enyx

I'm in Japan at the moment to see a downy concert and while I was here I decided to go check out the Budokan since I was in the area. Actually had no idea the ARCHE lives were this weekend, so I was pretty surprised when I found myself surrounded by fans queuing up so early in the day xD

Yeah, not feeling this at all. It's weird how his songwriting has degenerated into something so... lazy. Hard to think that this is the same guy that wrote songs like シャンディ, mib126, film A moment, etc.

I'm listening to TK's unravel and actually enjoying it. What the fuck is happening?

Going to dig through the releases you guys have posted since I personally didn't find anything interesting this month. 새벽's EP was okay but weaker than her first (which itself was just 'decent'). The only other notable thing I listened to was Dream Theater's album, which was only notable for being so monotonous that it made me want to gouge my eyes out.

Started playing The Witness. My brain hurts already.

For a band like Dream Theater that is 34 songs too many.

I'm on the 20th track right now and it's so bland that it's actually difficult to keep listening. Can't believe this is the same band that once wrote stuff like this.

Dream Theater's new album has 34 tracks and is over two hours long. The fuck...

New 雨のパレード is pretty nice. I tend to find this band rather "meh" overall but they have some solid tracks here and there. This is probably my favourite song by them since ペトリコール. Hopefully the b sides are good too.

밀당 (mildang) is the most annoying thing ever.

"Players Book" just makes it sound like they're giving us tips on how to pick up chicks at the bar or something.

This has basically become my new favourite channel on Youtube.

Recently saw the artwork for Braids' Flourish // Perish and thought it was absolutely brilliant. It's a very good description of the album's overall sound & vibe.

Some other album artworks that I'm fond of include:

Dream Theater - Octavarium 

The whole album is written around the idea of an octave and is absolutely filled with references to the numbers 8 and 5 (mirroring the 8 naturals and 5 accidentals found in each octave). The cover itself is only half of the full image, in which the eight balls represent the naturals while the five birds represent the accidentals (basically mirroring the layout of a piano). The album is also built around the idea of things going in cycles and repeating endlessly, hence the Newton's Cradle. On top of that stuff, I just really love the general feel of the artwork.

THE NOVEMBERS - Rhapsody in beauty

school food punishment - Riff-rain

While Ling's been rough as of recently, TK's last solo album was actually pretty great imo. I think he found a good balance between his Ling style and and newer, more approachable sound with it, so I hope he keeps on developing it (although it does make me apprehensive he might just churn out some full-on pop numbers, but whatever).

I have to disagree. Personally I found Fantastic Magic almost as disappointing as es or s, especially after flowering. There were some decent tracks here and there but overall it felt very lazily put together; almost as if the majority of the tracks were rushed or just churned out to fill a tracklist quota. Just my opinion though. That said, however, the few songs I have enjoyed from his post-2012 material have all come from his solo project (Acoustic Installation, Crazy Tampern, Skinkiro), so hopefully there will be one or two good tracks here too.

Anyway, here's his new promo image.

To help de-clutter this thread please use the last.fm image voting thread for that.

http://www.monochrome-heaven.com/index.php/topic/29324-the-lastfm-image-voting-thread/?hl=%2Bimage+%2Bvoting+%2Bthread

I actually forgot that thread existed. My bad.

^ Yeah, Zeus hit the nail on the head with regards to last.fm really focusing on the wrong aspects of their site. More stats and stuff pls

Anyway, would you guys mind voting up sukekiyo's new look?

http://www.last.fm/music/sukekiyo/+images/67441f234ef9a43fc8478fa2f5aeb384

For stuff with specific release dates:

01.26 새벽 - Division

01.29 Dream Theater - The Astonishing

02.03 Hiromi Uehara - SPARK

02.10 Kie Katagi - Serendipity

03.02 TK from 凛として時雨 - Secret Sensation

If we're also including releases that have been announced but don't have release dates yet, then add:

Death Grips - Bottomless Pit

유카리 - [TBA]

I never fucked pho

This is news to me.

and the other characters being one-dimensional/adding little to the plot. 

I never fully understood this argument. I thought most of the characters were surprisingly well characterised considering the fact that they weren't the main focus of the story. For example:

Watch these three cut-scenes concerning the subplot regarding Vayne usurping power in Archades and notice how well each of the characters are developed.

 

 

From these three cutscenes alone you're able to get a pretty good grasp of each character's personalities & motivations and how different they are from each other despite all occupying similar roles in the story. For example:

 

Vayne: Ruthless, cold, calculating. He places ends above means and isn't afraid to bloody his hands to achieve his goals. When he identifies a problem (the senate, Drace) he immediately seeks to eliminate them via whatever means possible. Yet despite that he's also compassionate towards his younger brother and seems to have a strange sort of respect for his father (I always took that middle scene to be Gramis tacitly consenting to his murder rather than Vayne backstabbing him).

Bergan: Values power above all else. Essentially realpolitik personified. Idolizes Vayne and others that he found to be powerful warriors (Zecht). But despite his ruthlessness he's also extremely loyal to Archadia and largely seems to base his beliefs on the idea that power and strength are what's most important for the empire to prosper, so there's a sort of honourable and loyal aspect to him too.

Zargabaath: Pragmatic and rational. He seems to be more loyal to the empire itself than to Vayne, but doesn't believe that challenging Vayne is in the empire's best interests. He tries to stop Drace from speaking out against Vayne but also begs Vayne to spare her, which makes it seem like he values order and stability above ideological irrationality.

Drace: Kind of the opposite of both Bergan and Zargabaath. The former in the sense that she supports Larsa and opposes Vayne, and the latter in that she's extremely ideological and seems like the least rational of the bunch. She's honourable to a fault, and when she loses faith in the Empire she's willing to die at Gabranth's hands rather than fight what she considers a lost cause.

Gabranth: Conflicted and confused regarding his loyalties. Closest to Drace due to their preference for Larsa, and formerly close to Gramis. Seems to constantly be trying to get the approval of his superiors but feels disrespected. Obviously his backstory and later character development expands more on most of this.

Considering how some of those characters aren't even all that important overall (i.e. Drace and Zargabaath), it's cool to see how distinct and unique they are. Most writers would have written the Judges in particular as effectively the same character with just a different name and armour set, but here they all have there own personalities that I wouldn't exactly call one-dimensional.

Anyway, the only thing I never beat in FFXII was Omega Mark XII.

Have you played The Witcher 3? That's very quickly become my favourite WRPGs and honestly one of my favourite games of any genre. The previous two games are pretty good too, but the third takes the WRPG 'genre' to a whole new level in my honest opinion. It's not quite as sandboxy as Bethesda's games tend to be, but the quality of the writing, the scale and density of the world, and pretty much every aspect aside from the combat (which is passable, at least) is absolutely stellar.

Are we including SRPGs in here too? If so then I'd love to mention the original Valkyria Chronicles (PS3, PC, and soon PS4). Despite it's anime-ish aesthetic and occasional cheesiness it's probably one of the most mature games you'll play in a lot of respects. It's a lot like games such as Final Fantasy IX and Metal Gear Solid 3 in the sense that, since it doesn't always take itself too seriously, it's able to disarm you and leave you unprepared or its more serious moments. It somehow manages to sneak in themes of racism, ambiguous political morality, and genocide/ethnic cleansing at the same time that it presents you with a flying pig mascot character who's only role in the game is to act cute and say "moink!" (seriously). On the gameplay front it's one of the few SRPGs in a long time to actually try to push the genre forward; getting rid of the grid system and adding in real-time elements (i.e. interception fire), while also featuring some really brilliant level design. It also has a brilliant Hitoshi Sakimoto soundtrack, which is always a plus. Unfortunately its two sequels on the PSP are just lazy cashgrabs, but the original is really worth playing IMO. Play either the PC or upcoming PS4 version if you can.

Hallelujah! It's so rare to see a XII fan these days, it makes me sad. I feel like the game gets a bad rep almost entirely because it didn't follow the storyline conventions of previous titles in the franchise, but if you're willing to look past the fact that the character that you control in towns isn't the central pillar of the story (or indeed, that there isn't a main character at all), or that it places more emphasis on political intrigue and ambiguous morality, then it's honestly one of the best video game stories out there IMO. As much as I love a lot of them, I find most Final Fantasy games tend to dumb down a lot of storyline aspects in order to place the emphasis on the emotional development of one or two central characters. Final Fantasy XII did basically the opposite and as such I think a lot of people didn't really know how to approach it or went in with misguided expectations. Also cool to see you giving Tactics a mention.

do their albums come out in november?

Yes. Also they only play shows in November and their birthdays are all in November.

On a more serious note, lately I've been thinking that アマレット would be a really good song for them to remake sometime. Like 'アマレット (Parallel Ver,)' or something. The original song has some really nice things going for it like Matsumoto's guitar line (1:33 <3) and the overall song structure and vibe, but I also feel that their weaknesses from their early career are really noticeable in this song. Koba hadn't really developed into the quality vocalist he is today which always puts me off whenever the song ramps up (e.g. 2:30). I dunno, I just think they could do a much better job with it today than they were able to back then. Anyone else think the same?

Do I go to Japan in the week where I can see downy (one-man) or the week where I can see THE NOVEMBERS (playing with some other band I don't care about)? I'm leaning towards downy.

EDIT: I chose downy.

HEALTH, SILICA GEL, and SARAM12SARAM are all intriguing prospects, so I plan on checking them out eventually.

For some reason I think you'd really enjoy the HEALTH album. It was a hard one to choose a sample song for because there are quite a few killer tracks on there;  MEN TODAY and COURTSHIP II are both pretty brilliant too. 

Senpai included one of my recommendations on his year-end list? I feel so accomplished.

Solid list overall! Not surprisingly there are quite a few similarities between our lists. In addition to those I was really close to including 宮内優里's album on mine as well, in fact he was on my first draft for the list and I only took him off at the last minute. The only thing that stopped me being that, as you mentioned yourself, it's still pretty much interchangeable with the rest of his discography. I enjoyed it a lot but I could just as easily recommend any of his other works in its place. I never checked out that Ropes album even though it was on my radar a while. Perhaps I should give it a shot after all.

Also, whatever site you're linking to just gives me a Korean censor warning, yay for Korean internet restrictions.

griffith is dat u ???

Dunno who that is, but the answer is yes.