Monday, December 21, 2015

Danganronpa: The Animation ~ full season review

Welcome to my full season review of the anime series, Danganronpa: The Animation. I did a 4-episode impression for the anime before, so if you're interested to know what was my initial reaction to the anime series, you can click here for my post for that.

Danganronpa: The Animation is the anime adaptation of the visual novel game, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. It's the first game in the franchise and it became so popular that it spawned more video games, manga adaptations, novels and of course an anime series. There might be a few spoilers scattered in this post regarding the plot so if you plan on watching the anime, you may want to skip and read something else. There won't be any big spoilers though so you might not need to worry much.

So what's the anime about? It's about a young boy named Makoto Naegi, along with 14 other students, who were trapped in the building of Hope's Peak Academy, an elite academy which only accepts talented students. All the doors and windows were closed and locked, the facilities were run with an enclosed self-sustainable system, security cameras were everywhere watching them, and they were monitored by a mysterious someone who controlled a stuffed teddy bear named Monokuma who also acted as their school's principal. All students who were trapped were to live in the facility forever and if they want to get out from there, all they have to do is to kill another student BUT they cannot be caught doing it. A trial will be held when someone is killed and if the killer is caught, then he/she will be punished, or should I say executed. If the killer got away with the murder and someone else was blamed for his/her action, then the killer will be released from the facility and the other students who will be executed instead. It's a weird (but definitely fascinating!) premise.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

Vanessa Carlton is back with Liberman!

I'm a huge fan of Vanessa Carlton, so I was surprised to realize that she had released a new album and I didn't even know about it. What a terrible fan I am. Liberman, her fifth studio album was released back in October 2015. She had released few videos on YouTube, a combination of official music videos, lyric video and audios, to promote the release of her album. I will put the link to her videos below so you can check them out.


I have always enjoy her music. She makes beautiful music with meaningful and poetic lyrics that I sometimes don't even understand what it means but I very much enjoy them nevertheless. She is not as mainstream as she used to be though so it's not easy in this digital era for someone like me, who only buy physical copy of albums, to find her albums sometimes, and considering I'm on the other side of the globe make it much more difficult. I'm not even sure myself if her current label would distribute her album worldwide or is it just will be for United States or North America only. I hope it will be available in my country eventually because as a huge fan of hers, it would be ridiculous for me not to get this album. You could buy the album through her official website but to be honest that would be too expensive for me.

As mentioned above, I have listed below the videos that had been released on YouTube to promote Liberman. If you are only familiar with her earlier works like A Thousand Miles and Ordinary Day, you might like Operator and Willows as they sound a bit more mainstream than the rest of the new songs. But you should definitely try to listen to the rest of the tracks as well. Personally I really love the two I mention earlier together with Take It Easy and Nothing Where Something Used to Be. Click the links below to listen to the songs!
If you enjoy any of the songs above, you can buy digital copies of the songs or if you like all of them, you could buy digital copies or physical copies of the album instead. You can find more info on how to purchase them in the video description in all of the videos above.

Monday, December 7, 2015

What to watch? ~ 2015 movies: December

We've come to the end of the year. How many movies have you watch in the cinema or movie theater so far? Usually a casual moviegoer won't spend so much to watch movies in cinemas so that's why I wonder. I've watched quite a few but I had sure missed a dozens more. Watching movie is quite an expensive thing to do nowadays surprisingly enough. So what are the movies scheduled to be released in December? Below are some of the movies that seem to be quite interesting.


1) Krampus


I was surprised of how this movie was getting quite the publicity, especially in a small market for Hollywood movies like Malaysia. I think I've seen the trailer been shown in cinemas and the movie posters had been displayed in the cinema hall very early on as well. I think that's kind of rare for a small movie like this, right? Anyway, it does look kind of interesting so I might be tempted to check the movie out. Krampus, according to the Alpine folklore, is a horned anthropomorphic figure who punishes bad or misbehaved children during the Christmas season, as opposed to the Saint Nicholas who rewarded the good ones. The film is a comedy/horror film directed by Michael Dougherty who is known for writing and directing the cult hit horror movie, Trick 'r Treat. Starring Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner and Allison Tolman, Krampus had been released in US on December 4, 2015 (it had been released in Malaysia as well on December 3, 2015).


2) Star Wars: The Force Awakens


This is possibly the most anticipated movie of the year. It's a huge franchise and there's a lot riding on this movie to be successful so the franchise can keep continuing on with more sequels and spin-off. Disney (the studio who owns the franchise now) seems to be pretty confident in this movie though since (I believe) production had already started on the spin-off known as Rogue One, and also the sequel which is Episode VIII. The movie will introduce new characters and bring back beloved characters from the previous films as well. The box office projection for this movie is pretty epic with some analyst predicted it will cross the $3 billion mark. That's a pretty high bar if you asked me but with a franchise like this, who knows? It could be possible. I guess we all just need to wait and see, and we don't have to wait any longer now as the movie is scheduled to be released on December 17, 2015 in the United Kingdom, December 18, 2015 in North America and most of the world around that time as well.