I realize that it is difficult to separate one cultural realm from the other. I’m sorry. That is how things work. While the first part of this Blogling about music (here) presented an awful lot of video game music, this one will unabashedly start with music video games.

Nearly a decade before Guitar Hero had American teenagers experience the power of rock and Rock Band subsequently brought their families together for some wild weekend jamming to Bon Jovi on the weekend, Japanese dorks had Beatmania. In Beatmania, you are a club DJ whose mission in life is to rock the crowd. Armed with 5 keys and a turntable, you need to reconstruct the song that is playing and to keep tha headz ringin’. For that, you get money. The songs in the game were either original or remixes developed expressly for Konami by more or less renowned artists in genres ranging from soul to “hard tekno.” Not too shabby. Remember this was originally an arcade game, then picture yourself rocking a virtual crowd by yourself in a middle of an actual crowd.

After that, the game was ported on the Playstation and Game Boy Color and even had its own portable console. Several Beatmania cabinets were created along the years with fresh tracklisting and updated graphics, the line was nicknamed “Bemani games” by Konami who laughed at the fat kids all their way to the bank and went on to design Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Freaks and Drum Mania. Of course these have all the ingredients to attain cult status and Bemani arranges are still wildly popular (and wildly frowned upon by the copyright holders).

Until a few years ago, I really had no idea about the pervasiveness of these games. Then during the second or third Hado Channel party (more on that in a second), the chat room became animated over this thing they called “Stepmania.” I inquired. These young minds came from a message board called BemaniStyle. It turns out, some Smartypant had released an open-source emulator of DDR, played on the keyboard. Open-source meant that with a little bit of knowhow, you could put any song in the world into the game and dance your fingertips away.
Hado Channel is an online rave party that now spans several nights, with back to back DJs from the J-trance, J-core and gabber persuasion. Of course, shit got real, real fast.

The track in this video is made by m1dy, the man is a kōjin (個人サー) or one-man dōjin. I will probably profile him at some point or another. I hold gabber dear to my heart. I grew up close to the Belgian border and a really stones throw away from Rotterdam – when my friends drove to Amsterdam to sample the vegetation, I had to hop along for the ride and stomp the night away. Gabber is what many people Stateside will call “hardcore techno,” but it has a very specific proletarian/fraternal ethics. Gabbers shave their heads, often wear military gear and braces; at first glance they’re not very different from skinheads. What you may not notice if you’re not paying attention is how sample-heavy, dorky and subversive gabber is. I certainly didn’t realize how much sampling of 80s music, Detroit house, dutch pop and exploitation movies was going at the time I was the most involved in this scene. Then came all the jumpstyle/hardstyle kids (and college) and I kind of lost interest (also I found a refuge in breakcore). All this to say that in addition to the 300+ bpm range making the music unfit for commercial distribution, clearing rights for gabber simply cannot happen – which is why the dōjin format is basically tailor made for it.

First dudes I heard came out of Osaka and quickly it spread to the rest Japan, for a discipline called J-Core (which can be anything from hard tech to splittercore and makina). Associated circles include Mob Squad Tokyo lead by M-Project, C.H.S (Cutie & Headshaking Sounds) lead by T+Pazolite (d(♥.♥)b) or Alice’s Emotion lead by REDALiCE. I hear you, demanding minds. Here are samples.

(more…)

This week there will be no High Five and you’ll instead be treated to the Bloglin’s original countdown, Hateball’s “My Top 5.”

So what’s the big idea, son? We don’t hear from you for, like, months, and then it’s twice in a week? I mean…jeez. It’s almost like it’s someone’s birthday and almost like they asked you if you could throw some posts up to, like, fill, while they attempted their first day off in, like, months.

Rilly. Seriously.

It’s like that (headslide) and that’s the way it is. Almost exactly. Here I am….typing from my lap, with a twin-toothed monster chomping at my toes…getting a post or two up this week so as to pitch in and let someone relax. Like, way relax. Chillax, even.

And, while we’re pitching in, I figured I’d write about a shared interest that this person and I have, so boom. My Top 5: Spider-Man covers.

—–

5. Amazing Spider-Man #306 (Humbugged) // Illustrated by Todd McFarlane

Throwaway storyline. All the 300 shit has sort of died down. Now what? Let’s Biggie-Tupac on some Action Comics shit. If you count backwards from 328 (which subsequently led to Spider-Man #1, which very shortly thereafter led to something called Spawn and Image Comics) you can sort of imagine Todd McFarlane staring at himself in the mirror of his helicopter living room and telling himself how awesome he is/was. Which, at this specific moment, he was. #mcSwag #ballFarlane

—–

4. Spider-Man #23 (Revenge of the Sinister Six) // Illustrated by Erik Larsen

Gog, dude. Gog. Have you ever read ‘Revenge of the Sinister Six’? This is Erik Larsen on some HUGE Scottie Pippen shit. Jordan’s gone, son. Time for someone to step up and fill some shoes. Fill some damn big shoes. This storyline is so fucking epic…it kind of takes away from Kevin Smith’s run on Daredevil…that saga is so weird and diverse and left-field…but this arc is left-fielder.

Read it. Or just look at the covers. But this cover is the best. I mean to say, ALL FUCKING THREE covers of this comic are amazing. Full wraparound, yo. For $1.75. Larsen probably made $900 for writing, pencilling, inking, and covering this issue. How about we reboot back to this moment in time?

—–

3. Amazing Spider-Man #325 (The Assassin Nation Plot) // Illustrated by Todd McFarlane

As with 306 above, I have little affection or recollection of this story, but it’s Red Skull. This is sort of an epic, all-american Jack Ryan-type cover, and I think it looks boss. The story is probably a little flat, but on the other hand, Todd probably sexed Silver Sable the hell up, so go fig. I love this cover and have always remembered it.

—–

(more…)

I’m not sure when I first started noticing design. It was probably in my sophmore year of college when I took a handful of preliminary pre-reqs (and subsequently the only classes I’d take in the program) for the art department major. My folks had raised me and my 2 sisters to be discerning about aesthetics too, but I didn’t really conceive of design until later. But once I did, it was everywhere.

I’m not sure when I first got an ingrown hair, but I started to notice them somewhat consistently at the end of high school. For whatever reason they were—and still are—consistently showing up around my elbows and my calves. But, these kinds don’t really count. The follicles are shallow, so there’s not much hair to get sidetracked and wreak havoc beneath the skin. I can’t remember the first time I had a serious ingrown hair. I’m talkin the kind that fill with puss until your skin swells and you realize, “oh, there must be a sidetracked hair in there.” Whenever I started getting the puss-prompting ingrown hairs is unclear, but I’ve had enough of them in recent months to come to a conclusion: this is just bad design.

Being that I’m one of yahweh’s chosen people I am, needless to say, exceedingly befuddled. Why on earth would the god of all gods who had led me out of Egypt to be my god—whom presumably thinks of me as the Mercedes in his line of people mobiles—stick me with such poor design? How can a part of the body malfunction so maliciously against another part of the body? And for what? Poor aim. But who can blame the hair for missing its mark? It’s like threading a thread with a needle using thread. It’s tough.

I don’t hold it against the hair itself, I just gotta know why I’ve been forsaken like this though. I mean, I had a fucking lump on my leg. For a while today I thought it was cancer—cause that’s what you do when god makes you the Mercedes of people mobiles, you assume every malfunction is the end of the line—until I noticed the tell tale sign of an in fuckin’ grown fuckin’ hair: a miniscule-barely-noticeable black line. Then I grab a needle and some matches, heat the needle, and break the skin open. It doesn’t take much because the puss behind the skin is thick and rearing to ooze by the time you’ve noticed an ingrown hair.

None of this makes sense. If my body were a restaurant the ingrown hair would be a 90 degree downward bend in your fork. It makes no sense. No fucking sense. The hair should disintegrate if it fails, not flip out and start infecting the whole place. So I say to Yahweh, this is just bad design bro.

You may remember waaay back in March 2010 we posted the trailer for a fan film about the origins of everyone’s favorite hockey-masked vigilante, Casey Jones. A year and a half later, the entire 35 minute movie is available online. Austin filmmaker Polaris Banks used $20,000 of leftover college funds to make the film, starring his brother Hilarion.

Shot in the back alleys if Austin and Dallas, Casey Jones is one seriously dark and well made fan film. The film follows the mythos of the Mirage comics, meaning Arnold Casey Jones is a homicidal maniac. I loved it. In a perfect world this would become an on-going web series. The costumes are great, the production design is detailed, and the blood flows freely.

Watch Casey Jones The Movie here.

I’ve noticed that I post about one Star Wars-related video a week, which is odd, because while I definitely like Star Wars, I don’t love it. It’s not like it’s my favorite movie franchise or anything. What I present to you this week is the infamous Boba Fett death scene. This is easily the worst scene in movie history, mostly because it kills one of the coolest characters of all time in such a bogus way.

Today marks the release of the entire Star Wars saga onto Blu-ray, featuring all kinds of updates and tinkers. As I have made clear before, I don’t care that George Lucas keeps making changes to the saga, though unfortunately he has still not course-corrected the fate of Fett. If nothing else, at least take out the ridiculously wimpy scream attributed to the bounty hunter as he rockets off the sail barge, as well as the burp from the Sarlacc. Ideally, Lucas will go back and totally alter Return of The Jedi, giving Boba Fett a stay of execution.

Well, ideally, Lucas (or anybody, actually) will make a new film focussing solely on Boba. Yeah. That’s what we need.

This week’s Star Wars post was inspired by the good folks over at io9who, in honor of today’s Blu-ray release, have written up a whole list of elements of the saga that they would like changed. They make some pretty good points and some pretty good jokes, so go check it out.

So let us start with the music. Because without music, there isn’t much going on, anywhere.

Dōjin music could be called “indie” if “indie” music here wasn’t released on major labels. Dōjin music could be called “independent” if “independent” music here wasn’t such a political endeavor. Though in actuality we are talking about an independent mode of production and distribution, dōjin works are also always the product of a pre-existing product being whole-heartedly appropriated by its fans. Instead of labels, the music comes from “circles” (サークル). An artist can belong to several circles as well as independent and commercial labels equally. The circle is here for the listener to partake in the artistic and mercantile experience outside of mainstream networks.

What results is a virtually infinite creative license: practically no expectations or accountability expected from your circle, besides that of making something worthwhile. Which in turn means that a lot of dōjin music will not be all that exciting, since it basically functions like an open-mic. It also means a bird the size of a mech-ostrich being flipped at copyright laws: sampling has become so super easy and rampant that it is basically expected in dōjin music, and tracking down artists to get royalties is tantamount to sending a message in a bottle – hoping that whoever gets it is not only the right person, but also willing to pay instead of just changing pseudonym to do it all over again with the next series.

Circles are quite literally peer-to-peer hubs, and since music does not have a long turnaround time it should be no surprise that it circulates through the magic of the internets. Sites such as Ocremix & Anime Remixh gather thousands of torrents, some of them weighing a hundred gig, of stuff you HAVE TO sort through. It’s part of the experience, and it’s also what makes these micro-productions successful. Some people will want to hear re-orchestrated versions of 16-bit tunes, while others will be content with a bit of timestretching / beat layering to an insert tune so they will listen to it over and over (and over) again. The method is called “arrange”, because sometimes “remix” sounds too presumptuous. So if you don’t know where to start? Plug in the name of your favorite Japanese cultural artifact into Youtube and add the word “arrange” to it. Go ahead, try it. Watch the hugeness of this thing I’m talking about.

Pretty quickly, you will see some names crop up a lot more than others. Vocaloid is one of them. Vocaloid is not a band, or a person, it’s a piece of software made by Yamaha with all the presets you need to make your own anime theme. Its most prized feature is a concatenative vocal synthesizer. You know how an electro-larynx sounds? Well the concatenative synthesizer works just the opposite by breaking down sonic units into lengths that are meaningful, not arbitrary. And it sounds damn good. The singing you are hearing on the video I posted above? It’s all synthesized. Although now they have added “Flex” which basically turns Vocaloid into a voice box. Vocal cosplay. AND IT GETS BETTER.

In 2007 a start-up named Crypton Future Media came up with Hatsune Miku. Hatsune Miku is not a band or a person, it’s a piece of software based on Vocaloid that is entirely anthropomorphized into the cartoon chick on the cover. The floodgates were open. Dōjin songs were written about Hatsune Miku using Hatsune Miku thus sung by Hatsune Miku. Dōjin animators gave life to the character and dōjin writers published books of her stories.

A label was founded by fans just to release and promote works relating to Hatsune Miku. There are nationwide competitions for people to sing and dance their favorite tunes in their favorite character’s costume. Once an idea is planted in these fertile minds, it takes on a life of its own to multimedia proportions that most of the world will not even hear about. So it goes. Head out to Know Your Meme if you want to know more, because we have to move on here.

Another dōjin success story that is worth mentioning here is Touhou Project. Touhou Project started out in the mid-nineties as a dōjin shoot’em up release first on NEC PCs and later (2000s) on to Windows. A dozen games were released in the franchise, generating official (yet still dōjin) merchandise such as manga novels and soundtrack CDs. And I’m sure you get my drift here: storylines blossomed across the land and the CDs sampled to a pulp, giving birth to new circles of Touhou Project arranges, with the benediction of the project originators. Then – because Japan has no fear of the meta – those dōjin extrapolations of dōjin products appear into commercial products.

The ramifications are extraordinary in length. One of the most prolific franchises in terms of generating dōjin content is of course Final Fantasy. With the countless games and carefully created universe surrounding ultra-rich characters, the series begged for dōjin artists to run away with content. There are hundreds of arrange CDs available with just FF material in rock or electronica flavors, even though Square Enix has and will send a C&D to anyone who even attempts to publish a new one. In a free market’s free market economy, you most definitely cannot stop the crooks.

I will end this with a word about IOSYS, the most famous – or at least the farthest-reaching – dōjin band there is. They epitomize the style by playing all kinds of music from what are essentially radio jingles to metal with the same serious silliness. The video above is one of their promotional tools as they tend to collaborate with dōjin animators and they also host an internet radio show dedicated to all things dōjin. This is how it starts, and this is how it spreads. In immediacy, by association.

I hope I got you interested. Next Blogling will wrap this up with some J-Trance and metal because it can’t be all kawaii everything.

Have you strolled through the action figure aisle of your local Target, Toys R Us, or Wal-Mart lately? It’s fucking depressing. All the Star Wars figures are either Clone Wars characters I’ve never heard of or that repackaged “Legacy” junk. Other rehashed dregs from our generation you’ll find include boring wrestling figures, Power Rangers, and GI Joe. I have no idea what kids are playing with nowadays. I’ve seen those awful Mighty Beanz and Heroclix and I’m sorry kiddos, but those aren’t toys.

Coming up in the late 80s and early 90s, there were tons of amazing mass market toy lines to get into. Most of them were tied into cartoon series produced for the sole reason to sell toys, but screw it. None of us cared about marketing back then – the toys sold themselves. Nowadays shows are still used to sell figures, but the output is either mined from existing Japanese cartoons or just plain dumb. I’d like to see Ben 10 square up against one of the Valorian Dino-Riders.

As we got older, toys gradually became shelf-jockey statues. I remember the first time I realized toys weren’t for playing with anymore was when McFarlane released their first Chapel figure. I broke his arm off just trying to put the gun in his hand. Basically, the more detailed figures became, the less you were able to play with them. And by the mid-90s, after nearly a decade of domination, Ninja Turtles figures were getting strange and insulting. I passed on Farmer Mike and those Turtle Troll Dolls.

Part of the Turtles’ legacy is a legion of imitators – dozens of anthropomorphic crime fighters with adolescent tendencies. Most of them were garbage (Cyboars may have been the worst), but some of them were pretty sick. Even if the cartoons weren’t great, the action figures were fun.

Below are my five favorite anthropomorphic action figure lines. And before someone can call me out in the comments, I was never a Thundercats fan.

—–

5) Biker Mice From Mars (1993-1996)

(I could only find dig up this “sports pak” commercial above. At least it shows some of the cool villains) Don’t ask me anything about the Biker Mice cartoon show – I never watched it. The toys for heroes Throttle, Modo, and Vinnie came with motorcycles though, and that’s awesome. The bikes were a good size to use with other figures as well, meaning my Casey Jones drove a motorcycle.

The mice’s arch enemies, the Plutarkians, led by Lawrence Limburger, had great figures too. You can see a few of them in the commercial above.

—–

4) Barnyard Commandos (1989)

Playmates released this unique line 1989, with a cartoon the following year. These were like vinyl toys before they were cool. They were non-poseable, made of a hollow plastic shell. Each figure came with a huge weapon the fit over them. The story was ridiculous enough to be fun, especially when you’re seven years old. A ditched military experiment left behind radioactive materials, that were then consumed by farm animals. They mutated into raging assholes that got off on blowing each other up.

The two sides were the R.A.M.S. (Rebel Army of Military Sheep) and the P.O.R.K.S. (Platoon of Rebel Killer Swine). I remember learning Pig Latin from the back of one of the P.O.R.K. cards. Man, these toys were cool. I’m gonna hit up eBay right now.

(more…)

So, this is kind of the weirdest thing ever. I thought at fist this was rare footage of Luke Skywalker on an inappropriate, pedophiliac date on Dagobah, which, I mean, it kind of is. The nearly eight-minute clip is from the now defunct BBC show, Jim’ll Fix It that sought to grant wishes to children. This particular child, Daniel, apparently wished to be transported to Dagobah so he could chill with Luke. Pretty reasonable (I’m super jealous of this kid). The sickest part is when R2 makes that picnic basket materialize. Watch this.

As of late, I’ve been scouring the world wide web vehemently in search of the books of my past. Who cares, right? Well chill out bro, these aren’t just any books I’m talking about; They are the ones that as a kid, I would read from cover to cover and then crack open again or return to my school library and check out again the next week. They are the novels and novellas that, please excuse the cliches and sappiness, held the keys to the doors of my imagination, flinging them open wildly and letting in creatures of insurmountable wonder along with the movable, magical, lands they came from. Still with me?

You see, dorkiness is bound to no age bracket or singular event, those with any sense will tell you, “Once a nerd, always a nerd”. Its that budding nerd within me that calls out now, ordering me to flip through my memory bank and revisit the literature that made me the jerk I am today. I did just that with all of my “research” leading me right back here to compile The High Five again for you fine, loyal readers. If you failed to read the title, I will be counting off my five favorite and most formative sci-fi and fantasy fiction, this excludes anything outside of the genre and the likes of Harry Potter, Narnia, or Lord of the Rings, got it? Good. Let us begin.

—–

5. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH  (1971) by Robert C. O’Brien

There’s some flying rats up in this bitch. To be exact the rats don’t have the capability to fly on their own so they use a crow, whose life they saved if I’m not mistaken, as a means of traversing the skies. Pretty, pretty, good. These laboratory rats, former prisoners of N.I.M.H., or more plainly the National Institute for Mental Health, have an increased intelligence level due to experimentation on them by humans.

Mrs. Frisby is some pathetic field mouse but then these badass mutated rodents show up and help her escape a farmer’s plow and welcome her into their liberal yet technologically-advanced communal lifestyle. The rats’ leader is named Nicodemus and I will surely be naming my first-born that. The filmic adaptation, The Secret of NIMH, is rad too and I recommend it to any fan of animation.

—–

4. Ender’s Game (1985) by Orson Scott Card

Chances are you’ve either heard of this book or the author or both. Wanna know why? It’s mainly because Ender’s Game is considered to be one of the greatest science fiction works ever written or at least amongst my friends it was. Here’s the abridged version — Humans and insects are battling it out in space as the Earthlings attempt to defend their planet and colonize the other.

They are training and recruiting kids in the third and upcoming war against the bugs, teaching them to wipe-out the Hive Queens. One of those kids is Andrew “Ender” Wiggin who possesses the tactical ability and inborn fighting skills to destroy the Formic (insect species) completely. He climbs the rungs becoming the most valuable exterminator in the ranks and then his conscience hits back. That should be enough, go read it, seriously. Long live OSC.

(more…)

Hey, so, this is weird. We’re being followed on Twitter by one Bart Simson Yugoslav. That’s right, Simson. No “P”. There’s a lot of bizarre, not-too-funny Twitter characters out there, but Bart Simson Yugoslav is in a league of his own, and kind of funny, too. I mean, check out his bio:

THE SIMSONS. IM BART, OFFICAL BART. REAL. MY DAD HOMTRE AND MAM IS MAGRE. BABY AND GIRL SITSER ARE OTHERS. BART SIMSON. OFFICAL YUGOSLAVIA SIMSON. THE SUMSONS.

Like, I don’t even know what to say about this. It’s sweet though; definitely sweet. Yugoslav Bart tweets things like,

ETE MY SHORTS. HOMTRE.” and, “:;CRUST CLOWN GET CANCÊR;: CUEST STORES:/// BETTY »MIDLE,,, JOHN CARS» SON,,, LUC;K PARRE,,, GABBO GABBO HELL PÛPPPET.. ¤¤ SIMSONS?

Which, what can you even respond to that? “For sure, dude”? For sure, dude. So, in conclusion, follow this guy. Who is Bart Simson Yugoslav? No idea. But I like him. He’s weird.