natto ripped her nail again. right hand this time, also index finger. T_T natto was opening windows...

having nothing to do, i also started a live journal... i think i'll post my ribon stuff and lyrics translation up there...

indiko.com seems to have upgraded their services, but i can't seem to upgrade my account... ~_~ i haven't received any word from them. i use it to store the images for this site and i also have some stuff up there... maybe i'll email them. メールするのって ちょっと怖いなんて...

oh, and i heard melocure's melodic hard cure~! XD i was afraid to get my expectations up, but i wasn't disappointed at all. but of course, natto would never be disappointed of anything by okazaki ritsuko. natto will always find a way to like it. ^^ well, if you liked the stuff melocure has previously released, then you're sure to enjoy this album. of the new songs, i liked "pop step jump!", "kogarashi no hodou o hana no saku haru o", "sunday sundae" and "rainbow kind of feeling". i like that title, "rainbow kind of feeling," how cute. the songs are cute. and hinata megumi sounds cute talking in english. ^_^

--natto

time for a random lyric translation! ;p no, natto was never good at this, and still isn't... i think i was a little too ambitious to choose this song, but it's one of my favourites by kajiura yuki, and i've always wanted to try my hand at translating it... so here you go! the insert song of kidou senshi gundam seed, "akatsuki no kuruma":

暁の車
作詞・作曲・編曲：梶浦由紀
歌：FictionJunction featuring YUUKA （南里侑香）
the wheels of dawn
lyrics/music/arrange: Kajiura Yuki
vocal: FictionJunction featuring YUUKA (Nanri Yuuka)

風さそう木陰に附せて泣いてる
見も知らぬ私を私が見ていた
逝く人の調べを奏でるギターラ
来ぬ人の嘆きに星は落ちて
the wind calls, in the shade of the trees, i lie face down in tears
i saw my own self that i don't even recognize
the guitar plays a tune for the dead
the stars fall in grief of the absent

行かないで、どんなに叫んでも
オレンジの花びら静かに揺れるだけ
やわらかな額に残された
手のひらの記憶遥か
とこしえのさよならつま弾く
no matter how i scream "don't go"
orange petals just flutter in silence
remaining on that tender forehead
distant memories from my palm
strumming an eternal goodbye

優しい手にすがる子供の心を
燃えさかる車輪は振り払い進む
逝く人の嘆きを奏でてギターラ
胸の糸激しく掻き鳴らして
clinging to a child's heart with gentle hands
the blazing wheels shake off
the guitar plays a lament for the dead
strumming furiously on the strings of my heart

哀しみに染まらない白さで
オレンジの花びら揺れてた夏の影に
やわらかな額を失くしても
赤く染めた砂遥か越えて行く
さよならのリズム
with whiteness that won't dye in sorrow
orange petals fluttered in the shadow of summer
even if i lose that tender forehead
the rhythm of goodbye
will cross the distant red-dyed sands

思い出を焼き尽くして進む大地に
懐かしく芽吹いて行くものがあるの
trudging through the lands, burning memories
there's something dear growing

暁の車を見送って
オレンジの花びら揺れてる今も何処か
いつか見た安らかな夜明けを
もう一度手にするまで
消さないで灯火
車輪は廻るよ
let the wheels of dawn go
orange petals flutter off somewhere, even now
someday, until the tranquil dawn i saw
comes to hand again
don't extinguish the light
the wheels turn

i haven't seen any of the show to relate the song with, unless you count the suit cds that only give depth to the characters (and plenty of ishida akira-sama XD), but it's a really nice, sad song to listen, although i don't really understand what the "kuruma" or the "orenji no hanabira" refer to...

anyway, i'm eagerly looking forward to fictionjunction yuuka's first single! i think i'll like nanri yuuka much more than chiba saeko. well, chiba saeko isn't bad, but... i don't know, her voice just doesn't seem to be "powerful" enough to deliver kajiura's songs, in my opinion. say, since both chiba saeko and nanri yuuka are part of tiaraway, wouldn't it be nice if kajiura yuki would produce some of their music? :) and about fictionjunction yuuka, kajiura says they dropped the "featuring" from the name (that they used for this song) because the name was long. ^^

oh, i miss see-saw! i hope they'll come up with something new soon. i've heard ishikawa chiaki's inner garden not long ago. it certainly is not see-saw, especially since none of music was produced by kajiura yuki -- in fact, ishikawa composed her own music. i thought it sounded very like ishikawa chiaki... in some way, if you know what i mean (??). ^^ my favourites are "kasa ni irete yo", "tokyo no panorama" and, of course, "like an angel". :)

--natto

they finally added content!

it doesn't look so bad... here's the voice cast for aishiteruze baby (my romanization may be off..):

=katakura household=
sakashita yuzuyu: Tsuzurahara Miyuu
katakura kippei: Fujita Daisuke
katakura ryouko (nee-chan): Endou Kumiko
katakura satsuki: Suzuki Masami
katakura misako (kippei's mom): Okohira Shizuka

=kippei's clssmates=
tokunaga kokoro: Hara Fumina
motoki mai: Ooura Fuyuka
kagami aki: Saitou Maki
nattsu: Kawase Akiko
tabata shin: Ueki Makoto
tsuchiya kazuhiro: Suzuki Tatsuhisa

=etc=
ken-kun (yuzuyu's friend): Honjou Yuutarou
sakashita miyako (yuzuyu's mom): Hirano Chie

hmmm... marika's voice actress isn't listed yet.. well, i'm not familiar with any of them, except maybe suzuki masami. i heard that the girl who plays yuzuyu is only 9... i'd love to hear how nee-chan sounds like! :p the theme songs are sung by hitoto you. i'm not familiar with those people in the animation staff, so i won't bother to jot them down. sorry. ~_~

uuu, i still haven't gotten ribon 4.... ;_;

instead my father brought home d.n.angel 3 and tsubasa reservoir chronicle 4! XD d.n.angel is so so so great~~ XD i was reluctant to get it at first, but am i sure glad i did in the end! my first volume was volume 9.. o.o wiz (whiz? with? ..whatever) is so cute~ i love how he calls daisuke "daisuki". ^^ and daisuke, i like too! ^^ you know, the part about a thief wanted for stealing works of art is kind of similar to kamikaze kaitou jeanne... too identical, if you ask me. i wonder if either of them was influenced by the other, or whether their similarities were simply pure coincidence? d.n.angel started first, but then, tanemura arina had submitted a story something like jeanne to ribon before she debuted... regardless of this, both stories developed their plot in a unique, different way.

about tsubasa... well, at first it was weird to see the card captor sakura characters in shounen style. i mean, back then clamp drew the manga entirely in thin lines. but the more i see it, the more i find the current style much suitable -- this is a shounen manga after all. the style is kind of similar to that of angelic layer and chobits... i like it. rough style for the action scenes, yet it carries an elegant aura for the fancy flowery scenes. as for the story line... well, it's rather ordinary, actually. syaoran, fai and kurogane are your typical save-the-day heroes, sakura is the damsel in distress and then you have mokona for the series' cute animal mascot. nothing new. but i'll still read on to see how sakura and syaoran's relationship turn out -- i was kind of sad when sakura remembered a birthday party but syaoran's seat was empty, and how his name is ommitted from the dialogues... plus, the real bad guys still haven't jumped in on the heroes! and i'll also read for kurogane! kurogane is cool cool cool!! *hearts* that was so sweet of him when he said he'd only fight for tomoyo-hime. XD and watch him fight~~~ XDDDD

aaanyway, i bought the paperback edition, which comes with a nice feb-jun calender with a picture of the boys. guess i'll have to get xxxholic 3 for the girls (and maybe the rest of the calender..?). i've heard people complain that tsubasa would've been better off with original characters. well, i think it's a very clever way of promoting their older works and guarantee that this sells well. ^^;; and as a fan of clamp's previous series, it is rather nice to see them spring back to life. i hope clamp isn't limited to including the characters that are only from kodansha-published series though... but if you want originality, definitely check out xxxholic. it's more about fate, fortune-telling and all that superstitious stuff. i like this much better. :)

you know, all that parallel world travelling reminds me of that webcomic strange candy, although strange candy is a complete different story from tsubasa. ^^;; speaking of which, i think haven't read it for so long....

--natto

i recently downloaded what i thought to be *.mp3 files, but it turned out to *.mpc. oooh, what are mpc files? the winamp player i had wouldn't play them, but i figured that it's probably because i had an old version. so i hopped over to winamp's site to download the new version, but it still wouldn't play... ~_~ i later found out that all i needed was a plugin to play mpc files and that there was no need to update my player. T_T uuu...

but now i can play them, and all ends well. i intended to encode the mpc files into mp3 but i'm just plain lazy~. and besides, it'll lose a lot more quality with all that decompressing and compressing, or so i heard. actually though, i don't really care about quality... well, okay, so maybe i do, but not to the extreme -- anything above 128kb bitrate works fine for me. my ears really can't tell the difference in the music quality, although it can easily pick up those beeps and other error noises. then when i listen to the smooth error-free music, i'll be expecting to here that error noise. it's really annoying. ~_~

hey, winamp 5 is really pretty~! i really hated winamp 3, but version 5 is sweet! the lite version should suffice for my music necessities, but i downloaded the full one anyway, just so i could have the modern skins. :) they're nice! it kinda reminds me of the mac interface. i wish it came with a *lime green* and *pink* color scheme to match the colors of my desktop scheme, which i made to go with haruta nana's "saboten no himitsu" wallpaper from ribon wakuwaku station~. *_* but my computer is just_so_slow for me to use the modern skin, and it keeps crashing when i do. so i'm stuck with the good ol' traditional. :(

oh, speaking of which, i really like "saboten no himitsu"! haruta nana writes good, funny shoujo stuff. :) maybe i'll translate it sometime.

and i opened this some time ago.... :) please visit! ....um, i was thinking that it was about high time that i got a web designing program or something. -_- i also need to install photoshop... and maybe change this layout. but i dunno, i kinda like it. still haven't gotten sick of it. yet. :p

--natto

having your nail being broken is not fun. no, i couldn't care less about manicures -- heck all my nails could be all chipped at once and i'd still ignore them. what i'm talking about here is having your nail being ripped from the flesh of your finger just because it got stuck on a stray thread from, say, the cushion of a frayed old dining chair that has become a favorite scratching post of the cats. that's what happened to the nail of the index finger of my stupid left hand. what *was* it thinking?? **whacks natto's stupid left hand**

well, it doesn't hurt much. not unless i forget to take in register of the activity of my left hand and let it swing about and have that particular finger brush against something that could make it bleed (a carpet for instance.. yeah, that happened). otherwise, it doesn't hurt much. yet. i guess it's not so bad. i mean, the nails on my left hand's fingers are too long, and i don't mean long nails that you can clip off -- the long part here is the flesh part. it makes nail-cutting sessions a nightmare, especially when i have to get my thumbnail short. there are times when blood emerges... uuuu~~~

moving along...

not long ago i visited the official site for "shinchou kyouryo ~ codor hero" anime (or legend of the condor hero... and "shediao xialu" in chinese, i think..?), and noticed that it was broadcasted on axn. i figured it was only on axn japan since i'd never seen it yet, but then not long afterward i see the local axn asia advertising the show on tv! i couldn't believe it. i was thrilled.

at first.

axn asia has just finished airing all 26 episodes, and as the last seconds of the animated tale rolled on, i was staring open-mouthed, thinking, "wha? that's it?? they didn't even bother to finish the story??" you won't believe how incredibly disappointed i was! how could they have butchered up a perfectly incredible story and then serve us with this... this... horrible thing!! okay, so it's not that bad, but still it's, well, terrible. ~_~ poor story adaption and script, unattractive character designs, primitive and unimpressive animation, plain background music... as for the cast, well, i can't say, having not paid much attention... and axn took out the text from the op and ed credits... even the episodes get no title! how could they do that?? the only reason to have, and even see for that matter, the op/ed sequence is so that the enslaven staff and workers behind the scenes could for less than 5 seconds have their names in limelight, backed by glorious music, to pay off all their hard work, and for us, viewers, to take the moment to honour them. ...oh well, that's axn's fault. the one thing i really liked is the op and ed theme songs, however. ^^ but overall, the anime was mediocre and a total let down for those who loved the original. for 26 episodes, i guess it would impossible to squeeze the whole story into the production. but i suppose it is a good thing that they didn't animate the rest of it or they'd mess up the entire tale.

it's not like i've actually read the original novel though. not with my ignorance of the chinese language is that possible. an english translation of jin yong's masterpiece probably exists somewhere out there, but i have yet to obtain such. the very least i managed to get was an english translation of comic adaption (it was titled "legend of the condor heroes"... i wonder why they made the hero plural..?), drawn by wee tian beng with help from a very talented staff -- that's how i was first introduced to the story. i remember that day when i was in the bookstore, disgruntled about having nothing new to buy -- no way was i walking out of a bookstore empty-handed! i just *had* to purchase something! that was when this comic caught my eye -- and am i sure glad it did! i instantly fell in love with the story and went all out to get all 18 volumes! well, you could say that in the first place what attracted me to the story was the beautifully drawn illustrations that gave life and soul to the story. by flipping through, you can tell just how much hard work and effort was put into recreating this epic tale. it makes me wonder whether i would still be fondly attached to this tale if i'd gotten it first in pure text or some other poor adaption. after this comic i've caught glimpses of one of the tv drama adaptions and wasn't all that impressed (although that's probably because i didn't manage to catch the whole show from start to finish ;_;), and then this japanese animatation came along... each time i see some part of the story that another adaption lacked. i don't which to believe... which one is truer to the original? uuuu~~ i want the novel! should i take up chinese just so that i can read it (i learnt japanese just so i could understand manga and anime after all...)? but first i'll need the book! anyway...

nonetheless, i still love the comic over the others. although after rereading it, i realized that a lot of parts had been omitted out and some events rearranged, yet the comic still manages to string and weave the plot in a very interesting way to accompany the amazing art that it makes you never want to put the book down. if you liked the story, then you definitely must check out this comic adaption -- that is, unless you already have. i bought them some years ago though. i wonder if asiapac still publishes it?

come to think about it, wouldn't "condor hero" make a wonderful movie -- if some rich movie production that is willing to put in a lot of effort and money into filming it were to do it? it is kinda long, but hey, someone made the lord of the rings movie happen. and that "crouching tiger hidden dragon" movie did make a name in the u.s., so why not "condor hero"? ....which makes me wonder, has anyone ever adapted it into a movie before in hong kong or taiwan or something...?

whoa, wrote one paragraph too many there. off to sleep natto goes~

(right, i'm still staying up late... =_=)

--natto

still not asleep... =_=

ooh, since when were there cds based on yazawa ai's nana? there's this and this! ..too tired to look up for official sites, so those links will do. are they real punk music? *_* what does punk sound like anyway? well, the cds are also available at amazon japan

just thought it was cool ;p

--natto

i should stop pulling all-nighters. staying awake all night makes me sugar high hyper in the mornings... i don't understand why. o_o

my father presented me paradise kiss #5 just now. wai~! XD but the only problem is, uh... i can't read, like, half of the furigana-less kanji in the book. T_T i have a couple other furigana-less manga on shelf that i've kinda shyed away from... including, chobits, xxxholic, and the zero-sum comics version of saiyuki. ~_~ well, actually i did breeze through the clamp ones, whether i understood the word or not, hee~, but parakiss has more 'harder' words. i already have enough trouble trying to understand the furigana-included nana... uuu~~ anyway, about parakiss #5, is that the final volume? there was "the end" printed on the last page, and upon seeing that i was reluctant to flip through the pages anymore so as not to spoil anything... aww how could it end so soon?? ;_; well, at least there's nana. apart from that, i wonder what else is yazawa ai working on?

nya~ gotta catch up on some zzzs~

--natto

うううぅ~~~っ...

すごくお久しぶり！！ ．．．みたいよね？ いいえ、本当だ！ 今まで何があったのかな ナットは．．．

oh well, natto's back. maybe. i think.

time to get a move on.....

--natto