Definitely:

BakaTest – I heard the light novel is nice. Main character looks like Louise, but you knew that already. The whole A class/F class thing reminds me of Special A. This looks like it’ll be a fun short ~13 ep series.

Dance in the Vampire Bund – SHAFT is more than enough reason to watch this. I actually haven’t seen many vampire anime (aside from Eva from Negima, only VK which was mediocre at best), so I’ll take this opportunity to add some variety to my list. Mina seems pretty awesome. She’s also voiced by Murasaki’s VA, leading me to think that if only Akira were to be voiced by Sawashiro Miyuki… sadly that is not so.

Durarara!! – Style looks great. Apparently it’s going to be similar to Baccano!, but I haven’t seen that yet. However, the director is also the same as for Natsume Yuujinchou, so surely nothing can go wrong here. \o/

Fate/stay night TV reproduction – If I don’t watch this I doubt I’ll remember anything from the original series, which was rather forgettable. I’m not much of a Saber fan at all, so what I’m really looking foward to is…

Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works – HELL YES RIN AND ARCHER!

Hidamari Sketch x☆☆☆ – More moe overload is very welcome. Looking forward to seeing what the new girls are like, but of course, as long as Miyako is there, the show will succeed. And of course, SHAFT.

Katanagatari – I’m not going to make a Bakemonogatari joke here. Oh wait, I kinda just did. Moving along… apparently this is going to air in 1hr long episodes, once a month. Anyway, NisiOisiN, show is destined to be epic, etc etc.

Nodame Cantabile Finale – Watched the first two seasons, so why not. I’m hoping for some real development between Chiaki and Nodame; hopefully it ends nicely.

Omamori Himari – To be honest, I don’t care much about the actual story at all. I didn’t even read the summary. Why is this show in the ‘definitely’ section? Suigintou.

Ookami Kakushi – Why hello there, Higurashi S3. Mana is a loli imouto voiced by Fujita Saki. Do want.

QUIZ Magic Academy 2 – Only because I watched the first one. :/

So・Ra・No・Wo・To – Looks like K-ON! + Strike Witches. Actually, this post practically sums it up perfectly.

Maybe:

Chu-Bra!! – Lol, we’ll see.
Hanamaru Yochien – It does look kinda cute…
Ladies vs Butlers! – Not getting many vibes from this one, but apparently it’s actually pretty popular.
Seikon no Qwaser – I’ll give it a chance to not turn into Queen’s Blade.

• Manufacter : 07th Expansion

• Genre : Adventure

• OS : WinXP (32 Bit), WinVista (32 Bit)

• Plot:

The 58th year of shouwa, early summer. It’s June and the early summer heat has arrived earlier than it does. By day there are crikcets and by night there are cicadas.

We’re in Hinamizawa, a small village in the countryside. There are fewer than two thousand people here. But every year, there is an event.

This event is a mysterious death. (The series has run from 1979-1983)

On a certain day in June, someone dies and someone else going missing. The series of deaths is connected to the upheaval surrounding the dam construstion project. A murder case that was covered up is being reenacted. Is it a conspiracy?A coincidence?Or perhaps a curse?

Someone who was suposed to be there, there is not.

Someone who was not supposed to be there, there is.

Someone who was alive last night is dead now.

Someone who is here right now is not alive.

So there is no way to avert tragedy. There is no choice but to give up. But don’t give up.

Only you can stand up for this.

SOURCE1 and SOURCE2

]]> http://mangagamer.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/higurashi-banners/ Sat, 19 Dec 2009 12:50:59 +0000 EvoSpace http://mangagamer.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/higurashi-banners/

How is everyone doing on Higurashi? I’m imagining people are on Winter Break now with more time to play. I’m glad to hear some people are actually enjoying the new BGMs more than the original. I’m already starting on checking Higurashi Kai here and there.

I uploaded a few web banners for Higurashi in case you want to show support to our release. It would be appreciated!

I’ll try answer a few questions while I’m here…

=============

Q. I appreciate this translation a lot and don’t regret buying it, but frankly this could really use another proofreading pass.

As being the final person to look over the English, I have no execuse…

But it is possible to patch our games in the future so you’ll have a more perfect copy at the end. Though there are reasons we can’t do it right away; namely the scheduling of our translator/proofreaders. They are already working on our next games.

If you think you can help out, please make use of our Bug Report section in our message board. It makes things easier when the time comes.

I hope we can further improve our future translations as well by organizing our process, hiring better people, etc.

Q. I hereby offer my complete willingness to go over the upcoming Higurashi Kai script FOR FREE if it will help improve Manga Gamer’s final product

If you seriously think that you can help out, send me an e-mail at evospace”at”hotmail.com. I don’t know how we can arrange this yet, but lets keep in touch.

Q. Soul Link Release Date?

We are aiming for December 28, 2009…

My brain will take time to recover from this Higurashi no Naku Koro ni video…

I found some good remixes of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni character songs and the OP. There’s also a violin rendition of Elfen Lied’s Lilium. Enjoy.

I thought it was important to inform our customers about the upcoming release of Higurashi When They Cry.

Primarily due to complications in the copyright, the following modifications are being made.

- Replacement of BGM in some scenes
- Removal of the Music Room
- Removal of the Mini Game
- Removal of the Staff Room

Now I’m sure that many people might be upset for not getting the exact same experience as the Japanese version, especially in the area of music which affects gameplay.

In order to explain why, we have to look at where the original game comes from. This title was released as a doujin game and the creator acquired BGMs from different artists. Neither 07th Expansion nor MangaGamer.com have the full rights to them, which is necessary in a situation like this where our version is considered a “port”.

To have you look at it from another angle, there might be some people who realized that there are BGM differences in the demo version of Higurashi and the commercial version, even in the original doujin edition. Of course the console versions and the anime all have different tracks as well. However, as far as I know, the famous songs which make Higurashi what it is, such as “Thanks”, “You”, and “Confession”, do not appear until the latter chapters so they aren’t affected.

Update by Kouryuu9:

From what I’ve heard, the issues are as follows:

Music Room-Because a few BGMs/SEs were replaced, the original license holder requested that we remove this feature as part of our adaptation of Higurashi.

Minigame-This was removed because of technical issues as well as copyright issues with some characters from other companies who have a cameo appearance in the minigame. In the original game they were used without permission, and we have not received permission to use them either, so the minigame was removed.

Staff Room-What many of you are thinking of is what’s called the “Otsukaresama-kai” in the DS and other versions. This is the scene where the characters gather and discuss the events of the game and their own theories and hypothesis about the culprit or culprits. These will be included as far as I know, and I believe Evospace said as much earlier. The Staff Room section is similar to a diary for Ryukishi, and contains various topics relating to games, products, and other material during the time he worked on Higurashi. Since we have no permission for any of the games or products he discussed, this section was removed as well.

We sincerely apologize for these differences between our version and the original, however the actual story and elements important to the story still remain just as they were in the originals. As a doujin game, Ryukishi was able to use many songs, characters, and topics without permission for these features, but as an official release we need permission from the copyright holders to use them. Since we couldn’t obtain all the licenses for all of the characters and products featured in these sections, they were unfortunately removed. If we ever have any new updates about these features, I assure you we will make the information available as soon as possible.

Again, while these features have unfortunately been removed, aside from the few BGMs which were replaced, the original story and other elements important to the story have not been removed or altered.

You can read the full article here, but the gist of it is that despite everything, they feel like it’s only right that the CGs for Soul Link and Higurashi be released, just like the original creators intended. Some of you may be wondering why Higurashi (an all ages game) would have any problem with censorship, but unfortunately there was one scene in the story where Satoko appears naked.

Hmm…now that I think about it, this whole thing kind of smells like a marketing ploy…

Now that this problem is solved, everyone who were complaining before can happily enjoy Higurashi, weird name, ugly font, standardized system and all  (they’re calling it Higurashi When they cry, which is a really odd choice in my opinion. Oh well, at least their font is ACTUALLY readable now). In fact, a few of you might be able to get it for free, through contests at ANN and the Sankaku complex (those are the only 2 that I know, there may be more).

Check up on the Mangagamer blog (it uses WordPress, whoot!) for more information, and buy Higurashi! (Oh, and soul link too, if it’s you kind of thing).

After a lengthy and heated discussion, we have decided to release Soul Link and Higurashi uncensored with all CGs intact.

As you all may know, the issues in Japan following the outcries of this past year have left many companies wary and overcautious when it comes to deciding what constitutes child pornography. With the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada cracking down and restricting content even more, we were no exception. As a company who hopes to offer our products to the entire English speaking world, we originally felt it necessary to take extra precaution to ensure that neither our company nor our customers would face prosecution or other action as a result of our products. This is why we originally felt it was necessary to remove Nanami’s CGs and replace Satoko’s naked sprite with the sprite where she covers herself with a towel. We wanted to ensure the safety of our staff, our consumers, and our ability to continue producing these games.

However, as many fans have made it clear, we have to choose where we draw the line carefully. The images we have released in our games so far and the images in these games being released soon are acceptable under Freedom of Speech. Furthermore, our products are being sold to a mature audience who is capable of making responsible decisions about what material they buy. Also, as many have already said, if we wish to continue in this business, we must push for our own standards as well. Although it is impossible to say there will not come a time when we are forced to censor content in a game, we do intend to proceed selling our products uncensored.

I found an very well done 【MAD】 for Higurashi set to an instrumental version of Dear-You-. I think the music matches the theme perfectly. It does contain spoilers for the entirety of season 1 though so you have been warned. I also have a handful of Rena images to share.

As some of you may know already, MangaGamer has given AnimeNewsNetwork 5 copies of our Higurashi release to give away. This offer is available to all new members who signed up today or choose to sign up before the contest ends on December 10th, 11:59PM Eastern Time. The copies given away will be of the official release which contains all 4 question arcs: Onikakushi, Watanagashi, Tatarigoroshi, and Himatsubushi. For those of you who do not win the contest or are too young to enter the contest, the game will also be available for purchase on December 15th for 36.95 Euros.

Yup, Mangagamers has announced that the question arcs of Higurashi will be released on December 15th, which will be a week from now for most of you. It will be priced at 36.95 euros (which I suppose is a pretty reasonable price), and with it will be a brand new all-ages section for Mangagamer (which hopefully will NOT go down the path of Hirameki International, purposely censoring games so that they can be for all ages). Of course, Bernkastel-sama is really happy, even though she’s being a bit tsundere about it. I will be cheering MG and watching from the sidelines, eagerly awaiting the release of the answer arcs (since it  has already been released in Chinese). Although I have to say that this is a bit late, and when you’ve read the manga and watched the anime I feel like there’s less motivation to actually read through the thing.

Anyway, I’m more excited about the higurashi  release than Soul Link, the other upcoming release from MG which was censored because of “underage” stuff again. I personally don’t think that that game was Suzuhira Hiro’s best work, so a few missing CGs don’t bother me. But hey, I probably won’t be playing it anyway. Let’s just say that I haven’t exactly heard raving reviews about the game, although one guy on erogamescape DID compare it to Ever17 in space with h-scenes, though he ended up giving it only 57 points, and there were a few others there who said the art’s the only good thing about it.

I guess I’ll just have to wait and see. Click here for the Mangagamer site.

Hi, Evospace here. I’ve been helping Mangagamer.com with their translations since Da Capo.

After spending a good 3 weeks of sleepless nights, I’m finally done with the translation check/proofreading of Higurashi When Whey Cry! Now with only the re-insertion and testing process awaiting, the release date should be announced soon!!

You can meet Mion soon!
(A Mion fan)
Also, as a test case we are doing something very special for this release, so please look forward to it…!

As for the Soul Link CG issue…
We are taking this issue seriously. No decision is final yet!!

Hello people, My name is Alex Simpson. Here’s me starting a new blog for you people to grab an interesting insight to my life. Well, Only the interesting parts. You are going to have to bear with my while I learn the ins and outs of this complex blogging contraption; WordPress. So, Don’t go anywhere. This is the first time I have ever attempted at a blog; I haven’t really even got the time to be maintaining a blog but… Who gives a damn? I know I don’t. Coursework can wait. I have more important things to do, such as: Watch anime; Listen to more obscure, completely NON-mainstream music (Mostly Japanese); Write for my new blog. You get the idea.

Oh, Oh, Don’t you just love my blog banner? It took me a while to make and I made it myself! I’m so proud of my awesome image editing skills, Haha! Anyway, On to explaining why I’m here.

I’ll be blogging about the general stuff; Japanese things, Anime, Manga, Music. Also some off topic things such as: Christmas; Minor happenings in my life and other web activity that I participate in, mainly to do with anime. That should do for my first ever blog post and I’d like to leave you with one of the most unrelevant but my favourite quote from my favourite anime ever:

USODA! [うそだ！] – Rena Ryuugu

^Any dedicated anime fan should know this!

Thanks for reading;

Alex!

Nipp…shut up!!

Na ez olyan sorozat, ami nagyot változott a véleményem, amióta végignéztem a két szezont. Már elégé vegyes érzéseim vannak, leginkább a második évadra értem, de majd arra kitérek.

Ez egy horror, misztikus Visual Novel adaptáció, ami egy egész franchise szült magának. Persze kelet egy anime verzió is, az adaptációt ugyanazok csinálták, akik a Fate Stay Nigh-tot is.(nyugi, ez sokkal jobb sorozat)

Első évad plot: 1986-ban Hizawa nevű kis faluban játszódik a cselekmény. Pontosabban Júniusban, amikor a helyi fesztivál veszi kezdetét. Minden évben ilyenkor szoktak, különös gyilkosságok történni, ami elvileg Oyashiro átka. És éppenséggel Keichi és az osztálytársai körül bolyon az átok. A sorozat haladása során tudunk meg több infót, hogy mi is pontosabban ez a bizonyos átok.

Viszont a negyedik rész vége, azt sejteti, hogy máris befejeződik? Hát a megnézzük az ötödiket………az egész újrakezdődik? Ja, hát így a halad a sztori, csak minden újrakezdésnél más dolgok történnek, vagy csak másra koncentrálnak. Amúgy egész érdekes a sztori, még akkor is, ha nem mindenre kapunk választ az első évadra.

A szereplők…….elmennek. Csöppet laposak a karakterek, bár igaz ezzel a történetvezetéssel nem igazán lehet karakterfejlődést beletenni.(bár nem mindig kell, hogy egy dimenziósak ne legyenek) Szerencsére nem idegesítő egyik karakter sem, bár van néhány……fura khöm a doki khöm.

Persze, mivel horror cucc, ezért lehet számítani pár véres jelenetre. Őszintén szólva néha unalmasak egy idő után, de nagyon hozzák a sokkhatást. Szóval, ha nem bírod ezeket, talán jobb is, ha kihagyod. Ennek ellenére, van pár vicces jelenet…….amik nagyon bénák! Jó tudom, hogy néha kell a hangulatjavítás, de e-nélkül is meglettünk volna.(vagy, ha tényleg jók lenének)

Tálalás: a grafika elmegy. Az a gond, hogy néha a szereplők elégé röhejesnek néznek ki, ami elégé gázos. A zene felejtős. A Japán szinkronról nem tudok nyilatkozni, de belenéztem angolul is, amit halottam nem volt rossz. Az OP király, az ED nem érdekelt.

Kicsit túlértékelt, de szerintem egyszer érdemes megnézni. Az első évad alapján én 7.5 pontot adok.

Na a második évad a Kai. Na itt válik gázossá a helyzet. De előbb egy kis háttér sztori.

Szóval 2007-ben, amikor leakadták adni a második szezont, felütött egy kis botrány Japánban. Ha jól tudom egy lány ölte meg az apját, és emiatt a talán a sorozat a felelős.(ha mégse ez, akkor valaki javítson ki! Köszönöm!) A végeredmény: ki kelet venni a brutális részeket a második évadból. Ouch! Várjunk egy pillanatra! Nem ebben az évben ment, egy idióta hárem anime, aminek majdnem hentai feelingje volt és gyilkolással végződött? Úgy tűnik az okés!!(jó, az cenzúrázták azt az epizódot a TV-ben, de akkor is)

A Kai Rikara koncentrál. Mivel elégé spoileres az alap felállás, ezért kihagyom. Nem tudom, de mintha kevésbé izgis a plot. Nem az jelenti, hogy rossz, de valami itt hiányzik. Mondjuk pozitívum, hogy legalább itt világosabb, hogy mi folyik itt és a kérdések nagy része megválaszolódik.

A szereplők ebben, még rosszabbra sikerültek! Nem tudom, mi történt, de itt sokkal unalmasabbak a korábbi karakterek. Bár, ha jobban meggondolom, igazándiból a pszichopata megmozdulásuk, miatt voltak néhány emlékezetesek. Mivel ez nincsen, akkor miért ne dolgoztak rajtuk? Sőt, itt Rika talán idegesítőbb is lett, mert a panaszkodásai elérik a repetív szintet. Ja a meg új szereplő, abszolút fölösleges.

A viccek még mindig nem viccesek, sőt itt már bekerült néhány nagyon hülye jelenet (mondjuk az elsőben is voltak) és corny baromság is. De, jó!

A tálalás nagyjából ugyanaz, csak a grafika kicsit szebb. Az új OP is egész jó, az ED megint hidegen hagyott

Szóval ez már megint a gyengébb második évad esete. Kár érte. Erre 5.5 pontot adok.

És van egy harmadik OVA-s évad a Rei, de ez abbahagytam. Leginkább azért, mert semmi köze a korrabiakhoz, mert itt jötten rá, hogy már nem érdekel a sorozat.

És itt vége a is postnak. Szóval megérte-e? Nem tudom pontosan, mert az első évad egy kicsit túlértékelt, de azért még jó volt, a második nagyon közepes volt, a harmadik meg fölöslegesnek tűnik. Hogy meg akarod nézni döntsd el magad!