peffy

gaaaaaaah i need to get my hands on this. but how?!?!

merry christmas? i super love shoya's ribbon

possibly relevant image

Ah, Wagakki Band. Only the 3rd album in the list that I've actually heard, and the 2nd that I actually like. I really like the sometimes-chaotic mix of rock & traditional instruments (not a surprise, considering I'm a big fan of Kiryu). The female singer's voice is very beautiful and pleasant to listen to. My personal fave songs: 風鈴の唄うたい - I've morbidly decided that this would be an amazing funeral song. 暁ノ糸 追憶

I only call MiA "boring" because it seems like he's been doing the "prince" costume for a long time. Meanwhile the other 3 members seem to have more drastic costume/makeup changes. (I could be remembering wrong). And for me, personally, half the reason I follow this band is their visuals. He still looks good, I would just like to see him do something different. Not saying anything about his guitar skills. I think he's good, but I'm not very technical about that stuff so I wouldn't really know.

not even peffy is crazy enough to buy this

My gut reaction upon seeing the group pic was "omg this is the first time I think Koichi looks bad" But upon closer inspection of his solo pictures, I think he looks beautiful as usual. Probably the best feminine-looking VK dude, IMO. This is possibly the first time I think Tsuzuku actually looks interesting. Meto looks like MiA is so boring. Also, I hate consecutive singles. MEJIBRAY does it so often that it's thoroughly annoying.

I have not noticed any increase in CD prices. For most CDs I buy, singles are 1200-1500 yen, and albums are 2500-3000 yen. Mini albums are somewhere in between. It seems to have been that way for many years... The tax increase shouldn't affect you unless you live in Japan. But here's what really makes me mad: 1. Japanese CDs cost about twice as much as American CDs, and I have to pay shipping (and sometimes customs) on top of that. 2. Record labels are pulling more and more bullshit stunts like releasing multiple versions of one CD. There is almost always both CD only and CD+DVD versions. There now seem to be more cases where they release 3-10 (!!!) versions of one single, with different coupling tracks or DVD content on each one, in order to encourage the fans to spend more money. I myself have bought up to 4 versions of the same single so I guess I am part of the problem.

Agreed. There were a lot more "nonsensical phrase" names that I saw, but I found them acceptable or cool for no particular reason. I saw a band called ANGRY FROG REBIRTH, and I thought that's a pretty cool name. But other people might think it's a dumb name. I always read that name as "ekks trip ekks". Another one I screw up constantly is D=OUT. It's just pronounced like the English word "doubt" but I read it as "dee out". You guys made me doubt myself re: ν[NEU]. I just checked vkdb and they say the pronunciation is "nyuu" （ニュー） . http://www.vkdb.jp/NEU.html So yeah, it's really not "vee new".

The main reason I stopped listening to Western (English) music was because of lyrics. I feel embarrassed when I'm listening to song that is, for example, describing hot sex, and there are other people around me. It might be a great song, but I'd stop listening to it just because of the lyrics. I also get annoyed when lines are forced to rhyme. For example.. this is from a Justin Bieber song: "You know you love me, I know you care / Just shout whenever, and I'll be there / You are my love, you are my heart / And we would never ever ever be apart". Bleh, the rhyming is so dumb, and because of the very common subject matter, a thousand other songs probably contain the same rhymes. There are a limited number of words that rhyme with "heart", and forcing the next/previous line to rhyme with it just.. seems so unnecessary and juvenile. (of course, there are exceptions where the rhyming is done very well) Japanese music solves both of those problems. No one around me understands a word of Japanese, and rhyming is not really a thing in Japanese lyrics. And whenever they do decide to sing in English, the botched pronunciation/grammar is usually amusing enough that I don't mind. (unless the entire song is in Engrish, which might get annoying) So.. do I feel the need to understand Japanese lyrics? Not really. I can just enjoy the music without worrying about what the song is about. Since it's not my native language, I don't interpret the words unless I decide to really pay attention to it, so "bad" lyrics don't get in the way of enjoying the overall song. On the other hand, "good" lyrics can make an average song exceptional, but I think that's rarer. There are certain lyric writers that I really respect (i.e. Temari from amber gris, Mitsu from Dolly/DOPPEL) that usually write really beautiful stuff, so I might put some extra effort into understanding their words, but otherwise it's not very important to me.

Browsed around another Japanese download site, and found a lot of stupid names. I don't think these were mentioned before: OLEDICKFOGGY Plastic Girl in Closet ROOKiEZ is PUNK'D GAS CRACKERZ Wake Up, Girls! Phew THE BED ROOM TAPE agenda is packed A Barking Dog Never Bites my ex toe BOYS AND MEN Beat Buddy Boi i am robot and proud never young beach YOUNG JUVENILE YOUTH BUMP OF CHICKEN Awesome City Club I Don't Like Mondays. Upset Heroes! for example you sell the sea Suck a Stew Dry Do As Infinity the chef cooks me ... ... that's probably enough for now. Honorable Mentions: Wagakki Band - I really love this band, but their name literally translates to "Japanese Traditional Instrument Band". .............. I'm surprised nobody mentioned K (the Korean R&B singer who also had a successful Japanese career) during the single-letter discussion. There was also a solo female punk/rock "singer" using the name D[di:]. I really liked her because she couldn't sing at all. Let us not forget ν[NEU], especially because that thing that looks like a v is actually the greek letter "nu", and I think their name is just pronounced "nu", but I keep calling them "Vee new". And lastly, the VK band †яi￠к .

I'm still scrobbling, because I've been doing it for 9.5 years, have 191k scrobbles, and (perhaps foolishly) invested a ton of time into making my charts "accurate". However, they've already messed it up because, for example, my unicode REIGN tag is now auto-redirecting to unicode Reign, which is a different VK band. Same is happening for SHIVA -> Shiva. Even though I disabled the "auto-correct" function!!! I don't really want to change the tags to something more fucked up, like mixing unicode & regular letters. Like everyone else, I hate the new design. I don't understand why they launched it while it was still in beta. How could it take them so many months to re-add something as basic as image uploading & voting?? Granted, I don't know very much about website development, but the way they've handled it doesn't make sense. Search is useless, I just type/paste the band name into the URL.

Yeah, one of my favourite things about Tales is the skits, they are usually quite amusing.

Yeah, the "dark past" thing is a trope.. but I prefer it way more than the other JRPG protagonist tropes, which are like.. "grew up in a tiny village and becomes the world saviour" or .. "average high school student becomes big hero".. also, these characters tend to have positive/friendly personalities. Velvet doesn't seem like that, so I hope she will be more interesting (but given that this is Tales, I wouldn't be surprised if she becomes a walking stereotype). Looking forward to seeing how this turns out, either way!

Hell yeaaaaah, Tales of Berseria latest trailer was just released. English info: http://www.siliconera.com/2015/12/15/tales-of-berseria-details-on-its-battle-system-and-a-new-character-laiphaset/ I'm super excited for this, because the main character is a lady, and it seems like she has a dark past and some "beast" issues. Looks like she'll be fun to use in battle. Her outfit is totally ridiculous, which is a plus or minus depending on your sensibilities. (it's a plus for me, but these games usually give you costume options anyway). Graphically, it kind of looks exactly like Xillia did (and maybe Zestiria, but I haven't played that yet). Whatever, it doesn't bother me that much. Mostly excited for what looks like a "darker" tone. Yuri made Vesperia great for me because he straight up *SPOILER*murdered a dude*SPOILER*. Awesomeeeeee. ETA: Eh, they put a child character in. But it seems like he is not a normal kid, so I probably won't be too annoyed.

I forgot about this line. Now I know why Karasuna Mei's latest look (for Ankoku sekai wa yami) features him carrying a red backpack with long black hair hanging out of it.

No one's gonna read this but I'm bored at work and feel like writing out my feelings on the games I'm playing. Assassin's Creed: Syndicate (PS4) Surprisingly fun game, especially since I wasn't too impressed with last year's offering (Unity). As usual, I've spent a lot of time on side stuff instead of the main storyline. Currently in Sequence 7, but I'm already at max level. I love having a strong female protagonist to play as.. though the character development is lacking, so far. The ziplines and horse carriages offer the best traversal ever in this series, and the special combat finisher animations are ridiculously brutal, just the way I like it. Diabolik Lovers: Dark Fate (PS Vita) I was really into the first Diabolik Lovers, but not so much into the sequel More Blood, because they added too many romance-able characters (4 more for 10 in total) and I didn't like the dumb "Adam" storyline. Unfortunately, Dark Fate basically continues that storyline, while adding TWO MORE characters. Another issue I have is that, for the 10 returning characters, the heroine starts the game already in a relationship with them, so it's kind of... boring? She also kind of pisses me off because she's such a damsel in distress. And she overcomes her problems with the power of kindness and forgiveness. Ugh. This will be the last Diabolik Lovers game I buy. Most favourite dudes: Shuu, Subaru Least favourite dudes: Kanato, Azusa - I will straight up skip these guys' scenarios, they make my skin crawl in a bad way. Dragon's Crown (PS Vita) I don't really get the hype behind this game. Maybe it's more fun if you're playing it co-op, but I don't like doing that. The character design is mostly atrocious. I'm sure you've all seen the Sorceress and Amazon by now. I'm stuck playing as an Archer because she was the female option with the least offensive design. But aiming her arrows is terrible, it's hard to tell what "lane" I'm in, and I end up missing half the time. Maybe I just suck at it. Anyway, between having to repeat the same dungeons over and over, and sorting through tons of loot that is 90% trash, and the horrible AI for your party members... and the disgusting artwork of the half-naked mermaid & fairy that greet you every time you go through those dungeons.. I think I might give up on this game. Grow Home (PS4) I haven't put much time into this game, because it literally makes me nauseous. I don't know why. It's not even first person. Maybe it's the heights? Also I have a lot of trouble controlling the vines while growing them. Might be another one for the "abandon" pile. It's a shame because, aside from those problems, I like what it's doing. Bastion (PS4) Another game that is seriously hyped. It seems ok so far (probably 3-4 hours in), but I'm not in love with it. I put it on hold for Assassin's Creed, and I'm not sure if I'll go back to it. Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- (PS4) I haven't played this much at all. Never played any Guilty Gear before, but picked this up for $15 on PSN. I'm not a competitive fighting game player, I just like screwing around against AI sometimes. Played through some tutorial stuff and it looks nice so far. (I mostly bought it because I love how much I-no resembles/copies Shiina Ringo) Gems of War (PS4) I've been playing this on my iPhone for a long time. It has ZERO business being on PS4, but I'm playing it there for trophies. It's a F2P match-3 game from the makers of Puzzle Quest. It's a good, almost-brainless time-waster. -- Up next: Probably will start on Life is Strange, The Witcher 3, and Eiyuu Densetsu: Sen no Kiseki (aka Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, but I imported the Japanese version because the English one will only have the English dub, and I can no longer stand English dubs)

I played THE SHIT out of the SNES version of that game. I have no opinion on Ghibli movies. The only ones I have seen are Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away but I remember next to nothing about them. The Little Mermaid was the first movie I ever saw. My personal faves are probably Lion King and Mulan (because it's Asian themed).

Thus far, the only album I actually listened to is Grieva's. Which is a great pick. Shuuen was really lackluster but I feel like they've bounced back in a big way. This is why I didn't bother participating in the "predictions" thread.. I could barely even name 25 albums I listened to this year, let alone 25 albums I actually liked.

I didn't play a lot of games that actually released this year. I'm trying to "save" money, so I've been waiting for price drops. Especially now that most new AAA games in Canada cost $80...or $90 with tax. (they were $60+tax just 1-2 years ago) So.. I just went through my game list and there is ONLY ONE 2015 game I played that I would put on a GOTY list. Assassin's Creed: Syndicate Yeah, yeah, the series gets a lot of hate. I haven't even finished the main story, but really who cares about the story. I love traversing the city with the new zipline & horse carriages. Ruthlessly stabbing every police officer and rival gang member to death is just stupid fun. Big points for including a tough, strong female protagonist (whose default weapon is a badass cane sword). Throwing knives at enemies' heads and 1-shot killing them is also deeply satisfying. Best murder simulator I've played in a long time. Almost every other 2015 game I played was a very small indie game. They were fun and cute enough but not really GOTY material. I've got a number of bigger 2015 games in my backlog or "will buy when cheaper" list.

^ Yes that's basically what I was trying to say. (Except that I didn't like the aesthetics very much.) I didn't say anything bad about the story. The story was fine. I just didn't like playing as child characters, and the gameplay became a turn-off over the course of the game. I only mentioned it here because I'd heard rumours of Level 5 making a new PS4 JRPG for the past year or so, and I was hopeful it would be something different. Was kind of disappointed to hear "Ni No Kuni 2". Well, whatever, it's fine, lots of people loved the first game, I hope the second one is better. =)

Yeah, I knew it was involved with Studio Ghibli. However, at the time, the game was super hyped up, had good reviews, and I was desperate for a turn-based JRPG to play. I was willing to look past the art style. I paid like $100 to import it from Play-Asia with the physical hardcover book thing (this was before the English version was announced). I kind of had a good time with it in the beginning. .. but no one could have told me I would get frustrated with the slow pace & the difficulty spike at the end. And over the course of the game, I realized I don't like playing as children. Liking Ghibli movies or not has nothing to do with the gameplay itself. Now that I have a lot of other games to look forward to, I do not feel the need to get excited for Ni no Kuni 2. That's all I'm saying.

Just added type B to my order. I spend so much money on you, Ikuma.

OH so you're telling me i have to buy both types now??? >_< also, I just spent quite a bit of money to get that live limited single.

Only 10 tracks? And it looks like 3 old songs. Disappointing... The preview sounds good though. Umm not sure if this is a joke post... but this is a totally different "Reign" I wish bands would stop reusing band names.