[Osu] Addicting song on youtube.

The song name is 美也と天国と地獄 in Japanese and Miya to Tengoku to Jigoku in romanji. The music for the melody is from an old song called Can Can. The voices are probably all based off of the character Tachibana Miya from the anime Amagami SS.

I found this song after seeing this song on osu! After which I searched for the youtube video and found that. It was originally posted on nicovideo but converted to youtube.

Below are some osu videos of the songs. All which I played. As you will be able to see, I've been playing that game for a while now. Still not especially good. But not too bad either.

Hardest Difficult (Relax mode makes it easier than it is, despite 90% accuracy and B, when I tried with failoff, I had 65% and D.


Second Hardest Difficulty. Normal Play.


Third Hardest Difficulty, Hard Rock, Double Time, Hidden Mods Used.


osu song link: Here.

PS. Don't ask me why the mapper of that song decided to put a picture of Byakuren Hijiri there.

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[AkabeSoft2] Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo Visual Novel Review

Finally finished Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo. Wow, that was long! And the story was great! Its a visual novel by AkabeSoft2 with the focus on society and its corruption. It had a heart warming story and promoted a ton of deep thoughts in it. There were also a ton of suspense and twists at many corners. Highly enjoyable experience to any deep thinkers with an understanding of what society is.

Full review after the jump.

Game Cover

Synposis:
You play as a male known as Morita Kenichi. You start off without learning about his history but over the course of the game, you (as the player) learn basically everything about Kenichi's background. Morita Kenichi is a very successful individual with lots of fame and money. He is smart, and looks decent also. In the course of the game, you face various challenges as your final examination to become a "Special High Class Individual". It is an occupation very desired in the country and regarded as the most prestige title one can hope for. The location for the final exam happens to be in the town where you grew up, where he left many painful memories. His task was to rehabilitate 3 girls, who went by the name of Mitsuhiro Sachi, Oone Touka, Hinata Natsumi. Each of them had to uphold an "obligation", it was his job to remove them.

An obligation was similar to a sentence decided by a judge and jury. It was an absolute order handed out by the country on a person who commited a crime. However, that obligation could be abolished if the rehabilitee demonstrates that she had self reflected and can stand up and contribute back into the society. That was Kenichi's final exam.

Morita Kenichi, protaganist, special high class individual in training

Higuchi Ririko, Kenichi's sister

Hinata Natsumi, obligation of restricted contact with opposite gender

Mitsuhiro Sachi, obligation of restricted time

Oone Touka, obligation of complete obedience to parental figure

Oone Kyoko, Touka's parent, school teacher

Mana, Sachi's unofficially adopted sister

Uzuki Isono, classmate

Nagumo Eri, fellow special high class individual cadet


Masaomi Houzuki, liscenced special high class individual, Kenichi's supervisor

Ratings:
Plot: The plot is the best one thus far. It was both very personal and grand at the same time. Society was not a obscure topic yet it had affected everyone. You and I both live in a society, whether there is a government (developed countries) or not (tribes). You live based on a set of rules that is set up from a person or people. And this story has its own society, it shows its problems and how corruption takes place. Because everywhere has a form of corruption. Corruption occurs because it is impossible to satisfy everyone, no matter how hard they try. The people who aren't satisfied will say the government is corrupted. It is as simple as that.

The plot was also darker than the other visual novels I've read. Adding to the seriousness of the story. Life is not nice, its not all candies and rainbows. This plot was surprisingly realistic for a visual novel (from the amounts that I read). Another realistic one would be Narcissu which I didn't review it but I had read it a long time ago. It was about suicide. Another very gloomy and sad plot.

The plot was also extremely long (in my opinion, based from earlier visual novels that I've read). It was divided into 5 parts. Whats like an introduction then moves onto Sachi's arc, then Touka's, then Natsumi's then finally the combination or conclusion arc. Of course, theres also the epilogue with the character you chose. But thats extremely short. So in a sense, this can be regarded as 3 visual novels as each one of the girls has a different problem so it is a different story. However, it all links back together at the end.

Choices mattered but they also not mattered. Actually I can't say for sure, but this is what I tried. I reloaded older save games (before I cleared the game and changed a choice, skipped a bit of conversation, the dialogue didn't change from my other savegame. So what I think is that, different choices will only get you a different immediate dialogue but doesn't do much else. EXCEPT there is an obvious choice to for whether you want your ero-scenes with a certain girl or not. Pick it and thats how you enter her route (thats what I believe), reject it then you'll be presented with the other girl's route at a later time (thats also what I believe). I only cleared it once, so I can't say too much for sure. Also, for Touka, there is an instant end option. I will assume there is one for the other characters too. But generally speaking, as long as you pick what your mind believes in, you should be able to clear it in one clean sweep.

In my opinion, I prefer happy stories except I must give this one an applaud for the emotional story. I definitely shed some tears.
5/5

Characters: The characters were probably the only thing they could have improved. The characters were by all means lovable. They all had their charms, from one of those energetic girls, to a tsundere, to a overly reserved girl. The problem for me were the voices. Although it might have been intentional, I found the voices to be a bit rough, like the voice actor was acting. It didn't sound very natural. Or maybe it was just how the people sounded like.
3/5

CG: The CGs were nice. The drawings were consistent and didn't look like the artists slacked off. There were a combination of normal pictures and chibi pictures. Both had their own charms.
5/5

Explicit Content: There weren't many, but is as expected. I only went through Touka's arc, there were 3 scenes, 2 of them were merged together in the event extras. There were 4 separate CGs (not including the variations; eyes opened, eyes closed, etc). More can only be better, right? Haha. As long as the story is not compromised.
4/5

Translation: I didn't notice anything wrong with the translation. After playing 3 games, I found that fan translations seem better than official translations by a company. Which is pretty strange but I can't argue nonetheless.
5/5

Overall: I think this was a good novel, again, I would recommend it to everyone. It is however on the long side so those with a short attention span or don't have much time should probably ignore this. I found myself agreeing to many things said in the story about corruption and ideal. It was great to know I wasn't the only one thinking like that. That was kind of aside though. But I would say I definitely learned alot of things if not just confirming my beliefs. It had alot of educational value as well.

There isn't much more that I can mention, the music is decent. There were some tracks I loved, and others not so much. But that was purely due to taste, I can assure you. I generally like the happy sounding tracks. Music was used in the visual novel as way to give players the atmosphere of the situation. For example when main character saves the day, theres a heroic BGM. When people are in tears, the music is very sad. And so forth.

The user interface and user experience is simple and refined. Nothing like the Wanko to Kurasou visual novel.

Title page

Sample CG

In-game screenshots:

4.5/5

Title Cover Image Source: Here.

The following are just notes I made while I was reading the visual novel. I made no reference to the notes when I wrote up this article except to get the character's names.

*SPOILER AHEAD*
Note:
- Main character is Morita Kenichi
- Story is realistically dark, the stories tend to have things like conspiracies, the plot is not straightfoward and simple
- Morita's background is a very intelligent person with lots of understanding of different people, probably why hes the youngest "Special high class individual", basically he is good at everything (looks good, athletic, smart)
- Morita's life goal "To manipulate people like fools"
- People who have done bad deeds gets obligations which they must fulfill, depending on the appointed "Special high class individual" who watch over them, they can either be lifted from that obligation after being recognized that the sins were atoned for, or they could be killed because progress was not met
- A theme is politics, talks about how the Government is run by the "Special high class individual" because they have been trained/educated in many different areas (super human in a way). For that reason, Special high class individual are rare because of the qualities involved to become one
- Another theme is corruption; every heroine had demonstrated some sort of trait, such as free will or spirit, however, Houzuki shows how easily such things are crushed. While Kenichi tries to show that those are important traits and it will prevail against the opposing government and corruption.
- Sachi and Touka both mentioned how they're don't feel like they deserve the "obligation" they have, felt it was unfair
- Educational, main character is educated, his thinking is thorough, lots of things that can be learned, good value
- Diverting blame seems to be another recurring theme, with the 3 girls looking for other people/things to make decisions for them (so they dont feel guilty)
- Stories involve putting blame on other people for their own misfortunes (dark stories)
- Choices seem to be a recurring theme in the game, every character had their share of choices that were laid out in front of them. They eventually have to choose and grow up
- Undecisive characters, got annoying for me.
- Alot of choices, however from what I could tell after reloading older savegames and picking the option I didn't pick, only certain few choices leads you to a "bad end". In fact, I had only gotten a bad end for Touka after picking an obviously wrong choice. Tried a few other choices, nothing seem to have happened, but ofcourse I didn't stick with those choice until the end of the game. So it may have an effect on the "final ending"
- Each story had their own theme about personal traits and how society tries to suppress those emotions, calling them useless. Main character sought to protect them.
Sachi - Justice
Touka - Compassion
Natsumi - Love
- Game is separated into 4 parts, Sacchi's Arc, Touka's Arc, Natsumi's Arc, Ririko's Arc

Characters:
- Morita Kenichi (Previous name Higuchi Ken, deserted his allies): Protaganist, Special high class individual in training
- Higuchi Ririko: Kenichi's sister
- Nagumo Eri: Fellow special high class individual cadet
- Mitsuhiro Sachi: Childhood friend, obligation of restricted available time
- Mana: Sachi's "sister"
- Uzuki Isono: Sachi's appointed "Footsoldier boss", writes fairytales, possibly a writer, pen name "Sepia"
- Hinata Natsumi: Childhood friend, obligation of restricted of contact with opposite gender
- Oone Touka: Classmate, obligation of complete obedience to parents
- Oone Kyouko: Teacher, Touka's mother
- Masaomi Houzuki: Experienced special high class individual, Kenichi's superior

Quotes:
- "No one has actually seen the tenets of society! Humans invented crap like gods and ghosts because they wanted to explain stuff that they didn't understand, so that they could avoid having to take responsibility for it themselves. As the advancement of scientific knowledge and technology marched onward, humans had less and less need for such explanations. However, right when the world had us believing that we had understood pretty much everything, we realized that we had come up with our own form of unexplainable phenomenon by creating society!"
- "People can't live without someone or something to shift the burden of responsibility onto."
- "Nah, you'll just get dumber if you go to school. The teachers are all trash, your friends are all stupid, and the rules are all pointless. If you can't study, they treat you like you're worthless. Kids who don't fit in are considered failures as human beings. The only thing you can do inside of that prison is listen to what the teacher tells you."
- "Society's fraudulent methods were absolutely powerless before true strength."
- "Depending on how you look at it, this world we live in is either heaven or hell. But, here's the thing. People are so weak that they never look at anything except themselves."

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Photoshop Tutorial: Changing Daylight Conditions

I found a picture of Reisen Udongein Inaba on Danbooru (NSFW) the other day. I quite liked it, however, to be shrunk and used as a MSN avatar was quite poor. The reason being, it would end up too small and dark that no one could see what was what.

So I ended up doing some photoshop on my own. I have never learned photoshop from a professor. Everything I did was purely through intuition.

The first picture above was what I had editted it to. The picture below was the original.


This picture was trying to make a sunset colour background however things didn't seem to be working out. So I just dumped the yellow background all together.


As for what exactly I did.
- First, I applied a curve adjustment layer to the whole picture to light it up.
- Then I had to select the background (I used the polygon lasso to select) since I wanted to change the background colour and brightness.
- I had 3 adjustment layers (probably 2 is sufficient though). Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation, and Curves. Select the checkbox for "Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask".
*Note: I could not find out how to attach a clipping mask to an adjustment layer, but I know its possible.
*Note2: I had never really learned the difference between Levels and Curves. From experience, they seem to do pretty similar things, but in Curves, you can also adjust the RGB colours individually. So I never use Levels anymore.
- Start adjusting. I started with Hue/Saturation, then Curves, and finally Brightness/Contrast
- Finally, I made 2 additional layers (without clipping masks, but you can add it if you like) for the gradient for the sky. Bright in the top right corner, darker in the bottom left corner.

On a closing note, I know I called this a tutorial but I personally don't have too much knowledge in photoshop. I only consider myself a man who likes art so I post what I think looks right. Please take this tutorial with a grain of salt.

Should you have any questions about anything or perhaps you are indeed an artist who can provide some sort of advice for future work, I'll gladly hear it in the comments.

Source: Here.

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NSFW: [Orchid Seed] Kawai Ameri PVC Figure Review

Here we have the review for Orchid Seed's 1/8 scale Kawai Ameri from the eroge/anime Tayutama. This is the second PVC figure I've bought from Orchid Seed, the first one being Suku-Mizu Mecha Nurse Girl Nana which I bought over in Japan. I quite like my previous figure from Orchid Seed, minus the difficult part of having her equip her syringe gun. The wing construction also added some more involvement.

So lets see what we have here today.

First of all, lets start with the box... its small... REALLY SMALL! What gives!? I thought this was 1/8 scale? Not 1/10 !

The parcel box compared to a MG Exia Ignition Mode retail box.

The retail box inside parcel along with paper packaging and a thin sheet of bubble wrap.

I was gravely disappointed by the size. I'll post the picture comparing this figure's size against other 1/8 at the end.

But whats done is done. So lets move on.

There were nothing worth noting on the retail box. Except, it really does say 1/8 scale.

See? 1/8 !

As for the figure itself, I found it for the majority of the product to be the same as what I saw online. It looks like a finished product. The paint job is nice. Theres only the water gun which came separate from the figure when I took it out from the box. Theres no instruction booklet unlike some of the castoffable figures I've owned. So its most likely one piece. I didn't apply much force in forcing things apart as I don't want to be left with broken pieces.

What is inside the box.

Much of the figure is bendable, be it good or not (its based on the material which is PVC, some sort of inert polymer, like rubber, thus bends). Basically what you would expect could bend, did; arm, hair, tail, ribbon, shirt.

I bought it for the pose, for that, I didn't regret buying it. I watched the anime that this character was made from, Tayutama. I thought she didn't deserve enough love from the main character. Its been like this for the past little while. I never seem to like the main heroine which is selected for the anime ending.

When I first saw the figure, the smile and the face was what had me sold. I didn't really care for the fact that shes not wearing any pants or that her shirt was half open. For me, the smile was the most radiant aspect from this figure.

Smile! ("Egao" in japanese)

Of course thats not to say that the figure is perfect. The first thing is the same with all other manufacturing processes. Some parts just aren't made perfectly. But in no respect should you expect it to be... or should you...? I don't know =/

There is a gap between the ribbon and the hair.

But on a positive note, that was the only area which seem to have an impurity. The other thing that bothered me was a small crack along the mouth. Its pretty faint, I didn't notice it until I got a really good look. Certain lighting helps to expose it also.

Do you see it? Above the mouth on the left side.

Since I only own one, I can't say if its a factory defect or not. Or maybe something scratched it somewhere along the route from Japan to me. Just be mindful if you happen to buy this or own it and comparing.

The base is not attached to the figure in anyway, it just sits on the base in that groove provided. So its not securely attached, unlike the Touhou figures I own.

Theres no pin or anything sticking out from the base or figure to attach to the figure or base.

The base is also pretty detailed, including very fine words written into the title.

It says "Kiss of my Deity"
(Sorry if you can't see, you'll have to trust me on it because I can't upload the 5186x3456pixel version on picasa, or that'll kill my space)

Summary:
- Too small, not 1/8
- Cute face/lively pose
- Watch out for imperfections
- NSFW

On a closing note, if you look from the sides, you are able to see the nipple on the breasts. I didn't post those pictures on picasa because I don't want google being on my a*s. But I'll say what I saw. Should that be a deciding factor for you.

Size comparison. Both the Shakugan no Shana and To Heart2 figures are also 1/8 scale.

Gallery: Here

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[Bandai] GP-01 PG Gundam Model Review

I recently finished building the PG GP01 Gundam Model from Bandai. It took far longer than expected because I had many things tied to my hands, making me unable to work diligently on it. But it is completed now and I am able to give a 80% review. Updated

Perhaps thats why it took so long ;o

The reason why I can't give the full review yet is because there is one last thing I have to do first. That is, the transformation from GP01 to GP01-Fb. Although it is theoretically possible, there may be problems which hinder the actual process.
Also, I would like to put decals on atleast the GP01-Fb parts and take some pictures. That will be the first time I've ever done decals.
First of all, there were an INCREDIBLE number of pieces on this thing. I don't seem to have any pictures of the box, but it came with a large box which had a handle. Upon opening it, you would have 2 boxes around the size of the MG Hi-Nu gundam. There are 2 booklets for this model also. One was for construction, the other had details about the gundam and where to put the decals. There are lots of pieces of parts and lots of screws also! That helps to hold parts together. There are springs also. As far as I could remember master grades don't offer such complexity. The MG Shinaju does offer 2 springs (for the belt), but thats about it. All in all, this model does offer you great amount of joy with the abundance of things to build.

Listing them all, they are,- Head
- Body
- GP01 exterior
- GP01-Fb exterior
- Arm- GP01 shoulder
- GP01-Fb shoulder
- Waist
- GP01 exterior
- GP01-Fb exterior
- Leg
- GP01 exterior
- GP01-Fb exterior
- Core fighter- Beam rifle
- Machine gun
- Shield
- Beam saber x 4
- Maintenance rack
- Wheels x 6
- Missiles x 2
It sounds like alot of things, below is a picture of what the finished product looks like (excluding one piece pilot or other people)

Yes, the background has a MG Exia Ignition Mode, its my bro's.

The joints feel solid and doesn't feel like giving way anytime soon. Which is pretty good because this model is old (Nov 2003). Probably the only reason why I was able to get it for 5000 yen (roughly $50USD). I had another old gundam, a MG ZZ Gundam. The hands couldn't hold the weapons. Maybe the weapon was too big, or maybe the joints were bad. Either way, it was a terrible model.

The details and complexity were noticeably good. Many of the parts, hands, head, body, legs, they all had parts you could open up. Notice the pictures below.

Before

After

Quite different, wouldn't you say?

At this point there isn't really anything thats bad about the model. The only thing I didn't like being the transforming part. I found the torso piece was difficult to place into the rest of the Gundam. Also, when I was opening all the "armor plating" or something in the above picture, some pieces would actually come off! I think the transforming part should be more sturdy (Unless I'm doing it wrong). But otherwise, the model is great. I looked at the decals, theres only 1 sheet of it, I thought that wasn't very much. But we'll see later when I finish the final touches. I also want to do panel lines, except I don't have a fine marker.

Oh..!
I thought of something else, there were no stickers !! D=
I've always thought I was pro with stickers as seen on the Shinaju (All the gold lines on the model)

I am quite happy with my first PG. I will definitely build another should the opportunity arise!

Gallery: Here

Update:
As this was my first time putting on decals on any Gundam, I didn't find it too difficult. Except in the cases of larger decals, the result didn't turn out too great. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong though.

Some of the decals are easily seen (shoulders and cockpit), others are more hidden and blends into model.

Here are some before and after pictures.

Before decals.

After decals

On a completely different train of thought, the transformation between the configuration wasn't too difficult. The book neatly laid out the steps required. And without any difficulties the new parts were easily swapped. Great!

Though the GP01-Fb torso cover along with the head and arms are pretty loosely attached to the actual torso. It is held on by only 2 connections. It is easily removed by holding the Gundam still and sliding the torso forward.

But the presentation in the end is what really matters for me. I probably won't pose it more than I have already.

I give this model 4/5.

Pros:
- Sophisticated/complex
- Lots to build/per cost
- Strong joints
- Low difficulty

Cons:
- Transformation could be better
- Lack of stickers and rub on decal

Part 2 Gallery: Here

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