that a proper sitting would be very rewarding, so I can only suggest you do that and start from "-I'll-".
 
Controversial opinion coming in hot here, but the production job is fantastic across all three discs. Some may disagree, but I find that I need time to adjust to a new production job before I can assess if I like the changes. There have been many albums I panned for 'inferior production values' that I eventually came to prefer. Sloppy production has always been one of DIR EN GREY's weaknesses, especially for the visual-era stuff which hasn't held up over time, so some of the older tracks have a second lease on life. GAUZE has never sounded so clean, there's a 12-string in "脈" that I've never heard, and some of the tracks from DUM SPIRO SPERO are actually listenable now that the bass isn't obnoxious. I'd pay good money to have all their albums past and future worked like this.

The way the album is structured is frustrating to describe. What at first seems like a chronological trek through their eras turns into anything but by the third disc. The first disc is an ode to their entire visual history, featuring songs from pre-GAUZE to 鬼葬 (Kisou), plus a bonus in "腐海 2018". New "腐海" sounds good, and I like it's inclusion as a way to preserve it. I'd spin it a few times, but it won't replace the original version for me. Every other song on this disc was just remastered. I'm surprised at the inclusion of "太陽の蒼" (Taiyou no Ao), since I thought Kyo hated that song, but like a few other inclusions it's here because its a single. The second disc dips back into 鬼葬 with "JESSICA", nods at six Ugly with "umbrella," and then focuses mostly on VULGAR through UROBOROS. Nothing from the disastrous UROBOROS [Remastered & Expanded] makes an appearance, which is a blessing. Personally speaking, I would have dropped "CHILD PREY" for "AMBER," "朔-saku-" for "Machiavellism," and thrown in the reinterpretation of "undecided". Disc 2 ends with a new version of "THE IIID EMPIRE" which is pretty lit and one of their more successful retakes.

Disc 3 is where most of the meat lies and unfortunately most of it is displeasing to my ears. It's packed with most of their earlier reinterpretations, many hit or miss, most of which I'd have left on the table if it were solely my choice. This is where my lack of frustration with the exclusion of "undecided" comes from, as I would have rotated out "羅刹国" (Rasetsukoku), "OBSCURE", or "霧と繭" (Kiri to Mayu) for it, the PV version of "OBSCURE", and the version of "Bottom of the death valley" from THE UNRAVELING. I would have also killed for a reinterpretation of "秒｢｣深" (Byou ｢｣ Shin) from six Ugly, or a proper version of "Hydra -666-" with more gutturals and less screaming. After comes the salvageable parts of DUM SPIRO SPERO, including a version of "激しさと、この胸の中で絡み付いた灼熱の闇" (Hageshisa to, Kono Mune no Naka de Karamitsuita Shakunetsu no Yami) superior to the album version, but not quite what the original single sounded like, a condensed serving of ARCHE, "詩踏み" (Utafumi), and then ends on a very random note with "Beautiful Dirt". Not quite sure why they set it up this way.

Maybe the unfinished feeling to Vestige of Scratches is intentional, but either way DIR EN GREY have collated a collection album worth the shelf space for any serious fan. It may not be perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than I expected it to be. At the very least, I can argue that it's a better alternative than importing GAUZE if you don't already own it. If DIR EN GREY attack 2018 the way MUCC took 2017, we may have an interesting year ahead of us.
 
Support the artist
 
CDJapan
 
 

https://www.last.fm/user/OriginalSaku/listening-report/year
 
 

Been using Last.fm since 2008, but I did a full reset back in January 2015 at about 40k scrobbles. here's my top 8 artists as well as albums.
 

 
I'm now back at 24k, but my chart numbers don't really reflect that since I listen to so many different bands and artists XD also it's funny that Diru is #1 because I almost never listen to them on purpose.... I have their entire discography and like a few dozen live audio rips, so they come up a lot when I listen to my collection on shuffle.
 
as a bonus my top songs.
 
 
My account link is below in my sig, feel free to add me.

My poor poor backlog....

Ah well I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's okay just replay it in a year or two down the line when your headphone game is better ggood thing about this game is that its not super long so replays are more realistic and viable.

I beat it last night and it was good!! I got used to the camera motion/visuals and managed to play through it~ There seriously needs to be more psychological horror games out there. The story was very touching and moving, and great soundtrack as well! Sadly, I couldn't play with headphones though...... I played on a tv screen and didn't have wireless headphones or headphones with a long enough chord so I pretty much missed out on that experience. Kinda upset about that but oh well.......

I just picked up Horizon Zero Dawn to add to the ever growing backlog...

My poor poor backlog....

so you know how I said that i was content with my current setup and didn't want/care about the 6xx on sale above?
 
.... well I'm a bold face liar, because I just did this.
 

 
so yeah... I just couldn't resist a pair of HD 650's for 200 dollars, talk about a steal.
 
btw my massdrop O2 + SDAC came tonight as well, freaking talk about a amazing amp/dac combo right here, my HD 579's sounds ridiculous compared to before. Now to just wait till march for those 6xx
 

Goddam Saku. I'm super jealous! Gunpla is the best present a Newtype can get!

My poor poor backlog....

My poor poor backlog....

My poor poor backlog....