Champ213

Everyone except that Cat person ofc. He's very very shifty.

Last time I ordered there I didn't get a tracking number either. A week after payment or so I was just about to ask them about the status of my order when the package arrived at my door, lol.

So yeah, it happens.

Too bad it doesn't include a PV. I need more overdramatic cape swirling.

Literally crying right now. So many good memories...

That's why I'd use FedEx, or at the very least, Registered SAL. Come to think of it, whenever I use CDJapan, I almost always use FedEx.

Also, I find it funny, pointless, and somewhat infuriating that their Registered Airmail takes longer than EMS, but it's more expensive.

That really depends on location. To Germany Registered Airmail is pretty much always cheaper, while EMS and FedEx are very close together. But FedEx may charge you extra for doing the customs work from what I heard from a friend. Again, this will probably be different from countrry to country.

To be honest, most of the vk stuff that isn't fairly old or super-rarez can be bought from CD Japan. I'm often surprised how many lesser known bands they carry. I do suspect them to overcharge on shipping though. Recently they wanted almost 4000 Yen for 5 CDs with EMS. I never payed more than 2000 Yen on Closetchild, even for more than 5 CDs!

That being said, I really like Closetchild, made some nice finds there. I just wish they would stop stocking all those Golden Bomber chekis. WHO IS ACTUALLY BUYING ALL OF THOSE!?!

Other than that it's Adumaya, Puresound and Yahoo Auctions for me, but 80% of what I buy is probably from Closetchild and CD Japan.

There's s far too many, especially among the older vk PVs. XD But among the more recent ones, this ones comes to my mind right away:

Yeah. We get it, guy. You work out.

^ That's some interesting stats there. XD

Anyway, thanks for the recommendations, Saku! I actually think I did start up Dragon Age at some point, but something else got me occupied so I only got about 1 hour in. Might give it another try.

Also, Bioshock Infinite is actually one of the games I considered for my next playthrough - but do you think I need to play any of the previous Bioshock games in order to understand what's going on?

What games do you have to choose from champ?

Far too many for someone who doesn't even consider herself a hardcore gamer. XD  I have about 4 years worth of Steam sales and Humble Bundles sitting in my Steam library. But sure, if you want to recommend me something, knock yourself out.

For info: the highlighted ones I already played and finished for the most part. Some of the non-highlighted ones too, but it's been a while so they're not installed anymore. It should give you some idea what I usually play anyway.

And well... I'm the type of person that always plays action games on "easy". But I like a good story.

I do have a few games on Origin, but I think you can neglect those. I also have a PS3, but only a handful of games, and I'm currently playing Uncharted 3 there, so I'm rather looking for something on PC.

Oh, and I'm not really into online/multiplayer stuff. "Chivalry" is really the only multiplayer game I ever played extensively.

I finished the Mass Effect Trilogy a few days ago. Late Champ is late.

Not sure what I'll play now. I have a huuuuuuuge backlog of unplayed games, but I never can decide what to play. Which means I'll probably just start Mass Effect 1 again with a different character. Lol.

Macabre all the way for me, so many good songs. I must admit though, I lost interest in them after MoaB, so I haven't listened to the albums after that.

If you are still looking for the Grieva CDs, you can get them from Closet Child, but they will cost you an arm and a leg:

http://www.closetchild-cd.jp/product/27653

http://www.closetchild-cd.jp/product/24991

For the lulz: our mystery Yahoo auction seller has managed to find yet another copy of a rare Kisaki tape in his collection:

http://page10.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/m124497408

This time in red.

Fun fact: the decsription says it contains one track, the one sold by Rarezhut with the same cover had 5 tracks.

http://www.rarezhut.net/product/levia-%E6%BB%85%E3%81%B3%E3%81%AE%E5%BA%8F%E7%AB%A0

There's a sample of a new(?) song in the discography section of their website, btw. Sounds good!

I don't know if it has been mentioned already, but apparently if you order the album from CD Japan, you can get access to an exclusive  "special acoustic Ustream Live & Talk show" with Kamijo. http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/tokuten/kamijo_ustream_notification_20141018

Not sure if I would watch that, but I give them props for creative marketing and offering incentives to actually buy the physical album.

A full acoustic set would definitely be interesting though.

I don't mind them. As a matter of fact, when I hear that a bands wants to re-record some of my favourite songs, I usually look forward to it and am curious what they will do with it.

Some re-recording are better than the original, some are worse, some are pointless because they aren't much different at all.

 

-Do you ever fear that an artist may "desecrate" the original track with a re-recording?

I never understood that reasoning. Yes, some re-recording may be worse than the original. But who cares? It's not like the original song will vanish into thin air, or that some almighty power forces people to only listen to the new version from now on. Like the original better? Listen to that one and not the re-recording! Case closed.

I think a re-recording makes most sense if the original was done with poor production value due to the limitations of the band at that point. I know some trve kvltists find it sacrilegious to take a song that was originally recorded in the kitchen of vocalists' mother and re-record in a proper studio - but not me. XD Many bands re-record old song because they finally have the means to produce them they way the wanted to begin with, but just couldn't afford to.

This is going to stop. Now. Take your personal bitchfights to PM or off this forum. Any further posts in here that aren't about buying the items in question will get deleted and a warning will be given.

"Reincarnated Really Hot People" is a rank that gets automatically applied once a user has reached 400 posts. It's nothing really special, but you get that fancy gold name and a fancy title. It's just a small sign of appreciation for regular participation on this forum.

If anyone wonders about the name of the rank. It was created years ago as "Really hot people that make you want to sex things" when the forum was still called Tainted World. We lost almost the entire database when our then-admin went AWOL and stopped paying hosting bills, so we had to rebuilt the group which was thus called "Reincarnated Really Hot People". In the past we used to add people manually, but now it's automatically added once 400 posts are reached.

My viking monster has been removed? ;__;

That is so random and awesome. XD

Also, nice shirts there, guys.

I have a Canon EOS 600D (or EOS Rebel T3i, as it is called in North America), which as I understand it, is basically Canon's middle tier DSLR. (The high tier DSLRs were too expensive for me, but I felt confident that I could skip the beginner-tier)

I bought it 2 years ago, so it's not the newest model anymore, and it cost me about 800 Euro back then (that's roughly 1000 USD).

I'm pretty happy with it, but then again, it's my first DSLR, so I can't really compare it to other models. I mostly use it for outdoors photography when hiking.

Here's some photos at different levels of ambient light. These are prior to any post-editing and in their original size (so warning, large files): here, here and here.

I also don't claim to be a great photographer when it comes to getting the settings right. XD

The funcion I absolutely love about the camera is the fact that it has automatic exposure bracketing, ie. it can automatically take 3 photos in quick succession with different exposures (normal, overexposed, underexposed). These can be used to create absolutely georgous HDR images in post-editing. When I take photos while hiking I never use anything but exposure bracketing.

Here's some examples of the finished product after merging and editing:

I can't really tell you much about the video function as I barely use it, but it's in HD and looks nice enough. Here's a short clip I took during a winter hike. (Make sure to enable HD in the video - obviously it's still compressed compared to the original file though)

Could we please keep this civil without needlessly attacking each other? Stick to the topic, don't turn this into personal bitchfights, everyone.

wait..why did they actually disband then if the new band consists of all memento mori members XD ?!?

That's vk logic for you. XD

 Why not simply sell all these limited releases separately? Or opening the borders and set up sales to overseas customers who are often more than willing to pay whatever the price? There just needs to be one band who opens up their eyes to the world and to actually working marketing strategies, and I bet the scene could lift itself up in a matter of perhaps two years.

Eh, this is quite an overstatement. The number of foreigners willing to pay "whatever the price" (or anything at all, really) for vk releases is small. Very small. It's not like there haven't been a couple of bands/label/projects that specifically tried to cater to overseas fans, especially during the high days of the boom. They all weren't doing too hot, to be honest. Anyone remember that Xodiack/HearJapan fiasco? Yeah.

I will be bold enough to say that the crack down on file sharing sites helped essentially "kill it." I'm not disagreeing with the fad aspect at all, but not having access to new material super easily definitely did not help those who only had passing interest. 

I dunno. It's true that a lot of older links died when Megaupload got shut and Mediafire began deleting a lot of stuff. But looking at the number of Blogspots that still exist it does't seem to be much more difficult to get new vk stuff today than it was, say, 2006, when the fad began. At that time you often had to go through Bittorrent. P2P like WinMX for less common files. Nowadays you just to google a release name, and the Blogspot Download is often the highest search result.

I think we can only speculate why there was a fad and why it died again. As Ikna explained, in Germany the vk boom basically came piggybacked on the Manga fad. And as such it mostly attracted young people in their teens. During that age tastes and interests tend to change quickly, so it's no surprise that many of them left again soon.

It wasn't always like that. When I began looking for vk-related stuff on the net around 2000/2001 most non-japanese information sites were run by slightly older folks, usually people in their early 20s, who had been to Japan for a few years during the late 90s and now shared their first-hand experience of the last years of the vk fad in Japan. I'm talking about sites like Rushed Blue, Paradoxical Reality, Japanese Channel and so on.

It really was a different fandom. And the high days of 2007-2009 were just a fluke, really.