Sparing the details, I've been doing some streamlining of the friends list. Apologies go out to those who've been surprised at the changes, or feel offended that I no longer count you "friended".

Then again, some explanation is in order, so here goes...

Some of you have empty journals. Some seem to have interests I don't find myself sharing. Another apology here to torrrn - I understand not one word of what you write, and the language barrier is overwhelming...

And I find myself looking at a screen name and wondering, "WHO IS THIS?"

The bottom line is, ikka's decided that it's quite disrespectful to consider a person a friend if she barely knows them, which is the case for some of you guys. This may be what kept me from the social services "mingling" sites, since those are places where people can friend potatoes (as in, the food) and get away with it...which, when one thinks about it, may not be fully sensible behaviour either.

The policy ←what policy? will be different from now on - friend ahead, you are always welcome, but please don't be chagrined if I don't do the same.

ikka is also shy.

Preview!



Link to entry is here. It has a few (a few?!) in-jokes, especially the one on the immortal idiots, but also some icons that don't require knowledge of context to understand. Only after counting did I realize Reimu showed up in 40% of them...that camera hog of a main character...

If taking, credit would be appreciated, but not compulsory. Just don't claim 'em as your own.

In related news, I found out only recently about LJ's limit on GIF uploads, which essentially makes the animated icons in my CANAAN icon post too big. ;^; Will have to work on those after exam season.

Rearranging stuff, I spent some time around half a month before looking through my older (mostly hardcopy) comics, acquired back when they hadn't cost so bleeding much and the unstable internet situation made it difficult to read scanlations. That thing they say about "dark history"? It is very, very true. Either ikka had horrible taste in stories then, or those mainstream stories that are still running have gotten increasingly bad. Perhaps it's a combination of the two, for some. When did you turn into Dragonball, Bleach?

( babble cut )

Okay. End babble.

Trying to get back into writing for amusement, because my drive has dropped a lot with prelim season and I find myself reading and watching enjoyable stuff but not feeling the "it". Must be all those brainkilling essays.

Starting with the vintage...

( LETRA: Danse Macabre )

Now onto a couple of newer ones.

( KEMONOMICHI: The Flying Dutchman )

( FRAC: Adabana )

Much as ikka is shocked by the news, it is true. An announcement was put up on her blog on September 19.

Her husband is Fujita Junpei, who does composing and arrangement work for Elements Garden. According to Suara, she met him when they were working on the BLUE DROP ED, 蕾 -blue dreams-.

What makes it even more surprising for me is that there were already hints about their relationship, according to a variety of folks I'm too lazy to list out. So this is what happens when we don't track the goings-on of the lives of the singers we like...lol. At least she's being open about it, unlike a certain Cantopop Heavenly King who's been getting flak after it was made known that he'd hushed up his marriage for 20 years.

Here's wishing both of them happiness in their marriage, and all the best to Suara in her future musical endeavours.

Uploaded the only new song from this album here. MP3, 224 kbps because the better quality one is on a host that hates this connection. Someone put the booklet up, please! It's impossible to find any YT stuff over here! *unwilling pirate tears*

On an additional note, FrostBytez is the best filehost ikka has had the experience of using, simply because it actually lets me upload something. Yeah, no idea either.

Errr, yeah. If this is going to take away so much of my elgaying time, it should at least have something relevant to show for it.

Ikka plays ---

At paradisa :

lilblackdevil Erica Hartmann (Strike Witches, post-S1 finale + audio extras)
exhikki Chiba Seiya (Yankee-kun to Megane-chan, between chapters 89 and 90)
dog_the_ripper Izayoi Sakuya (Touhou Project, post-Imperishable Night Extra)

and was formerly

sigma_hime Shizuma Yuuho

At gensokyo_dr :

phoenix_downed Fujiwara no Mokou
dog_the_ripper Izayoi Sakuya
frogly_god Past!Moriya Suwako

So now everyone knows what identity I'm assuming when not doing silly stuff over here. Yay?

*is aware that this post makes creating fanworks involving any of the above characters extra-embarrassing...and may never get over it*

So Yousei Teikoku's second full album Gothic Lolita Doctrine was out today yesterday. I might have been more excited about it, if not for the fact that all the songs on this album, save one, have already been released previously. It is very hard to look forward to only one new song.

I don't have anything against compilation albums. It is a fact that they are a godsend for fans who are selective regarding what they pay attention to, since material released on a certain single may not necessarily be relevant to their other interests. An example would be FictionJunction YUUKA's circus album, which had a good many songs ikka enjoyed, even though only El Cazador (which romanesque was the ED for) was the only show watched among the 6 or so that had related material collected on it.

Additionally, there is the prospect of a booklet, which means graphics. Maybe it's just me, but booklets are always something worth checking out. Folks might complain about photos when they test the boundaries of their sense of aesthetics too much (I can recall a certain hilarious blog post which remarked on the Gekkou Chigiri album art), and some booklets look as if the production company just typed the lyrics out and printed them in colour, but anything is better than nothing! ...or maybe I just like booklets the way others like their collectibles/photobooks/etc, who knows.

Still, it is very hard to look forward to only one new song. It may have something to do with how 9 of the 13 previously-released tracks are sitting on my carry-around playlist.

Alphard: 6 (3 animated)
Canaan: 3 (2 animated)
Maria + Canaan: 1 animated
Liang Qi: 5 animated

Total: 15 (some duplicates from same scene - un-animated, or from another angle)

Disclaimer: watching these icons for too long may cause motion sickness ^^;


( click here )

I've fallen in love with this icon, no idea why.

Anyway, spreading some love for this download as I know that it is relevant to the interests of some people (like so-and-so or so-and-so). There's a bit of drama behind the subs that's elaborated on in the forum post here, but I guess knowing about it is optional...even though it was certainly an incentive for me to grab this instead of alternate versions.

Mediafire links:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

The Making Of

No comment on the content and quality as my download is running concurrently with another bandwidth hog, but the folks working on this have a certain degree of rep to them so it should be at least fairly good.

Yes. Also, it's the Heimlich maneuver.

Now I think that this artist's work is like an inferior version of Fujieda Miyabi's. :\

-the process of how Vivio became Nanoha's daughter
(Fate: *tears up* I was the one who told her... ;^;)

-turning adult-sized <> Kaiserification
Seriously? The previous chapter was really misleading...purpose-wise, all ikka can say is that she's her mother's daughter indeed.

-"So I heard that mamas were like me(ry
The legend of the amazingly incredible 9-year-olds seems to be a staple that has to be brought up ever since they stopped being, well, 9.

-a vow, complete with pinky swear
OI, WHY DO THESE TWO LOOK LIKE THEY'RE CHALLENGING EACH OTHER TO A FIGHT *snerrrrk*

-after upsizing, Vivio is taller
Ga-rei chapter 42, the MSLN doujin 右眼と左眼に映る景色...
If it wasn't for these two things, I would have been significantly less touched. Just sayin'.

-hotpot time at the Nakajimas'
Eh, they're eating remarkably little. Compare with this. The later refill kinda explains it, but heh.
"That was a long time ago already." Genya is becoming more and more senile...j/k
WHY DOES CINQUE-NEE HAVE ARTHUR KIRKLAND EYEBROWS?!
Deredere Subaru is cute.
...this family practically treats Church HQ as a playground-slash-hangout spot, lol.

-cliffhanger
This picture says all I had to.

This is, surprisingly, the first time ikka has drawn so many characters in one image. But the focus is on the brown one the middle, really.

My excuse for the "interesting" proportions and relative heights is that this was intended to come out cutesy-looking anyway.

I suspect this has been covered already by certain bloggers, but am too lazy and uninitiated to check. Anyway, this falls within ikka's scope of interest, so 's all good. However, this post is probably not too interesting if you don't follow K-ON or care about headphones, lol.

The AKG K701, a model that's more high-end than your average (both price-wise and, according to reviews I've read, performance-wise), has recently garnered more attention after it was shown to be used by Mio in K-ON episode 5. According to one Taiwanese blogger who wrote about this, its sales ranking on price comparison site kakaku.com astonishingly rose from 41 to 6. Whoa.
...as to be expected, the price has also rose accordingly. Akiba shops have also been spotted promoting it with the Mio connection, calling it 澪ヘッドフィン (Mio Headphone) K701, as this image shows.





This phenomenon has found its way to gigazine, among other news-oriented (?) sites.

Admittedly, I've never had the chance to actually use the K701 - for one thing, it costs about $600 or so in SGD. The specs and manufacturing details are appealing, though. But this piece of news was pretty interesting, not to mention funny. Who's with me in saying that some of the people who bought it wouldn't know the difference in quality between the K701 and a more lower-end pair of cans?

Fujino and Yuuki
As some (many? idk) already know, ikka goes for this more than Yuuki and Kuga - never saw the appeal of, or was interested in, the latter. I admit to having completely no inkling as to why there are so many people who like/ship that. It probably stemmed from Kuga comparing Yuuki and herself. My point of view, roughly speaking, is like this - if Fujino could fall in love with Kuga, what's stopping her from being attracted to someone that's a lot like the one she loves?

"Are you an idiot? Love, attraction, affection...the only person you can trust is yourself!"

But not Viola and Zhang, because that takes far more mental acrobatics, despite the fact that they look exactly the same as their AU counterparts. aslkdljf

Reiri and Riza
Yeah, the natural enemies thing. Who was it that first came up with that idea? I don't know why I like this vampire-werewolf pair so much as compared to the 9387524 others out there. Maybe it has to do with how ikka is also a Riza fan. And volume 4, oh volume 4. I think I started seeing the possibility of these two together from then on. There are plenty of moments scattered here and there that can be used to construct a subtext-filled argument as well.

"Would you believe it? I've been banished from vampire society because of you, Riza."

Kaguya and Mokou
In ikka's mind, this works out more as Kaguya→Mokou, lol. Forgot who it was that brought up a point I agree with totally - Mokou stands out because she sees Kaguya as Kaguya, rather than a pretty object to be claimed (as in the suitors who'd wanted her hand in marriage in Taketori Monogatari) or a princess (as in...basically the whole of Eientei?) - Muffin-san, iirc? That also explains why NEET-hime would even step out of her manor just to provoke and fight somebody that she can never kill. Note, of course, that the opposite also applies, and Mokou has obsessed about a grudge that, as many fans have pointed out, should have been gotten over long ago. My interpretation of Cage in Lunatic Runagate 4 is that Kaguya had been her raison d'être for over a millennium already...how else would she even have made it?

"For the first three hundred years, other people hated me, and I was a sad creature who only caused trouble to myself and those around me if I didn't stay in hiding.

The next three hundred years I spent harboring a grudge against this world, and was able to preserve the faintest sense of identity by immediately dispatching anything that crossed my path, youkai or otherwise.

For the next three hundred years the youkai in the area couldn't hold my interest anymore, and I lost all motivation towards anything, living out a boring existence.

But during the next three hundred years, I was finally reunited with my immortal archrival, and we discovered the joys of killing each other over and over."

Either scanlations aren't out yet, or no one has uploaded them to where I usually read mine. Either way, this chapter is remarkable because it actually has Konoka and Setsuna following through with that intended Pactio mentioned...how many chapters ago? Shippers everywhere must be screaming and clutching their noses in bliss.







(thank you Finestela-san for uploading the raw chapter)

Definitely the most canon support for this pair yet, it's already crossed the line from subtext into overtext IMO. Sure, the anime gave us moments like Secchan nosebleeding at being flashed (iirc) in one opening sequence, among other notable instances, but ikka saw them more as lulzy moments than anything too serious. Acknowledging that Akamatsu had a certain degree of say in what was written, and that there were staff members, including Kobayashi-gahaku and Aipon who professed their liking these two as a couple, that is. It still is nice to have scenes like this to cement their closeness.

Ah, a translation can be found here, for anyone interested.

I WANT A LIFESTYLE LIKE THIS.

On an unrelated note, Hime Yuzuriha appears to be making its way into canon (if those 660 henshin pictures are for real). Guess someone on the MSLN staff roll decided to take a leaf from ZUN's book or something.

Hint: the cover is a lie. To some extent. This does not refer to the rating, or the pairing.

Doujin info:
Circle/artist: くりころ。/tokoharu; homepage
Fandom: Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha
Size: B5 offset, 28 pages
Available from toranoana.jp etc at 1155 yen (inclusive of tax)

( some NSFWness )

 Was reading dimon-san's blog and saw this post on the upcoming Mahou Senki(ry. The protagonist this time is Tohma, a mysterious girl encountered within the depths of ruins...if I'd read the text correctly?

The part about how Hayate doesn't look like a tanuki anymore (literally, "Tanuki doesn't look like Tanuki anymore (because everyone looks so alike)")  made me laugh, then worry for the quality of this sequel OTL 
But hey, human-sized Rein-chan gets a thumbs-up. Since she wasn't 30cm in the group shot for Sound Stage Vocal Best Collection either, maybe Hayate's magic rose to such a high level that she'd be able to maintain that form? *headscratch*

Have some Chiba icons over at exhikki .

This is one of those (I sure hope not the only) times where the icon-ing process was so easy. I completed coloring over 10 icons in the space of an afternoon, inclusive of distractions. Sure, part of the preparatory work was done earlier on, but I hadn't expected this to be finished so fast...

I will...do a post about Yankee-kun to Megane-chan someday. Perhaps. Don't think of this as a promise.