Saturday, April 25, 2009

God Hand Teru, 1st Episode Impression

First episode of God Hand Teru has been subbed by TimeLesSub (Fansub FTW!). Apparently, this dorama is based form a manga of the same name. Teru is a young new doctor/surgeon in a top hospital. His dad is a brilliant surgeon, that people call him of having the God Hand. The first episode started just like any dorama. I thought this is going to be a J-dorama version of ER. Well, the realism is completely shattered on Teru's first surgery. Here, take a look: (make sure you watch in HQ)

First of all, there are a lot of pauses of silence and self thoughts during the surgery. In real life, the patient would've been dead from the get go. You don't see doctors pausing and having deep thoughts during surgery in ER. But okay, this is a dorama after all.
And then, bam, Teru's superpower is shown. I swear I saw him saying "Henshin!" Now, that is just too much. I mean come on. In the J-dorama Voice, Daiki, the main character, has an anime-like deductive power, but the CG effect is very minimal and within the context of the situation. God Hand Teru's surgery scene is just way too overblown, contrasting the rest of the dorama. Reminded me of the Nintendo DS game Trauma Center. Oh well, hopefully they don't recycle that lengthy fanservice "Henshin" scene too often.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

仮面ライダーダークカブト☆ゲッダン☆

Well, I decided to join in the Get Down meme, using a stop motion of Kamen Rider Dark Kabuto action figure. Enjoy:


This is my first attempt in making stop motion animation, and yeah, stop motion is quite tedious. Basically I took a couple pictures of the figure in different poses. At first, I tried iMovie09. Well, the meme requires the stop motion to be pretty fast. iMovie09 doesn't allow picture slideshow to be faster than 1 second per picture. The fast forward effect is not available for slideshows either. Tried iPhoto, no luck. Finally, I decided to dust up the old iMovie HD (iMovie06). Luckily I still keep a copy when Apple offered them for free. iMovie HD allows very short duration for pictures. Perfect. I created the stop motion video using iMovie HD, and did the final editing with everything else in iMovie09.

Monday, April 13, 2009

More Get Down ("ゲッダン") Internet Meme

LOL. This phenomena is more infectious that I thought. There are pretty much any anime characters you could think of doing this in Youtube. Everybody is doing it, and it's worldwide.
Let's start with George W Bush.

Even Kim Jong Il is getting down. LOL.

Get Down ("ゲッダン") Internet Meme

I can't believe I missed this. This is yet another internet video meme infecting youtube. It's started from somebody posting a glitch in the game GoldenEye for the Nintendo 64, where the characters and objects are spinning.
This is the original glitch video:

Well, somebody added a J-Pop song, Promise by Kohmi Hirose, and the result is hilarious!


Of course, knowing Japan, come the animation versions:

Oh, and don't forget the double Lockon Stratos version. I can't stop laughing.


And, typical Japanese, they have to make the real live action versions.


OMG, this is just hilarious. Oh yeah, the guy on the top left corner is naked... LOL.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Wonton soup 4 lunch


Wonton soup 4 lunch, originally uploaded by pika2000.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Sakura-con 2009 Day 1

Day 1 of Sakura-con 2009. My first 2 hours was pretty much wasted waiting in line to pick up my badge, and I pre-registered already. The regular registration line must be worse. The line was DAMN LONG! The line in 2008 wasn't this long. I even saw a lady freaking out, bitching to one of the staff that she already waited too long and wanted to cut in line. LOL. To make matter worse, they announced that their credit/debit machine broke down. I almost felt a riot was coming. After I left, the line was even longer. Not a good start.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Kamen Rider Decade Funny Clips

Natsumikan is probably Decade's most powerful enemy.

To be honest, I'm getting disappointed with Decade.
1. In the 1st episode, Seto Koji appeared, reprising his role as Wataru. As a fan, that makes me think they might bring the main casts form the previous series, making Decade like a reunion series, like the annual Super Sentai versus where new casts meet the old casts. Alas, that's not the case. So far, all the other Rider's world are alternate universe, and no cameos at all. Even Kiva's world episodes didn't have Seto Koji in it. Forget about Mizushima Hiro returning as Kabuto then, he's probably too busy with his new marriage and movie. Also, no Takeru Sato in the Super Den-O and Decade movie either. No Kento Handa in the Faiz world either (even though he appeared in Go-Onger).
2. Kamen Rider Decade started with a bang, the Rider War. All the special effects and CG you can think of is in the 1st episode. Fast forward, now they have to use a freakin in-animated toy for Kivala. It was so obvious that it's just a toy with a string. Very embarrassing for a show that have been using CGs heavily, especially for the Final From Ride transformations.
3. Decade can use a Final Form Ride card, and "transform" any of the riders into a weapon or some sort. WTF? It's just weird. This is not Transformers. This is obviously a ploy to sell toys.

The belt is very neat though, but you have to buy the other toys to get more cards.
Good thing that Shinkenger seems to be a better show.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

A Walk in the Park

Couple days ago, I went to a local park to test drive my Fuji F200EXR digicam. Here's two quick slideshow I did with iPhoto09 & iMovie 09. Make sure to go to youtube and watch the HD versions of the slideshow.
HD links: Slideshow 1, Slideshow 2.


On the second slideshow, I also put in videos taken with my Samsung MX20 camcorder. iMovie09 is simply awesome. It can produce pretty high quality videos with only a couple of clicks. For example, the picture-in-picture feature, something that I thought is only available in pro software.


Notes:
I created the slideshow with iPhoto09 first. However, iPhoto09 doesn't do the music very well. It cannot fade-out the music at the end of the slideshow, resulting in an abrupt end. So I exported the slideshow as a 720p quicktime video without music, and then used iMovie09 to add the music. iMovie09 itself has different themes for slideshow, but I like the once in iPhoto09.