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Omonomono Newsletter, 2021-02-22

The experiment continues.

RIP Daft Punk? But the Clock of the Cinderella never stops ticking.

The real joke is RIP Daft Punk vinyl prices. Ye gads.

This Past Week

I talked about D4DJ First Mix in general but finally, Waipa talks about his work in the anime! It’s in this week’s D4DJ presents Peaky P-key no SaichoutenMix. Miyu and DJ Wildparty have met from way back, and it’s rare that these DJ gets the backstory spilled out this way. The full thing is available free: here (need VPN or region-bypass plugin for Radiko), or check it out on Spotify, Amazon or Apple podcast.

I was able to catch some of Bloom, the Hololive idol concert thing. Really not that bad, but this is at the same level where I can see how some other groups (namely: well-stocked Chinese companies and vtubers) can do just as good if not better of a job. But it’s evaluating the situation backwards to think that, I think. At some level this is the way a properly postmodern regurgitation would feel like. It’s easy to look at the output and say how it would be written as a SQL statement, but the management and creation of the database is magnitude harder. That said, I am not really familiar or vested in the the characters (and maybe not even the performers) so it really is not that appealing. But then again…this is its own thing that will appeal to certain folks.

Hosoda’s new film gets a sneak peek here.

Hironobu Kageyama’s birthday was 2/18! More over, check out this video talking about JAM Project 20th anniversary and their new docufilm. For some reason they got Angela’s Atsuko and Masayoshi Oishi as MC–anisong’s biggest shittalkers. Sure is weird. Also this article IN ENGLISH!

Checking out on Zaiko was the eufonius anniversary concert stream and it was pretty chill and got all the hits. A bit short but also pretty spot on. That falsetto sure is something.

On the Mind

I had a lot of good memories surrounding the Crest series–Crest of the Stars, and then the Banner of the Stars. They are a series of SF novels from Hiroyuki Morioka. If you copied the form of LOGH and made it more superficially interesting in line with modern popular SF, this will be what you get kinda. It’s infrastructural, it’s a bit 40k in space, it’s about relationships that otaku will care about. While the anime adaptations have come and went for over 20 years (goddamn it has been that long?) the light novels recently have been rebooted by EN localizers J-Novel Club. In fact they have been retranslated and it has made past volume 3 of Banner, which IIRC was how far the original official EN translation went. Volume 5 just recently came out, with part 1 of volume 6 in prepub.

Sunday nights anime watching has becoming a bit of an experience this season, between Attack on Titan Season 4 and Mushoku Tensei. While I never did the GoT thing on Sundays, I get that same vibe with these two. I just don’t get the “water-cooler” talk for these shows. It’s like you either get smug light novel/manga types or very, very deep and wide pool of plebs like myself enjoying the ride. Unfortunately many don’t watch the shows right as they come out.

Lots of event backlogs this week, despite being more of a light weekend for most. Going to churn through that…maybe catch the 8bitstory BAC show?

Was there supposed to be a Kurocon announcement? LOL.

Coming up in a couple days is the launch of the long-awaited Umamusme mobile game (which will be on iOS, Android, and DMM/PC). Watch the launch live stream?

Events

Zombieland Saga streaming event on 2/27. Then they have a stage at Anime Japan, which is all virtual, at end of March.

The big show this weekend is LisAni Live 2021. I probably will try my best to watch it all real time, but we’ll see. Unlike Animax Musix, anyone can watch these, no geo restrictions. Of course, CG and ML are representing so that makes it a no-brainer.

May’n is celebrating her 15th anniversary this year and she is doing 5 monthly concert streams. Saturday is her 2nd one.

Taketatsu Ayana is doing 3 showings on Sunday. It’s an online concert but, well, it’s Ayachi style.

Asaka and Yurucamp is a winning combination this weekend, too.

Personal Note

The extremely cold temps hitting Texas (cold for Texas) causing power outages affected me also indirectly, because of friends and family out there in the cold. Learning about the details of this is just extremely sad. Say what you will about how authoritarian governments and communism can make countries ineffective internationally because so much energies and overhead spent on dealing with polity, there’s something to be said when unregulated rampant greed dressed as capitalistic policy undermines a nation’s fundamentals. The money it cost to fortify the Texan power grid against cold is a tiny fraction of costs inflicted on blackouts of numerous factories and interruptions of businesses. Worse, almost the exact same thing happened 10 years ago. If the government isn’t willing to fairly referee and revise the rule book for the best net outcome, it is it still even capitalism? This is literally the case of spending a big fortune to make a small one, just backwards. [BTW, that’s a saying I learned from Everquest (any Enchanters…), thanks Log Horizon.]

The scary thing is how a certain philosophy of greed has really taken hold the momentum for change in the US government. It’s one thing for Texas to struggle with this, but the fear is it will merely be a reflection of other crises the country have to deal with in advance, that nothing happens even after those bad events happen.

In a lighter note, Priconne Fest came and went–it’s the first in-person type festival the series has had. Too bad the live concert segment was postponed? Bummer. This past week was pretty crazy for me on PriconneR just because of the EN new level cap, event, and the festivities in JP. Now there’ll be horses on the plate… Ugh

Long Reads

Budding sensation of the Hanshin Tigers talks about it in English. Jerry Sands plays the outfield and the fans enjoy this emotional guy on the field (for NPB standards), aside from his raking. Anyways, this NC native kind of made the meme circuit in 2020. Like many hitting prospects of the modern era, they’re kinda, uh, chonk.

And then, there’s this short one.

Somewhat more on topic, here is the TL for Noriko Hidaka’s Famitsu interview having reaching 40 years in the biz as of 2020. There are 2 parts, and the same person is translating the interview for Kouhei Tanaka also in the same issue (and also 40yrs).