Octave Ministry

Orgasmic Strawberries by RanpaRuru

2011-06-24T11:19:00.003-06:00

A while ago was father's day here in Canada and I decided to make something a little more extravagant than things I have tried in the past. I had learned how to make these the week before from one of my colleagues at the magnetic resonance research center when we were celebrating the success of one of our center's own in his PHD defense.

They were absolutely irresistible at the party. Staring at you with a juicy red allure imagining the gritty taste of the chocolate as it would melt on your tongue. Only to be completely blown away when you find out there is actually cheesecake stuffed inside it! Starting with the more solid tasting chocolate crumbs on top, following by a rich, cool, creamy cheesecake only to explode with the moist sweet taste of the strawberry as you chew down for the second time. That lasts a few seconds until the chocolate coating on the bottom of the strawberry begins to melt and another rich, taste spreads through your mouth starting from the sides and slowing working towards the center of your tongue.

Alas, I was absolutely compelled to make them again. The good thing is, they're really easy to make, they just take some time, but if you're ok with that, they make for a great party desert or maybe even a surprise treat for your girlfriend/boyfriend when they come home from a long day at work.

Recipe and instructions after the break!

You need:
-Strawberries (the larger the better)
-New York cheesecake (or another flavor that you prefer)
-Oreo cookies
-White bakers chocolate

1) Wash the strawberries and cut off the ends with a fruit knife so that the fat end is now flat and you can sit it upright. Continueing with the fruit knife, stab it deep into the strawberry, and with a sawing motion, make your way around the strawberry and hollow out the inside.

2) Take your cheesecake, cut out a slice and remove the cookie base at the bottom so you're left with the creamy part of the cake. Put this into a bowl, take a spoon, and mash it until the texture is like those times when you were a kid and you mashed your ice cream until it was really soft. Shouldn't take long. Once you have this, just use a teaspoon and fill up the strawberries core with it. It's ok for it to have a little mound protruding outward at the top, don't worry about it.

3) Now get your oreo cookies (i only used 3 cookies and i had a ton of crumbs left over). Pull them apart and use a knife to scrape off the stuffing. Put the cookie halves into a zip lock bag and proceed to beat it to death. I prefer to make it more fine, but if you like it more chunky, that's your choice. With the strawberry covered in cheesecake at the top, simply invert the little bugger and plunge it into the oreo crumbs followed by a twist of the wrist.

4) Time to dip the chocolate. Take the bakers chocolate and cut them up into small pieces, they don't need to be too fine, but the more fine they are, the less time you spend heating them up. Prepare a water bath by taking a pot and heating it up to a medium temperature so that its just bubbling at the bottom but not outright boiling. Take a metal bowl and put it on top of the water and place the chocolate in there.

Make sure not to get any water into the pot of chocolate while you're doing this. The heat from the water will warm up the metal bowl and that will distribute the heat a little more evenly and melt the chocolate. Heat it until the chocolate has a thick liquid consistency (too runny and it'll be hard to stick to the strawberries).

Simply pick up your strawberry, and dip it into the chocolate and set it aside on wax paper and allow it to harden.

And you're done :D

Hope you guys take the time to try it out in the near future, it is definitely worth it.
Ask any questions if you have any in case my instructions weren't entirely clear.

Enjoy~

Dear Chapter 31

2010-11-21T15:40:00.002-07:00

Hi everybody here kunkun here to make a quick release for RanpaRuru.
I helped out a little bit with translations but most of it is his work.

Download link after the jump.

I'll be posting something new later this week that might interest some of you people too so be sure to come back and check it out.

Download Dear Chapter 31

Subarashiki hibi - review by kunkun

2010-06-19T21:27:00.013-06:00

Hi everybody kunkun here for another eroge review, this time it's keroQ's latest game, Subarashiki hibi ~Furenzoku sonzai~ (Wonderful everyday ~Discontinuous existence~)
The game came out this March 26, 2010.
Some people may also be familiar with the art style as this is the same team that made H2O -Footprints in the sand-. Just pointing that out because there was an anime for H2O in 2008 and you people might be interested in this if you liked H2O I guess, even though SubaHibi is nothing like H2O.
Not naming any other titles because you people browsing this blog probably wouldn't know them.

No NSFW content and minor spoilers warning.
Blah blah blah after the jump.

Story:
This is a denpa game, a psuedo horror/mystery story where the unfortunate events of the characters are triggered by someone going crazy (any character, main character included). I really don't know what to say about this genre but that's kind of the rough idea.

The story is presented in 6 chapters/short stories, each of the 6 chapters feature a different main character and their perspectives on the events that are presented in the story. The chapters are as follows:

-Chapter select menu-

Chapter 1:
"Down the Rabbit-Hole" - [The sky and the world]
Main character: Minakami Yuki
One evening as the sun was setting Minakami Yuki sees a figure standing on the roof of an apartment building staring out as if ready to jump. Yuki, in a rush of panic attempts to ascend the building from the inside only to realize she wouldnt make it in time so she steps back outside. Not knowing what to do Yuki yells out while stretching her arms out reaching for a falling shadow overhead.
What fell into her hands was a stuffed animal, a white rabbit.
Takashima Zakuro was the girl atop the building, she goes down to reclaim her stuffed animal and she tells Yuki that she was looking for "The day the sky returns."
From that day on Yuki, her childhood friends, the Wakatsuki twins Kagami and Tsukasa, and Zakuro begin searching for the place where the "Girl of the Sky" and the "Girl of the Earth" will meet.

"Down the Rabbit-HoleII"
Yuki bumps into a girl that appears to recognize her. Not knowing who this person is, Yuki continues to converse with her. The girl is named Takashima Zakuro, after the conversation Zakuro suddenly kisses Yuki and tells her "From now on extraordinary things will happen."
The next day at school Yuki feels strangely uneasy and hears of a rumor that the students are spreading:

"Takashima Zakuro has committed suicide."

Chapter 2:
"It's my own Invention" - [The end and the beginning]
Main character: Mamiya Takuji
Witnessing the death of Takashima Zakuro, Mamiya Takuji begins preaching of the end of the world on an online message board. He begins to convince people that he is the savior and that the world will end in one week. As the savior he says he will return the people to the sky.

The sky is called "Tsui no sora"(Ending sky)

Chapter 3:
"Looking-glass Insects" - [The literature girl and the science girl]
Main character: Takashima Zakuro
Takashima Zakuro falls in love with a boy that she met. This boy is a poet, a fencer, a philosopher, and his name is Mamiya Takuji.

With her friend Tachibana Kimika, they both are bullied day after day and with each day the bullying excalates. Zakuro not being able to take it anymore cracks and is on the brink of despair until she meets two other girls. These two have similar traumatic experiences and tell Zakuro of a greater purpose and convinces her to join them on their journey.

Chapter 4:
"Jabberwocky" - [The savior and the hero]
Main character: Yuuki Tomosane
Yuuki Tomosane is the "Destroyer"
Standing under the same sky he confronts the "Savior"
He promised his sister that in order to protect her he will become a "Hero"

Chapter 5:
"Which Dreamed It" - [Brother and sister]
Main character: Mamiya Hasaki
She waits and waits for her brother to come home.
Many years she has waited, remembering his promise that he will come back.

Chapter 6:
"JabberwockyII" - [Sunflowers and the hill road]
Main character: Yuuki Tomosane
A story of the beginning.
How it all began at the field of sunflowers.

The overall story of the game revolves around the philosophical idea of different worlds. How your world isn't exactly my world and that it is all based on the mind of the person in which you are viewing it from etc etc you get the idea.
So the story proved to be quite interesting to me, very enjoyable. Putting all the pieces together as they are revealed like any other mystery story and just when you think you have it all figured out the final ending just fucks you up.
The ending just throws everything at you, leaving it up to you to decide who is who and what is what.

Some things to also point out about the story is that it is quite disturbing sometimes. The game features an awkward variety of H-scenes, awkward as in futa and other such things. Nothing really to turn you down but it surely helped to build on the insanity that was going on in the minds of the characters.
And a big plus to this game as it features yuri, pretty awesome stuff.

The game should take around 25~30ish hours to complete, not too long and not too short. The game has 15 different endings, one of which in each chapter is necessary to complete in order to advance on to the next chapter, and 3 different epilogues for chapter 6. However numerous endings must be viewed before you can get the final third epilogue.

Characters:
Another awkward point about this game is that all but one male character is not voiced and all female characters are voiced. I don't know if this was due to the budget or something else but it was kind of dissapointing I guess, but no big deal.
Nothing much for me to say about the characters specifically, they are all okay, we got our archetypes and what not. I liked the characters, they each had there time in the spotlight at least one point in the story so it's all good.

Minakami Yuki: Main character of "Down the Rabbit-Hole" Is well trained in kobudou and is a rather violent girl that likes to be alone. She is usually on the roof of the school staring up at the sky or reading a book.
Takashima Zakuro: Main charater of "Looking-glass Insects" Is timid and submissive to the bullying that she endures. She is kind hearted and trys to avoid all conflicts.
Wakatsuki Kagami(left): The older sister of the twins. She worrys a lot about her sister and everything about her is to protect her little sister, Tsukasa. Is a tsundere and appears to be attracted to Yuki. Wakatsuki Tsukasa(right): Is Kagami's twin sister. Thinks seriously and sensibly of all situations. She watches over her sister and her situation with Yuki. An all-loving type of person.
Otonashi Ayana: A strange girl. Appears where nobody should be. She sees everything, knows everything, and does nothing...
Tachibana Kimika: Takashima Zakuro's best friend. Is the captain of the track and field club, always strenthening her reflexes. She carries around a knife and other multipurpose weapons.
Mamiya Hasaki: Main character of "Which Dreamed It" She is always carrying a stuffed rabbit and is Mamiya Takuji's younger sister.
Yuuki Tomosane: Main character of "Jabberwocky" and "JabberwockyII" Acts cool and coldly to people around him. Appears to be friends with Minakami Yuki and is a retro game maniac.
Mamiya Takuji: Main character of "It's my own Invention" Is a day-dreamer, an otaku, and is constantly being bullied.

Graphics:
This game had quite a few artists on the team and these guys have been with keroQ for past games and such, and they are as follows:
SCA-自, Kagome, Motoyane, Suzuri, and karory
Each of the artist's designed certain characters, though they were not credited exactly for what characters they did design. However the game's entire scenario and original concept was designed by SCA-自.

The game has around 300 cg's(variations included). The overall quality of the cg's of course are top notch as expected of any other game, so no complaints here.

The in game art for the characters however has some noticable pixelation. Not a problem if you're playing window mode as you won't be noticing them too much but for those that like to play in full screen it'll probably be quite annoying(it was for me).

User interface is plain and simple, easy to use, and not many options to customise outside of the usual. Features both window and full screen text displays(not selectable), it doesn't switch between the two types as much as Dies irae does but still good to know.

Sound:
I liked the soundtrack very much for this game, very fitting and well put together. Sadly however the BGM player is not unlocked until you fully complete the game.

The game also sports quite a number of vocal tracks, 1 opening song, and 7 different ending songs.

At Dream Party 2010 in Osaka keroQ also released the soundtrack and 2 cds for the vocal songs, 1 for each of the 2 vocalists Hana and monet.

Overall:
A very nice experience, I really enjoyed uncovering the mysteries behind the events and to think about all the possibilities that are thrown at you. It was very fun and only the true end bothered me because of how much is thrown at you. The amount of possibilities to what is going on is quite frustrating on the mind lol or not really the amount but it's just a pain to try and come up with a definitive answer.

Hmmm what else did I really like about the game...
Oh, Yuki and the Wakatsuki twins are full of win, Yuki at times reminds me of Haru from G Senjou but it's probably because of same voice actor.
So I say I would give this game a 9/10, I really liked how the story was presented and how it went about openning itself.

Well that's it for this review, thank you for reading and all that other stuff. Tune in for some more reviews and eventually I hope to get up some figure reviews too.

What to do when you can't find parking in China?

2010-06-10T20:05:00.003-06:00

If you want to know how to get a easy parking spot in a city center make the Jump and see how (you will LEAP if you are AWESOME).

Super Junior M - Super Girl @ Otafest 2010

2010-06-09T17:16:00.008-06:00

So, we've been keeping this project relatively secret for the past...8 months? or something like that. We started practicing every friday afternoon for like, 2 hours, but a lot of the sessions were spent just wasting time =p

In either case, 4 of us here at the Octave Ministry (Kunkun, RanpaRuru, Hippo, Riceball) feat. BkYou have completed our dance cover for Super Junior M's Super Girl :D We started this project originally to perform at the cosplay event here at our local anime convention "Otafest". At first, we just wanted to do it for fun, but after we were part way done, we compared our results to the dance covers that were on youtube at the time and the previous winners from past Otafest years and realized we have a very good chance of winning. And we did exactly that.

Our Super Junior group stole best performance at Otafest 2010 :D I'm pretty sure it was the first organized dance performance at this event also so it was something new for all the past otafest goers also :D

Video after the break =]
Enjoy ^^

BORING way and the TOP GEAR way

2010-06-01T23:03:00.013-06:00

There is the BORING way to make a video to promote something then there is the TOP GEAR way to do it. (Jump (you will LEAP if you are AWESOME) to see the videos)

The BORING to way to do it.

The TOP GEAR to way to do it.

But there is one thing in common with these two videos and it's that both presenters have a bad tooth to gum ratio.

CNBlue-Love MV translated

2010-05-19T00:59:00.002-06:00

I decided to sub the latest mv from CNBlue~

A beautiful Farewell lyrics translated

2010-05-17T22:29:00.002-06:00

This is Hippo posting another translation although I'm supposed to be taking a break from blogging. It seemed like I was going to be busy for a while and I was in panic because I hadn't received acceptance from the universities at the time. Then I got my acceptance sometime last month, and I had a lot of spare time to kill again. I made a few translations for songs (music videos) and made youtube posts, although I didn't post anything on the blog about it.

I guess I'll be back to working on translations now, so feel free to make translation requests on the comments for my latest post, or e-mail me at resurgenceofromanticism@gmail.com

This is the translation of the lyrics for the song "A beautiful Farewell" Enjoy~

Title: A Beautiful Farewell
Artist: Taeyeon
Album: When a Woman Loves [Park Hye Kyung]

My tears flow, I knew it was time for us to part ways
When I looked at you from behind
While you turned around weakly

I know you're as sad as I am,
but you'll have to endure it,
so that our memories remain beautiful

Our meeting that was so short, and our sad love
are scars that we'll
have to erase with our tears

In the deepest part of my heart
you'll always remain,
because I've had enough of sad love
from the love we shared

but even though time tells me to
cast you aside in my memories and erases everything,
I think I'll feel like crying from time to time for a while

Close both your eyes and look back towards the past
Within it, is our hidden love
You will always be able to feel me
from inside your heart
while I remain hidden in your memories

Our long separation tells me to forget you,
but my sad love is
looking at you from inside the tears

In the deepest part of my heart
you'll always remain,
because I've had enough of sad love from the love we shared

but even though time tells me to
cast you aside in my memories and erases everything,
I think I'll feel like crying from time to time for a while

[kunkun] LIFE:ERRORS Chapter 4

2010-05-16T20:25:00.002-06:00

Download after the jump.

Chapter 4:
http://www.mediafire.com/?zz25ndzmygh

Visit my blog for other information relating to release and current project status.
kunkun Adventuring Co.

TWITTER?

2010-05-12T23:30:00.002-06:00

Attention ladies and gentlemen!

We... Have... A... TWITTER ACCOUNT! That's right!

twitter.com/octaveministry

8 people, 1 twitter account!

We're really spamming it hard, so follow us for some shenanigans!

Raymonduu!

Dies irae - review by kunkun

2010-05-04T22:07:00.018-06:00

Time for another eroge review by kunkun.
Okay, this time I'll be talking about Dies Irae -Acta est Fabula-, which came out December of last year.
Now for those that are confused as to what this is to the original game and expansion, Dies Irae -Also sprach Zarathustra- and -die Wiederkunft-, AeF is the complete version Dies Irae.
This third iteration of the game includes all that was in the other two versions plus some new extras, the best part being that now the main character, Fujii Ren is fully voiced by Toriumi Kousuke (credited under alias Sakiware Spoon).
Blah blah blah after the jump.

No NSFW content warning and minor spoilers.

Okay lets start with what each games had to offer.

Dies Irae -Also sprach Zarathustra-
The original game that came out December 21 2007.
It featured 2 routes, Kasumi and Marie.
Fully voiced minus Main Character.

Dies Irae Also sprach Zarathustra -die Wiederkunft-
Pseudo sequel to the first game, released date was July 24 2009.
This one has only 2 routes as well, Kei and Rea.
Still fully voiced minus Main.

Dies Irae -Acta est Fabula-
Complete version of Dies Irae released December 25 2009.
This version has all 4 main routes: Kasumi, Kei, Marie, and Rea.
Includes the appropriate changes to script and decisions in game to access each route. Order of access is as follows: Kasumi/Kei -> Marie -> Rea
New opening theme and animation, also includes the old one as an unlockable.
Additional background music.
Fully voiced including Main Character (FUCKING WIN)

Story:

So the main scenario writer of the game is Masada Takashi. He is mainly known for his work with another eroge also produced by light entitled "PARADISE LOST". This game however was overshadowed by the release of TYPE-MOON's Fate/stay night. So all in all "PARADISE LOST" never really hit it big and Masada's name just isn't well known.

This time I'll try to avoid spoilers or at least I hope too...
The story is about a group of people known as the Longinus Dreizehn Orden. They try to obtain eternal life and our hero, Fujii Ren, fights these people and blah blah blah things happen.
Hmmm that sounds pretty generic, but that's all I can come up with that wouldn't lead me to vomiting spoilers.

Alright now, I liked the story, mainly for the epic battle scenes, hence why the genre is listed as Gakuen Denki(School Romance) Battle Opera ADV. The battles scenes I say are on par with that of TYPE-MOON and Nitro+ writing. Nitro+ being really good at this cause Fate/ZERO is too amazing for words.

The story starts off rather slow but it does manage to pick up half way through as you get past the common route (chapters 1-6). Each route was quite interesting except for one, Kasumi route. The routes here are of course standalone, except this one incident in Rea route hints at something more... but no.
Common route is chapter 1-6, Kasumi and Kei share 7-8 with slight differences, Marie and Rea's 7-8 are different from the other two and contain their own differences, and then all 4 have their own individual chapters 9-13.
Length of each route from chapter 1-13 is about 10-15 hours, not very long now that I look back on it, but that's more than enough content to enjoy.

Time for route impressions!

Kasumi route:
It is crap because nothing happened. Heydrich didn't appear with the castle, Schreiber, Wittenburg, and Machina didn't even show up, so you don't even get to see all thirteen of the order. It was just a crappy childhood friend character route. Only route where swastika is not completed, so no epic battles with Heydrich and the three captains.

Marie route:
Favorite route second to Rea route for awesome fight between Ren and Heydrich. The route reveals story about why Kraft and Ren look alike and Marie's relation to this. Swastica is completed, Ren, Kei, and Shirou go fight the three captains, and final battle with Heydrich, Ren achieves Atziluth.
This route is just awesome for the ending battles, nothing else really stood out to me in this route... Hmmm I guess I should mention that Marie's H-scene is probably the longest and is actually one of the better ones in the game.

Kei route:
OMG Beatrice appears for one chapter and one chapter only, Kei route - chapter 13. Story covers Kei, Kai, and Beatrice. How Kai became Tubal Cain and well this was already mentioned in the common route I think, Kei -Leonhart August- replaced Beatrice -Valkyria- as L.D.O. number 5.
Ren loses Marie mid-way through his fight with Machina cause of Kraft and ends up using Thrud Valkyrie, Beatrice's holy relic. He sticks with this all the way to the end where we get Ren with Thrud and Kei versus Heydrich.
This route is pretty good everybody loves Kei, but OMFG Beatrice for only one chapter T_T

Rea route:
Favorite route, only ending that I felt needed more closure. The ending was left pretty open and confusing(mostly this)... Amazing stuff, everybody dies lol except Ren and Rea. Ren goes berserk in this route(only time) and fights the three captains in berserk state until Marie regains herself and they go Atziluth.
Oh, how awesome this route is...
And due to high user demand there's going to be a drama CD to cover what happens after the ending. More on this at the bottom I guess...

There are a total of 14 H-scenes, you'll get like 2 or 3 each run. The H-scenes here are good, on par with BALDR SKY in terms of amount, length, and quality. Nothing else to say here as it clearly isn't a major part of game.

Characters:

A pretty big cast, 20 or so characters total and one thing this game has is no random npc type characters. Pretty amazing to me seeing as I can only think of the 3 randoms in the prologue and 1 more in Rea route and that's it for unimportant characters.
The characters are one of the high points about this game and I agree they are a nice bunch of characters with amazing voice work. Some names to point out would be: Toriumi Kousuke playing as Fujii Ren and Carl Ernst Kraft.
Sakakibara Yui as Marie, she is also the only voice actor I know that doesn't use an alias for her work in eroge.
Nabatame Hitomi as Himuro Rea, under one of her many aliases. She's a pretty common voice to hear in eroge now a days, or in the stuff I've been playing.

Ok the main characters are as follows:

Fujii Ren (far right)
The main character of the story. Is also Longinus Dreizehn Orden number 13 Zarathustra Uber Mensch, his holy relic is the guillotine "Marguerite Bois Justice" aka Marie.

Ayase Kasumi (second from left)
Ren's childhood friend and classmate. She, Ren, and Shirou share the same apartment, and uhhh nothing else...

Marie (second from right)
Is Ren's holy relic, was told by Mercurius to stay by Zarathustra. Though she has always been sleeping inside of him. Her full name is Marguerite Breuil.

Sakurai Kei (third from right)
Longinus Dreizehn Orden number 5 Leonhart August and her holy relic is Scharlachrot. She was taken into L.D.O. by Trifa 11 years ago replacing Beatrice, who as far as we know was KIA.

Himuro Rea (far left)
She lives in the church with Riza Brenner and Valeria Trifa. Her Christian name is Theresia. She did not have any fiends before meeting Ren, Kasumi, and Shirou.
Longinus Dreizehn Orden number 6 Zonnenkind.

Yusa Shirou (third from left)
Disappeared 2 months ago before the start of the story after a fight with Ren. Appears to know about L.D.O. and has been watching over Ren somewhat, as he doesn't know about Ren's holy relic.

Honjou Erii (fourth from left)
Shirou's partner, is a genius hacker and uses a S&W M29. Not much else is said about her I guess.

Then theres the Longinus Dreizehn Orden:

And the extras:
13. Zarathustra Uber Mensch - included in image above
05. Valkyria - previous number 5
06. Zonnenkind - the first number 6, plays a rather important role in the story

Graphics

The art here is done by G Yuusuke and as far as I know he is exclusive to light eroge(so far only 2).
There are 220+ cg's, repeats are not as common as other eroge around or it didn't feel like it to me. Each battle scene usually has their own set of unique cg's that are not repeated in any other scene which in turn keeps things pretty lively and interesting to look at.

Along with the cg's the game features short fmv's. These are usually very short and are just some cheap prerendered effects over a cg. Not exactly the greatest idea but at least it's something different.

The game also takes a different approach in text display. The game uses both full screen and window text display. Window display is only for when in Ren's point of view, and full screen for when in any other character's point of view.

And of course as expected of any other eroge it's the same same visual novel formula, text and character over background, and etc.

Overall I'm not a fan of the user interface, mainly because the English font used for the menu options bugs me. I don't really like it but it gets the job done.
The cg's are nice, G Yuusuke's art style is amazing and I'd like to see more of his work outside of light's eroge.

Sound:

Nothing too outstanding in this department. It's a pretty mixed bunch of tracks to me, most of it sounds pretty generic except for some tracks used in the battle scenes. I guess just the baattle bgms really stuck to me, but it's not like everything else is bad though.
And also for vocals we have Sakakibara Yui singing the opening "Gregorio," the previous opening "Einsatz," and the ending "Uber den Himmel."

Overall:

Okay, no gameplay to write about because there really isn't any. It's a visual novel nothing more nothing less, so all the enjoyment is based on your understanding of the Japanese language.

Good story that's all there is to it. Setting, characters, and the art are clearly the high points of this game.
Ugh getting lazy thinking of a conclusion, well I'll say this game is a 7.5/10. Story can be improved in a few areas and the UI should be changed IMHO.

And now, as I was saying before, the ending for Rea's route was left kind of blank and confusing. So because people expressed their wishes for some sort of conclusion we get a 40 minute drama cd entitled "Zwei Wirklichkeit".
The drama cd is supposed to cover the events after the ending and is packaged with the complete soundtrack of Acta est Fabula, "Neuen Welt Symphonie", which was released April 23 2010.

And along with the soundtrack there was another drama cd covering the events of 11 years prior to the main scenario. This drama is the story of Kai and Beatrice during that time and it'll also feature new characters not from the game.

Alright, thanks for reading, leave comments, etc, etc.
I think I'll make a post on the drama cds when I get a hold of them.

Starcraft 2 BETA!

2010-04-06T23:07:00.006-06:00

YO!

Eliwood242 and I are in the Starcraft 2 beta!

FUN! FUN! FUN!

My game ID is OreoBoi.Raymonduu, feel free to add me if you are in the beta. Also if you guys and gals have any questions, feel free to ask (unless it's "Can I play on your account?", don't ask that pwease ^_^ =P).

If either eliwood242 or I can get fraps running at a decent resolution, we will be uploading random games to our youtube channel.

PEACE!

Raymonduu

Teleporting Doves

2010-03-27T23:23:00.002-06:00

Hello peeps,

it's me Hippo again =)

...

...

...

>_> Yeah, I'm supposed to be off the blog 'cause I'm "busy",
but~ it's spring break and I found an interesting video, so I decided to make a post.

Usually, I'm not too crazy about magic shows, so I don't know how this compares to other magicians, but he blew my mind. @0@<==insert drool here and that's the face I had watching. While watching, a part of me knew that all this was just a magic trick and that there is no such thing called real magic. However, when all those doves started popping out of nowhere, my eyes were too busy chasing doves all over the screen. I haven't watched the video over and over to try and find his little "trick", but I have a feeling I'd just end up wasting hours of my life and still fail to find out what it was that he did. That might just be me though, since my observation skill is non-existent.

Can you find the trick to these teleporting doves?

Aion Online

2010-03-21T23:12:00.011-06:00

So, like many of you out there (hopefully) you share a passion for gaming. In this case, our love for MMO's! With relation to Aion Online, Me (RanpaRuru), Ac1L, Raymonduu, and even the mighty Hippo have embarked on our journey through Elysia fighting for the Elyos...on Vaizel =p. So if you're also on our side, feel free to come chill with us if you see us running around, otherwise if you're an Asmodian, we'll see you in the abyss *sword sharpening sound*

Otherwise, after the jump I've embbeded a trailer for Aion vision, the upcoming patch meant to compete with the release of Final Fantasy 14 online, and I have to say it's sporting some nice upgrades to the graphics especially =p

So, here's our character details if you wanna stalk us~

RanpaRuru : Taeyeon
Ac1L : Sultrian
Hippo : Ouroboros
Raymonduu : Reilee

Otherwise, feel free to share one of your favorite MMO moments you've had, can be any game. For me, it was just chilling in the entrance to payon caves lvl 1 back in my RO days. Watching 10's of noobs ganging up on one level 90 and seeing them fall dead and just talking with everybody there was probably one of my favorite things to do back then since PvP isn't really my thing =\

Edit: Just wanted to add some impressions.
1) You might see lots of people complain about the grind in this game...they're lying. If you've only ever played WoW, then sure, this increase in grind might scare the bejeezuz out of you, but otherwise if you've come from other asian MMO's like ragnarok online, lineage 2, or anything like that, you'll find the pace of this grind quite fast with quests pushing you through all the way to the max level without feeling like you're being spoon fed.

2) The PvP in this game is refreshing for me. I never had too much time to experiment with it on WoW, but it's like a....faster paced version than lineage 2's PvP system with large scale fortress raids still and field skirmishes. You'll note that field PvP has taken out, probably to prevent the noobs from being harassed although ganking is still present =[

3) Pretty. 'nuff said.

4) Unfortunately they do not offer a trial period, but if you've been looking for a new MMO to play like me, then consider giving Aion a chance, it's a very solid game and will only get better. If you read the forums, it might scare you about all the "unbalance" talk but that happens for EVERY game. Classes will always complain about other classes, and any nerf to anything will always result in a lot of whining but every game has done that at one point or another (WoW included >_>).

Microphone Testing 1,2,3

2010-03-21T16:33:00.003-06:00

Post starts here. view under "edit html" to see the jump code, the post expander/read more.

Rest of post. anywhere below will be at post page

-----

Thanks blogger ^_^, I will follow your instructions when I post!

HAI! ^_^

This is my test post.

From now on I will be posting on a regular irregular scheduled of not scheduled updates.

RAYMONDUU

-----

Raymonduu says:

FIRST

Goong 124

2010-03-20T15:31:00.003-06:00

Here it is...

Download Goong chapter 124

As mentioned in my previous post, this will be the last release for Goong by the Octave Ministry, until further notice. If no other scanslation group's taken the project by the time I'm back, I'll probably take it, but the "Goong" project is dropped for now. Thanks for keeping up with all our releases, and see you around!

Hippo reporting out.

Why you have to pay more for insurance

2010-03-18T15:15:00.012-06:00

If you’re a teenager like me and you’re wondering why you have to pay over $300/month to insure your car, you can thank Jay Chen, an owner of a wrecked Nissan R35 GT-R. According to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the 21 year old accused street racer allegedly crashed his Ivory White GT-R on the Glendora mountain road in California. According to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Chen and his sister Tracey gave the insurance investigators conflicting testimonies, sending up red flags. Chen later called the insurance company and informed them that he would cover the damages himself, only to claim another accident three months later on 60 Freeway in Riverside, California.

That is not the end of the story for Chen. During the paperwork processing for the second accident, the body shop informed Chen’s insurance company that the shop had been holding on to the mangled GT-R since the accident in March. Upon searching YouTube, investigators found incriminating evidence of the incident. The insurance company claims that the video below shows an incident where an ivory white GT-R does a mountain run with a Mitsubishi Evolution IX MR. The damage on the mangled GT-R in the video was consistent with the damage on Chen’s GT-R.

Even though the severity of the accident wasn’t serious, Chen has been officially charged with six felony counts of insurance fraud and his sister Tracey has been charged with one count of insurance fraud. It’s all thanks to people like this why if you’re late teens to your early 20s are paying over $300 dollars to insure your battered metal box your call a car.

Also, why is it that people who engage in illegal activities feel compelled to record their indiscretions? It’s a terrible and stupid idea and it only gets worst if you decide to post the evidences on YouTube where any random person, even an investigator, can find it.

Source:
http://www.sgvtribune.com/rds_search/ci_14666391?IADID=Search-www.sgvtribune.com-www.sgvtribune.com

Going on hiatus...+Goong chapter 123

2010-03-15T22:47:00.004-06:00

As many of you probably noticed, the game or the translations for Goong did not continue after the last release.

I first want to apologize for that, but I had (still have) a lot of things to do in life. I'm applying to get into a university, my house is being renovated (and I had to do things around the house for as much as 5 hours a day), there were unit finals in school, etc. At first, I had planned to continue the game a week after the break. Then... exams came up... so I decide to scrap the game, and do rest of the volume and release it. Then there were a lot more things to do... so I wasn't able to do anything, (sorry for those of you who applied to be cleaners, but a person named Esther had already taken the position a couple days after the post). I somehow managed to translate 2 chapters, but apparently the typesetter for the 2nd one forgot about it... ha ha... then I realized all of this was too much for me to handle until I have some more spare time.

That is why... I decided to release the 2 chapters that are ready( the second one is being typeset right now >_>) and drop the project. Esther told me that she knows willing Korean-English translators that won't mind picking it up, so don't worry. Although things have been rough and I haven't kept to my words, thank you to all our readers out there and I'm not saying good bye. It's just that I have too many things on my hands for now, and I am taking a short(?) break, but...

I

Will

Be

Back

...

edit: Here's the link for chapter 123:

Download Goong chapter 123

Normality~

2010-03-07T23:24:00.007-07:00

So this is more of a random brain fart then anything else i suppose due to my homework assignment but,

How would YOU define normal?

According to various dictionaries and encyclopedias, they say..

"being within certain limits that define the range of normal functioning"

"normal refers to a lack of significant deviation from the average"

"The psychological characteristics attributed to the majority of people in a population at a given time"

But then we run into the issue of different types of normality dont we? Given by my subject Christopher Boorse in his paper back in the 1970's regarding health as a theoretical concept, he argued in favor of something he called statistical normality revolving around the idea of statistacally typical functional efficiency. Contrasting his position is a man named Wachbroit, who in his paper from the 1990's regarding biological normality, took an opposing stance to Boorse's position.

Course, I don't expect many of you to read what's after the jump, but if you'd like to give it a read and tell me your thoughts on the subject, that'd be nice. Keep in mind that this is obviously still novice work from a first year undergraduate student, but as I stated previously, this is all a brain fart @_@

Statistical versus Biological Normality with Respect to Practical Usage

When looking at health as a theoretical concept and trying to apply it to real world scenarios, it is imperative to consider both states of health, healthy or diseased. However, it order to accomplish this, the concept of normality must first be established as a reference point where the state of being healthy is considered normal, and the state of being diseased is considered abnormal as per the modern axiom. In this paper, I will argue in favor that Boorse's concept of statistical normality is more correct and applicable to practical use as opposed to Wachbroit's biological normality. I begin by first discussing the major points of each theory in the following section before presenting my arguments. In the latter section, I will investigate a few possible objections with my argument and how they go astray.

As the name implies, Boorse's concept of statistical normality is heavily reliant on the idea of an average where normality is defined to be a mean of the ability to perform all physiological functions at statistically typical functional efficiency of a system or subsystem in question. In this case, it can be simply seen that the state of disease results when the system or subsystem in question functions at an efficiency level outside of the average parameters outlined by conventional standards or medical studies investigating the functional efficiency during periods of idle activity. For example, take a patient with a cardiovascular disease such as cardiac arrhythmia or aortic regurgitation where oxygen delivery by the blood may become insufficient while performing at a , sub-normal or abnormal, level. This state would then be considered disease. The normal level would be obtained by conducting tests on a sample population to determine what the typical efficiency of the heart would be when delivering oxygen in an idle state and then compared to the patients.

Wachbroit on the other hand argues firmly against statistical normality, and a second type known as evaluative normality (refers to the conventional, cultural, and ethical norms which we will not be discussing in this paper) and focuses on a third type which he terms biological normality. This particular view on normality pays a lot of attention to the contrast between function and malfunction. Without presenting a concrete empirical definition of normality, Wachbroit presents that biological normality as a whole is independent from biological function as well as other physical sciences. Suppose that the idle function of an organ is considered normal where it becomes goal-oriented as a part of a system. However, in the case that the organ is still accomplishing its goal, but at sub-standard levels, the concept of biological function fails to accommodate the discrepancy between function and malfunction. As such, Wachbroit attempts to establish normality as an indeterminate concept where no particular case, or average case may not be normal and it becomes up to the medical professional to discern if the condition is normal or abnormal.

Thus far I have tried to simplify the definition of normality in preparation for the presentation of my arguments. As I have previously stated, I am in favor of statistical normality but for what reasons? Wachbroit has already proved in his own paper that goal-oriented theories and etiological theories regarding biological normality are insufficient in discerning between function and malfunction without appealing to the considerations of normality but what about his conclusion? Living in an internationalized community, the mixture of different cultural and ethnic values is inevitable, even to the medical world. Even individuals that didn't come from an international setting with their own previous conceptions offer a large variance in what that believe to be right and wrong. In this case, what is healthy and diseased. Ultimately, this will lead to whether or not the patient will receive this or that prescription. Now consider this situation. The first patient to suffer from cardiac arrhythmia with no previous outstanding medical record walks into a clinic and seeks a diagnose. Of course the practitioner, following Wachbroit, may decide this is abnormal, but he may very well decide the patient is simply suffering a temporary setback due to some outside factor. Unfortunately, this system appears very impractical following Wakefield's argument that incorrect application of disorder by the practitioner might misinterpret an evolutionary mechanism as a disease. On the other hand, a statistical analysis of this situation will most certainly consider this condition to be abnormal and lead to further investigation and research into the symptoms and effects. With respect to the individual, this also becomes the more practical result as he receives immediate medical attention for his condition.

Furthermore, with respect to a more research based view on the subject, the existence of a reference class is essential when analyzing the dispositions offered by the experiment conducted. Without a control, it becomes difficult to pursue a specific future research subject. Of course this applies to health practice as well. With the discovery of an abnormal condition as specified by the control parameters it becomes easier to look for similar abnormalities and identify them at an early stage before the condition progresses. In this sense, it may also be used to discern regions in a medical perspective. When comparing different regions of the country and other countries entirely, this will help to identify a more appropriate course of action. Suppose an individual afflicted with sickle cell anemia is suffering from sub-optimal efficiency by a number of organs as defined by the conventional norm. However, when comparing his condition to a region known to be more widespread with sickle cell anemia, it can be seen that the patients other conditions are often observed hand in hand with the former condition. Knowing this allows the physician to more carefully plan an appropriate course of action.

By this point, I hope to have developed a rational argument for my stance with statistical normality. However it is possible that there may be objections over the following issues. I previously mentioned the comparisons between different regional means and values for their specific typical functional efficiency however the economics to conduct such a large scale research project is largely impractical. Fortunately, this can be remedied by cooperating with international governments to collect and share data with the medical community and ameliorate the discrepancy between healthy and diseased with respect to practical usage.

It can also be noted that a statistical approach does not account for biological function or the actual occurrence of dysfunction. In this respect, it can be argued that statistical analysis falls flat when attempting to determine whether a condition is really a disease or an anomaly in light of evolutionary mechanisms. In the case of an athlete with an exceptionally strong cardiovascular system that results in a less than normal heart rate, the statistical definition will most definitely classify the heart as diseased. However, upon further analysis, the same statistical definition will find the athlete to be beyond normal as his physical performance abilities are recorded and compared to statistical values.

If, as I have argued, the use of an indeterminate form of normality cannot remedy the arguments regarding the concept of a reference class, analysis, or external influence upon medical judgment then statistically typical functional efficiency as a definition of normality is the more sensible approach to creating a more practical and efficient health care system. Where the state of being healthy or diseased are easily identified by comparing the subject to a reference class based on pre-existing cultural and regional data. Then statistical normality will hold more prevalent role in practical application.

Goong chapter 122 & recruiting cleaners!

2010-02-21T23:09:00.007-07:00

As promised...

here's chapter 122, available for those of you who couldn't solve the riddles, since it has been 1 full week from the first round.

Download Goong chapter 122

I'm also over the cold/flu/w.e. I had, so I will be working on the next few chapters as soon as I get someone to clean the raws.
I think someone volunteered to clean for me a few days ago... but I forgot who it was.
Anyways, if you want to be a cleaner for the Octave Ministry, apply by replying to this post in this format:

Name: Hippo
Position: Cleaner
Reason: Because I want to help, blah blah blah
Previous experience:
E-mail address: crunchinghippo@gmail.com

An E-mail with a link to the raws will be sent after you apply, and you'll be tested to see if you can be a cleaner.

*Keep in mind that you will need to know how to use photoshop or a similar program to clean raws if you want to be a cleaner for us.

A few benefits you may gain from doing this are:

-earlier access to releases (a bypass for the Hide-and-seek games)
-A warm and fuzzy feeling for getting releases out faster for Goong fans

Shutter Island review

2010-02-20T11:00:00.005-07:00

Synopsis

From IMDB

In 1954, U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are assigned to investigate the escape of a patient at the federal maximum security hospital/prison for the criminally insane located on Shutter Island. Once on the island, they find that the hospital and prison staffs aren't really cooperating with their investigation. It seems that the staff is hiding a big secret and Teddy is going to uncover it. Teddy believes that if he can see the records that he would break the case. In the meantime, the island is hit by a hurricane, and more dangerous patients escape and must be captured. This gives Teddy and Chuck the opportunity to check out some of the buildings that they were denied to go. What Teddy finds is the answer he was looking for. Remember, things aren't always what they seem to be.

In a word, this movie was amazing. Definitely a must-see, especially if, like me, you've felt that there hasn't been many good movies released for a while (minus Avatar, I have to admit I quite enjoyed James Cameron's latest, but more for the eye candy and orchestral score rather than the story). It's a very tense movie, it will keep you thinking and involved in the movie. Many red herrings littered throughout, but if you stop and think about it, you'll start to put together pieces of the puzzle as they move along making this very enjoyable to watch as well. Leonardo DiCaprio does an amazing job once again reminiscent of his role in Gangs of New York. Ben Kingsley also carries out an amazing performance with a persona much like his role back in Minority Report. Great filming with nicely selected camera angles, panning shots, color palettes and other visual effects. Very solid movie with more twists than you'd think ;D so definitely make sure to drop by your local theatre sometime or rent it when it comes out, you won't regret it.

Further impressions after the jump

Spoilers will be indicated beforehand

Share your thoughts in the comments section below

Looking at the trailer for this back when we went to go watch avatar, I remember thinking that the story was pretty generic and nothing special about it, and although a plot twist like this has been done before, Shutter Island does not fail to bring some flair to it.

The movie opens with Teddy and his partner Chuck coming to a mental institution on Shutter Island. He meets the doctor in charge of the island who promptly explains how they are leading a study on the new perspective of psychotherapy. The old one consisting of surgery's and lobotomies and his perspective that states care and respect for those who are in need of help can calm them.

Teddy arrives seeking a woman by the name of Rachel who had escaped her cell within the last couple days. Oddly enough, her room has a barred window, a steel door locked from the outside, and she left without wearing shoes despite the rough terrain of the island. At this point, you already know something out of the normal is happening on this island and the story progresses.

One of the things that struck me was Teddy's character. In his past, he served in the American army in world war two and aided in the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. There many references to it throughout the movie, all of equal importance concerning his past, his present situation and even a couple little twists thrown in there. The directors choice to pay homage to his past by giving him a springfield rifle near the end of the movie made me giddy as you watch his tactical entries.

**Spoilers - Highlight to read**

I did mention earlier about the originality that shutter island does bring to an old plot twist and one of them is the last line of the movie. I don't think it could have ended on a better note. At the end of the movie, you find out that Teddy was indeed Laeddis the entire time and that he was sent her for mental recorvery from the murder of his wife (whom murdered their three children) and that this entire role-playing scenario was part of the new psychotherapy thought to make the patient remember what had happened through self-realization. Teddy had been successful before but immediately reverts back to his fake persona under the name Edward Daniels. After his second success, Teddy sits on the steps talking to Chuck, when asked what their next move was, he points to the mainland and says they'll find a way off this rock together. Done right? He's crazy again?

"Would you rather live as a monster, or die a good man..."

Now is he crazy? I found this line to be absolutely amazing. Maybe it did work, and now he chose to die as a US federal Marshall with is honor and dignity intact despite having the option of going back to the mainland and living as the monster who murdered his wife. But his resolution is still unclear, so it's still up in the air whether or not that honor comes from Edward Daniels, or as Andrew Laeddis.

Now for some more technical things I suppose. The filmography was done very tastefully. Good balance of close ups and panning shots and wisely chosen angles to reflect the mood. An example of such would be when he was walking through ward C to find Laeddis and bumps into Noice. Very sharp but well timed transitions make that scene a very tense one. There was one scene though, where they placed the fire infront of the speaker such that it was flashing. That personally hurt my eyes, and RiceBall's quite a bit.

The pacing of the movie was also nicely done. It doesn't feel like it's going too slow such that it drags on and on and on, but it's not going too fast either where you find yourself asking "how did we get here?". Each twist has a large enough..."grace period" ? around it, so that you can think it through to yourself and put it together.

As for the score, I can't say that there were any specific songs or melodies that stuck with me, so the only impression I can leave for this section is that, it was fitting for the moment. Although not memorable, it's still very nicely done. Avoiding too many high note staccato's and balancing out the smoother strings too.

In the end, I highly recommend this movie, you won't regret watching it guaranteed.

Final Verdict 9.0/10

So, everyone who has seen it, now you know my favorite scene, how bout yours?

Goong-Hide and Seek Chapter 122 FIXED

2010-02-18T23:31:00.009-07:00

It is brought to our attention that there were some typesetting errors on Goong Chapter 122. This is due to the fact that I was too busy play/getting my ass kicked in Mortal Kombat. But all of the issues that have been brought to our attention has been fixed, the hidden download link has been fixed and the game is still on!

To the people who have already solve the question, you can go back and redownload file. The answer to the riddle is still the same. The URL for the download has been changed.

[kunkun] LIFE:ERRORS Chapter 3

2010-02-18T02:19:00.001-07:00

Download after the jump.

Chapter 3:
http://www.mediafire.com/?mzkikn5jtty

Visit my blog for other information relating to release and current project status.
kunkun Adventuring Co.

Sick Hippo

2010-02-15T21:01:00.003-07:00

Because I am quite sick...

and since we don't have a cleaner for the raws anymore, I decided to put off the game+releases for a week or so... or until I get better and we get a new cleaner.
If you want to help us out with cleaning raws, post a comment down below.
I'm sorry things turned out this way, but I don't think I can get any better without getting some rest...

ALMS Laguna Seca 2009- "Bergmeister drives him to the wall!"

2010-02-15T15:15:00.009-07:00

Since RanpaRuru has been bugging me to post something, I decided to post something that’s controversial to petrol heads. The controversial topic I picked is the last lap in ALMS Laguna Seca 2009 in the GT2 class.

This was the final race to the 2009 ALMS (American Le Mans Series) and the controversy was over the move that Joerg Bergmeister of Flying Lizard Motorsports pulled on Jan Maggussen of Corvette Racing. Give this video clip a watch and look at the battle in GT2 between Bergmeister’s red and silver Porsche and Maggussen’s yellow and black Corvette.

At 3:06, Maggussen bumps Bergmeister in an attempt to pass him, but as a result, Bergmeister goes on the offense and drives Maggussen’s Corvette into the wall making him crash.

From that video, I would have to side with Bergmeister, even though he went too far. The reason for Bergmeister’s extreme reaction was the event that happened to Bergmeister in 2007, when he was bumped off in the last lap at Sebring. So, in an attempt to prevent history from repeating itself, he defended his position. Also, “if not for a boneheaded and dirty move by Magussen,“ and Magussen not backing off when alongside Bergmeister, things would have ended differently.

That is my opinion of what happened, but I want to know if there’s anyone else out there with a different thought of what happened in the video. If so, leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Goong-Hide and Seek: Round 1 starts now!

2010-02-15T02:00:00.008-07:00

First of all, I'd like to apologize for posting 2 hours later than what I promised.
Anyways...
*edit-I've messed up big time... the bonus solution for the round will not work as I intended... so if you have the answer to it, just e-mail me the answer, and I will link you to the download T_T I'm really sorry for those of you who couldn't get the link through the bonus solution. E-mail the answer to: crunchinghippo@gmail.com

Here are the hints for this round(solution 1):

*to make up for my big mistake(the faulty bonus solution)... here's the biggest hint you can get w/o me directly telling you the answer:

You can find the hidden link somewhere on here

The chapter link can be found in the wise words of a certain person...
and here's what he says:

-I'm one of two lonely brothers
-I am younger than my brother
-I am one, but many, all at once
-From my mouth, you shall find the solution
-Patience will bring about silence, and that is when you will find your answer
-*new hint: People see me, but I cannot see them.
-*new hint: I sing every time someone watches me.

BONUS solution hints(this is for the other easy way to acquire the chapter):
This is something that can be described with two words:

1) _____ means of mass communication... can refer to: TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc

2) ____=often referred to as man's first invention, but is more of a discovery.

If you put these words together, you should know what to do ^^

*P.S. there is more than one way to acquire the link for this chapter, and let me just say, one is way easier than the other =P

*edit:Here are some of the changes I'm going to make:
-more hints will be added to this post at random hours
-make sure you send a proof screenshot of the download and e-mail it if you want to gain points for the game
-since this round started off 2 hours later, it will also end 2 hours later, at 2:00 AM or... I'm thinking of changing that again, because I'm down with a cold and I might want to sleep earlier...
-*IMPORTANT: I forgot to mention that there is no password for this upload, although there might be for future rounds.

BALDR SKY - review by kunkun

2010-02-13T17:09:00.036-07:00

Time for some random eroge talk. This post will be covering my overall impressions of BALDR SKY Dive 1 "Lost Memory" and Dive 2 "Recordare", so pretty much a review. I am also going to be discussing some parts of story I did not understand so there will be some pretty big spoilers, but for the people that may happen to stumble here by accident and would like to answer or discuss some of my questions please do post a comment. Okay, impressions after the jump. This review is for both Dive 1 and Dive 2, I consider them both as the one game BALDR SKY.
SPOILER WARNING FOR PEOPLE THAT GIVE A SHIT
Again, nothing after the jump is NSFW.

Story:
Okay people, sorry I am just gonna jump straight into the spoilers lol.

So we all know(now) that the real world is the Sora route which went through the Ark Project and really the one that died during "Haiiro no Christmas"(Grey Christmas) was Kou. So Sora is alive and Kou is dead. (OMG for you people still playing Dive 1)

Question #1: How did Simulacra Kou wake up?
Cause from my understanding here's what I got: When Sora began her world searching it was the real Kou(sort of) in those world's that Eve generated. So eventually after going through so many world's the information of Kou from these worlds began to leak into Simulacra through Kuu? Now I'm lost as I was never sure about the connection between Kuu and Simulacra Kou.
Question #2: Why is it that only Makoto has memories of the other worlds?
Is it because she's a Connecter? I don't really have any ideas as to how she is able to see the other world's through her dreams. But I did like how she was able to create the world that Sora has been looking for, just because she has memories of the other worlds.
Question #3: How is Kou's body in the real world?
I'm guessing some random miracle to bring back life, the Assembler? But this also leads me to ask how is it that they were able to get out first...

Okay so that's all the questions I have about the story. A reminder for those that have played and have some comments on these questions please do post. It'd be nice to hear some other ideas on these questions or just straight answers.

And now time for impressions. Yes, I liked the story, Murasaki did a much better job with this than BALDR FORCE that's for sure. But that's understandable as BALDR FORCE is pretty old, uhhh 8 years old now I think.
So first I'd like to say that I especially liked the pacing of the story, just enough action and dialogue not drawn out too long in between. Another plus for me is to be going through routes and finding out more about the story, all routes are connected to main story, and not just all about the heroine of the route. That was a big motivator for me to go through all the routes. Each route revealed more and more and by the end of Dive 1 you'll be asking yourself stuff like, "Sora is alive? WTF I just saw her die!(You really do)" And even at the end of Dive 2 I still had questions so I spent a few extra hours going back to certain events to find answers, and as you can all see I didn't find them all... But that's just more fun for me.
Good story I really liked it(but Muramasa still #1), and I guess I will just give a little comment on the H-scenes as well. There are at least 2 per route, so not that many considering the time you'll spend in a route. But once you get there you'll see that they aren't that great, they're still nice though, but that's pretty common in the more story intensive eroge.
But really compared to Muramasa(which I played just before this) these are a godsend.

Characters:
Ummm I wasn't really sure if I wanted to seperate this from the story section but I thought it was looking a little too big.
So the characters here are of your generic Japanese anime stereotypes. No problem, we all love our tsundere, loli, and onee-san type characters. No yandere here for you freaky people. Character voices are well done, good quality stuff, and I'm sure you can all recognize the voice talents of Koyasu Takehito and Wakamoto Norio.
Well I don't really feel like commenting on each individual character, so I'm just gonna write down a quick line or two to describe the 7 main characters.
Another spoiler wwarning for the people that give a shit, but really if you read this far in you already hit the big ones.

Kadokura Kou: Main character. Pilot in a mercenary group and is a First Lieutenant. Voiced FTW
Kirishima Rain: In the same group as Kou, is Second Lietenant. Is support role in battle and she spends most of the story following Kou. Apparently voted most popular character, so yes she's awesome.
Wakakusa Nanoha: Kou's childhood friend(the worst I've ever seen). Parents were killed in research accident. Her character may come off as annoying for most people but she's okay... Sometimes.
Nagisa Chinatsu: Kou's best friend and first girlfriend. Is part of GOAT(government military faction) and is a First Lietenant. RanpaRuru's fetish, girls in pilot suits.
Nishino Aki: Is Kou's Aunt Seira's daughter, so his cousin. Genius progammer and works for ARK. Is actually a clone of Kou's mother. That's right Kou gets to bang a clone of his mother...
Minaduki Makoto: Loli character. Is the Preistess of Dominion, and believes her sister Sora is still alive. Yah for loli? Yeah, all eroge needs their loli.
Minaduki Sora: She is Makoto's older sister and was Kou's girlfriend. Despite what all the routes have been telling you, she is alive. She always has been and the next part probably won't make sense to people who have not got to the end, but she has been searching for a very long time for a world where both she and Kou are both alive together. Best character! Well for me at least.

Graphics:
The user interface is pretty nice looking, I like it. Customizable UI wallpaper and chibi character mascots are just about it for customizing but it should only be a problem if you don't like it.

Normal visual novel style, character art on screen over top backgrounds, and the usual multiple emotions to help visualize the dialogue. Or this isn't actually just seen in visual novels it's seen in just about every video game in Japan.

But no problem, it all looks nice, and I am biased as I like Kikuchi's art :P. So cg's are also FTW for me, but anyways there is about 200~300 cg's in total from both games, quite a few I guess and some of the robo ones are also repeated many times throughout the two games.
Battle graphics are a step up from previous games, still the same slightly overhead view, and the sprites are pretty detailed with fluid animations(Aerial machinegun FTW). Nothing to complain about considering the kind of budget these sorts of games would have.

Sound:
Music was split between quite a few groups, which are as follows:

I've SOUND: For having KOTOKO perform both opening themes, "Resoration ~Chinmoku no Sora~" for Dive 1 and "jihad" for Dive 2.
Barbarian on the Groove: Did about 40% of the tracks as well as the insert song "Paradigm Shift" and the ending theme "Nano Universe", both songs were performed by Katakiri Rekka.
SHIM(TGZ SOUNDs): Another good chunk of the tracks, 30%~. Had some really nice battle tracks.
Little Wing: Also did about 30%~ of the tracks. Did only scenario tracks, none for battle part.

They did a good job, there are quite a few memorable battle tracks, and "Easiness of Time"(both mixes) is really nice. No complaints from me about music, I thought they fit well with the situations used and the vocal songs were good too. Hearing "Paradigm Shift" for the first time against last boss in Dive 1 was pretty awesome and listening to "Nano Universe" at ending credits was nice to finish off Dive 2.

Gameplay:
A nice combination of both generic visual novel gameplay and an awesome action game.
Okay, normal visual novel path split decisions, multi-endings, the usual nothing different to expect here but it is nice that they have an unlockable scenario chart. It helps when going for the different endings. Along with the scenario chart there are also other unlockables that can be purchased with "Force" a currency you collect after battle, nothing to do with the story.

Alright now for the best part, the battles. They are well placed within the scenario and there's just enough and never too much.
So this is a 2.5D(I hate that term) action game it's also pretty simple. So first you can equip a total of 12 weapons/attacks, along with these 12 are 2 super attacks which are unlocked as you progress through the game. The weapon equip menu can be seen below.

First the weapons are equipped on to situational roles amongst the three buttons A, B, and C. The first slot is for Short Range, second is Search Dash, third is Long Range, and last is Normal Dash. So when executing these attacks, the first weapon used will be based on the distance between you and the target as well as whether or not you are using a dash. Comboes can be done by executing another attack after another, all attacks can be canceled but if not timed or planned out the attack will whiff ending the combo. Example below, my 12 weapon Initializer combo, this is a quick efficient combo I've used since Dive 1, I haven't gotten around to screwing around with the Dive 2 weapons.

There's more to the battle system than just that, I just don't feel like going over it all. So let's go on, the game features 5 different difficulty levels: Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard. The battles can get pretty difficult sometimes even on normal, so it's not exactly an easy game that you can spam your way through with one weapon. Replay value is enormous with the action part and the story to keep you playing, and then there's even a survival mode that lets you fight waves of enemies so that's always fun to do when you're finished with the story.

Overall:
So overall this game should recognized for it's gameplay above anything because it's what the series is known for. So good story, robos, music, and an action game. OMG it's made of fucking win. Well as you can see I really like the game, there's really nothing to bash on it for because when compared to other eroge it's really different and original in that it's an action game and not an RPG cause there are so many of those now a days.
Hmmm I don't think I'll be putting out any number scores on any of the categories but I'll just say the games as a whole is 9/10. So my most anticipated eroge of 09 turned out to be my favorite and I hope you all have learned something today: Just because it's pr0n doesn't mean it's a bad game in any way. Okay that's all for my review, hopefully I've converted some people into looking into eroge and playing this amazing game.

[WIP] GN-001 DGS Exia Alyattes Update Feb 13

2010-02-13T15:50:00.006-07:00

RanpaRuru here again~

So heres a quick update for the Exia. Reading break just started so i'm taking a little bit of time of for some me time before i start studying for bio and stuff again. So heres what you will see in this post.

- Neck mod : Increasing mobility by about 30-40 degrees

- Torso mod : Increasing mobility of the torso by about 45-50 degrees

- Skirt mod : Extend skirt by 3.5 cm by using plaplates

- Head mods : Almost finished version of the head, addition of detailing + painting

Explanations on what i did for the mods will be broken down for each~

WIP Pictures and explanations after the jump!

So heres the neck mod first.
What happened here was the original neck for the 1/100 MG exia was a single static ball joint on a base. Two things bothered me about this...
1) It was a very short neck, makes the exia look stubby
2) Could not move it foward so you have trouble making poses that requires the head to be tilted down/foward say during kneeling poses etc.

How Did it,
First i used my 0.1mm modeling saw and cut off the ball joint. Used my rotary tool to dremmel out the base and hollow it out. I then tried a lot of different methods including the double ball joint from kotobukiya but i couldn't get the ABS joint pieces to work properly. In the end, i hijacked the neck joint from my wing ver.ka, sanded down the sides until the diameter matched and then slid it in. i re-sealed it with some super glue and let it sit.

Torso-mod next
The original 1/100 MG exia torso had rather limited torso posability. It was VERY close to the waist so when tilting back and forth you couldn't get very much motion out of it.

How.
I began by cutting off the support pieces for the torso joint so that they were now two independant pieces. I realized if i raised the torso by a bit, it would give it enough space to allow it to bend forward. So after glueing in the plaplates to extend it by a bit, i had abit of a problem where i had trouble closing it up. i remidied this by cementing it shut after carefully considering if i need to open it up again.

Skirt mod!

Ok, so for this little guy...i purchased the 1/144 to kitbash this because exia's nakedness on the side always bugged me, a lot. So i saw this rather attractive skirt and decided to use it. HOWEVER, once it actually arrived, i realized how tiny it was compared to the actual leg, so i set out to extend it to match the 1/100.

How.
First, i began by cutting it half as you can see, measured how much i needed to extend it by which came out to be 3.5cm. Cut out 1mm plaplate and filled in the bottom piece first, joined the pieces using super glue and plastic cement. Next up was the curved piece. Cut out another piece of plaplate and boiled it for about....15 minutes. After i was able to bend it, i realized it started to bend back..so i had to boil it again. After this time, i left it in the bench vise for 24 hours and it seemed pretty stable. Connected it with super glue again and then continued sanding. a LOT of sanding. It's still not entirely done, i plan to do so after this post~

This is just some pictures to finish it off with.
you can see the V-Fin is still a little rough but i'll be fixing that.

Hope you liked reading this post

Check back for more!

Dear Chapter 24 Translated

2010-02-13T00:33:00.003-07:00

Hello!

RanpaRuru here announcing my own personal project on the series Dear!

Taken from MangaUpdates~

Meet Chiruha: She lives alone in a small secluded house deep in a mountainous forest, the TV her only connection to the outside world. After years of watching and dreaming of what life must be like in the outside world, she has gathered up her courage to venture out and explore the local village. However, she must be careful not to stand out among the humans, for Chiruha holds a secret...
Kisara also holds a secret...and a grudge. He's searching for who--or whatever cursed him, and he may have finally found the answer...

Download Link after the jump!

Please leave comments and criticism belowww!
The next chapter 25 is a relatively short one so i expect to have it out within the next week.
stay tuned for more!

Download Dear Chapter 24

Goong chapter 121 translated + "hide-and-seek"

2010-02-10T02:35:00.007-07:00

Just as the title reads~ grab the link belowww.

Download Goong chapter 121

Hide-and-seek info:

1) All the remaining chapters in volume 19 of Goong, will be released as "hidden"
releases starting on Feb. 15th, 2010.

2) These "hidden" releases are download links+passwords to the new chapters that will be hidden somewhere in the blog or even our youtube channel.

3) A single round will be played every day for 7 days starting on the 15th and there will be one "hidden" release per day.

4) To play the game, simply find the download link along with the password and take a screenshot of the page where you found it at, and e-mail it to me.

5) The first ten people to send me an e-mail with the proof screenshots will receive
additional hints toward the next round of the game and collect points according to
how fast they sent the e-mail. All e-mails should be sent to crunchinghippo@gmail.com

6) All of the e-mails with the proof screenshots sent after 12:00 midnight, after the day of the round is over, will not get replies with hints for the next round.
You will still collect some points however.

7) Some hints for the specific round will be given on the same day as the corresponding round.

8) The game will increase in difficulty with each and every round, starting with just
a simple hidden link on the first day, and later with riddles and puzzles to solve.

9) These releases will not be found on any of the manga hosting sites nor will they be open for easy access on the blog within the duration of the game.

10) A scoreboard will be created after the end of the first round, listing players' online aliases and their corresponding scores.

11) After the game is finished, all the points obtained by the players will be tallied and a winner will be announced.

Rules:

1) DO NOT LEAK THE HIDDEN RELEASE!

-If you manage to find the link, great! However, don't ever leak the link to anyone
else or upload the releases onto sharing sites such as www.onemanga.com, www.mangafox.com or any free hosting sites such as mediafire and etc.
If you are caught doing so, you will not only be kicked from playing the game, but the game will come to an end and the project will be on hiatus until further notice,
so please, don't do it.

2) DO NOT E-MAIL ME ASKING QUESTIONS REGARDING THE GAME!

-because I will not tell you anything!

3) PLAY FAIR AND DON'T SHARE SOLUTIONS TO RIDDLES/PUZZLES WITH OTHER PLAYERS

-however, I won't be able to stop you from doing it, but try not to cheat and have fun!

4) DO NOT LEAVE ME ANGRY E-MAILS OR COMMENTS!

-about how the whole game thing is unfair, because I'm giving people a chance to
get the entire next volume at once(which means a lot of work for me)

5) PLAY THE GAME AND HAVE FUN!

[kunkun] LIFE:ERRORS Chapter 2

2010-02-07T14:58:00.003-07:00

Download link is after the jump.

Chapter 2:
http://www.mediafire.com/?dfum2lykdmz

Visit the blog for more information on my other manga translation projects.
kunkun Adventuring Co.

Goong chapter 120 translated

2010-02-03T00:53:00.008-07:00

Here's chapter 120 as promised... although I'm thinking about whether or not I should continue on with this series... but that'll be up for discussion later. Grab the chapter from the link below!

Download Goong chapter 120

Girl's Generation/SNSD MV Oh! translated

2010-02-02T22:28:00.010-07:00

Enjoy your daily dose of cute Korean girls:

SNSD Oh! MV

An Attack on the Gas Station!

2010-02-01T23:52:00.004-07:00

Coming soon to a youtube near you!

Hippo here. I was surfing the intrarnetz the other day and found a sequel to a movie I watched in 1999 called "An Attack on the Gas Station!" This made me wonder if the 11 year old movie had ever been translated into English. ...=_=;;; Sadly, it was already done a long time ago apparently. However, I didn't let that stop me from making the movie my new translation project. I searched all over youtube for the full movie and couldn't find it, and since it's such an old movie, I don't think I'd have any issues with uploading it on youtube. So... I am doing a rerelease for the movie (although a fully subbed version has been uploaded onto a torrent >_>), but that doesn't mean I'm going to take someone else's work and call it my own. The subs for the movie that will be released by us will be an original. The whole movie's about a little less than 2 hours long, so it will take me quite some time to finish working on it... but I guarantee you that it will make you laugh so much that you will suffocate in your own saliva and gurgle/giggle your way to death! (lol hopefully not though, so you can keep coming to our blog >=D)

P.S. The trailer above was NOT subbed by me or anyone from this group. All credits go to "draftzero" or whoever that subbed it >_>

Octave Youtube Channel

2010-02-01T19:59:00.016-07:00

Hello World.

Riceball here again to introduce our Youtube channel called 8MRoR which stands for “Octave Ministry Resurgence of Romanticism". We are going to show some of our video translation projects using the Youtube Channel. We probably won’t be taking any requests on anything that has been copyrighted in North America unless we feel that it’s worth taking a chance.

So far we have two videos up as demos of our work. With time we hope to get more videos up of all genres. For demos we have the “Outsider 아웃사이더 Loner 외톨이 MV” translated by Hippo and “Love Online - 联想ideapad「爱·在线」网络小电影 PV” which is a touching Chinese commercial for the Lenovo ideapad translated by Yingster and myself.

*Banner coming soon if RanpaRuru feels like making one.

[kunkun] LIFE:ERRORS Chapter 1

2010-02-01T00:59:00.007-07:00

Hello everybody kunkun here to announce my new project.
The title of the series is LIFE:ERRORS, written and illustrated by Tsunashima Shirou.
Please do enjoy and spread the word around.

More information after the jump.

You can find the download link to the chapter release on my main translation blog, the link is on the sidebar, and right here: kunkun's Adventuring Co.

LIFE:ERRORS is written and illustrated by Tsunashima Shirou, known for his JINKI series. The manga was originally serialized and published by SQUARE-ENIX’s Gangan WING (got cut last year), and was then re-published by Mag-garden. Under Mag-garden Tsunashima also was working on his new manga at the time which is JINKI:EXTEND, the sequel to JINKI, serialized in Comic Blade. The scans we have however are not of the Mag-garden version.

Dowry for marriage?

2010-01-31T18:02:00.005-07:00

I started wondering about this topic when I was watching a Korean drama series (the series is called "A Woman who Still Wants to Get Married"). In the show, there was a brief mention of a dowry during a flashback for one of the characters. A dowry is a set of possessions a woman brings into the family she's marrying into.

If you want more details on what a dowry is, visit the wiki page on it here:

I'm no longer living in Korea, so I wouldn't know if they still have dowries for marriages in Korea as that drama series suggested. However, I'm curious as to what people think about this.

On one side of the coin, dowries may be unfair to the women who have to prepare them, especially when they are told to bring specific items that they cannot possibly afford (much like the character from the show). Why should material possessions play a role in marriage, a sacred ceremony to bind two lovers for life?

However, if taken from a different perspective, this may seem completely fair in cases where the man takes all the financial burdens involved with marriage. Lots of women ask for equality, so why should it be just men who have to pay for everything?

Of course, these cases do not include situations where both the man and woman provide a living for the family, nor does it include the occasional situations where the woman is the one earning money for the family. Considering all this, a "fair" marriage can only exist when both individuals in a marriage take equal responsibility in providing an income for the family as well as child care and every other obligations involved in a marriage. Then, should all married couples keep a checklist for every single task to be divided equally amongst the two...? Or should men and women stay true to their traditional roles in a marriage?

Please leave your answer to the above question and also whether you think it is fair for women to prepare a dowry in a marriage, down in the comment section.

[WIP] GN-001 DGS Exia Alyattes Intro

2010-01-31T10:16:00.007-07:00

RanpaRuru here again~

This time, i'll be posting about my exia WIP.

I started this project back in the summer right before school started and naturally, it got put on hold once school actually started. But now in this second semester, having gotten used to the pace of things i'll be working on my exia again little by little.

So when Gundam OO first aired i cant say i was very fond of the Exia design, mainly the area around the skirt and how they left it virtually naked felt very awkward to me. So i wanted to change that. This is only my third gunpla, my first one was a force impulse i received from my brother for my birthday present. First time airbrushing with my trusty mr linear petit. Made a LOT of mistakes, learned a lot. I then moved onto my RX-001 Unicoяn-λ where i used verniers for the very first time. I found that quite stressfull, drilling a hole and hoping that it works. End result came out just as i had envisioned it and now he's sitting on my desk xD. So, now that i've airbrushed, and put on aftermarket verniers, next step is to experiment with scratch building and larger modifications.

WIP Pictures and explanations after the jump!

So this was a preliminary mockup of the mods i wanted to make.

-Change the front skirt

-Add side skirts

-Open the shoulder Flap

-Point out the knees

-(Not in the picture but...) Add a katana

-Custom decals

-The biggest mod, which you cant see in the picture is the addition of a new furnace.
DGS stands for the "David and Goliath System" consisting of 2 independant hyper particle accelerator + compressor units.

Pretty simple when we look at it this way, but once i actually got started, the plan started to change a little.

So heres a quick picture of it in its current state

As you can see, i altered Exia's head a little bit too, Adding a double Vfin on top and sharpening it outward. I didn't like his original ear piece things so i opted for the ones the Wing Verka had and shoved those on.

Opening the shoulder was slightly different than the original intention but i think it still turned out pretty well. I plan on putting a heat-sink vernier in the metal frame to give it some shine =p

Here, you can see his chest piece has been modded as well, I puttied it up there with some epoxy putty, dremeled it out with my rotary tool, and i'll be placing to verniers in there as well to give it some more spunk.

Heres a more detailed shot of the leg.

As you can see, i extended the knee out using some trusty old epoxy putty. Added a piston in the front of the leg (i think i'll go metalic red on the body of it, and then an nice shiny finish for the actual shaft). If you look along the side of it, i added a little vent-y thing. Not big difference, but still adds to the overall effect of a tougher looking Exia.

You can see on his foot that i extended his toe a bit too. I always felt they looked like pump shoes before so i figured this would give it a nicer feel. I changed the ankle guard too for the one on the wing ver ka. Though the original ones weren't BAD, i felt these ones looked better. Slightly bigger, more contours, overall better on the eyes.

Heres another shot of the piston. And another mod thats less noticeable unless pointed out but still a very difficult one for me.

-First, you can see the Grooves on the inside of the knee. I added this courtesy of one of kotobukiyas wave sheets to replace the smooth nothingness of the original.

-Heres a better shot of the piston as well.

-Now the main thing here, If you look at the original, you can see that when he bends his knee, that thing that sticks out gets raised into the middle. I felt that was.....stupid. i couldn't understand why they did that. So i set off to work. I opened up the frame, cut out the part thats pushing it up! hoping it would go. Well it did. kind of. Now i just had to chop it, so i removed it with my modeling Saw, made sure that when i bent the knee all the way theres no empty spaces showing, and glued it back on with super glue.

That concludes the first WIP i guess.

Right now i'm working on the skirt, the pieces you see in the prototype draft were way too short. so guess what, i need to extend them by no less than 3.5 centimeters! So far, no problems. Nice and sturdy extension with plaplates, i'll have more pictures to explain this later with a side by side comparison to the original.

Thanks for reading!

Multiple Screaming Orgasm? Yes please.

2010-01-28T10:49:00.004-07:00

Random little blurb from RanpaRuru~
The other day, i tried making a multiple screaming orgasm (awesome name) and it turned out, amazing as the name implied lol. Perfect consistency, not too thick, nice and creamy with a taste of chocolate and a nice subtle kick from the kahlua, vodka, and baileys.

This highball is definitely one worth trying, though i have seen it in the form of a shot as well with higher alcohol ratios but in either case, still a very yummy treat.
Highly recommended for those who love creamier and sweeter drinks. If you like paralyzers, white russians, and similar drinks, you'll love this.

Picture and recipe after the jump! =]

(sadly, i dont have a collins glass, but this seems appropriate considering the upcoming olympics does it not? =p)

What you need!

1/2 oz Vodka
1/2 oz Kahlua (regular is fine, feel free to try it with french vanilla and their other flavors =p)
1/2 oz Baileys
Chocolate Sauce
Chocolate milkshake mix (optional)
Whip cream (optional, but nice to have)
Milk and cream 50/50 (can be subsituted by milk/light cream)

Directions!

1. Take a clean collins glass, squeeze a little chocolate sauce round the inside of the glass, and fill with nice clean ice
2. Take a 16 oz cocktail shaker
3. Add vodka first
4. Then add Kahlua coffee liqeuer
5. Finally add the Baileys
6. Around 6 oz's of milk/cream (you can add more for less alcohol taste)
7. A little splash of chocolate milkshake mix (or you can put a bit of chocolate sauce or chocolate liqeuer)
8. Add some clean ice into the shaker and shake hard to blend
9. Strain the mixture into the original collins glass keeping the ice in the shaker
10. Decorate with some whip cream and some more chocolate sauce

Enjoy your Multiple Screaming Orgasm~

Goong Chapter 119 translated

2010-01-27T02:22:00.028-07:00

Just as the title reads~ Will add more to post when I'm not dying from sleep deprivation.

I will host them on some other ones tomorrow... eh I mean in a couple hours after I wake up. Hope you enjoy our translations!

Download link after the jump! =]

Download Goong 119 Here

Jefy's intro

2010-01-26T20:36:00.008-07:00

Hey mom, I'm on the internet!

Hello people, this is Jefy, another member of the Octave Ministry. Sadly I do not have a clear role in this group.

Here is something about myself, first I see my self as a fairly normal individual despite the fact that I am a Taiwanese (this should explain my chinglish T_T). Yet, in the past 18 years I have not discovered any special trait that might one day turn myself into a hero of some sort. I must admit that I'm not as enthusiastic as others members (like kunkun said his intro lol), yet I'm willing to cooperate with other members in their group, which also means that you wont see too many post from me.

Nevertheless, I do play games on PC/consoles and read mangas like all others, have'nt touched any new animes series since the first season of sayonara zetsubou sensei but I do enjoy watching anime movies. (anyone watched Summer Wars?) Besides gameing and mangas, I always have plenty of things to do during my spare time thanks to my wide range of interests such as drawing, reading, or even crafting. I might bring up some of them in the future, even though I'm not doing too well in those either.

Here's some examples of my drawing, none of them have been finished and wont likely be.

The most recent project would be an octopus mascot I designed for the Octave, it's passed to Ranparuru for better coloring

-Jefy-

Hippo's Intro

2010-01-26T20:05:00.003-07:00

Hello, Hippo here again. Ranparuru insisted that I make an introduction for myself although I said it wouldn't be necessary =_=;;

So, here a little bit about me.
I've watched anime and read manga for as long as I know.
Hmmm... I probably got serious about it when I was in elementary or something.
It wasn't until... 2 years ago that I got into watching Korean drama.
I'm also an avid(?) gamer, ehhh I mean RPG gamer, although I can't play on any consoles other than hand held systems because of a certain someone. *rolls eyes*
I do play on my nintendo DS though, so I might be doing reviews for ds games... probably not. Most of my posts on the blog will be about my translation projects.
I may occasionally post a rant or two about certain anime/manga/drama series that I've read or watched.

...and that is it for the Hippo's intro.

Riceball's Introduction

2010-01-25T17:26:00.008-07:00

Hello World.

This is Riceball (I know cheesy name) here to do my introductory post. As a member of the Octave Ministry I’ll be doing my fair share of timing, video editing and etc for upcoming group projects and events.

To introduce myself I say that first off I’m a passionate petrol head/gear head and yes like other petrol heads/gear heads I enjoy watching Top Gear. I am a big fan of action, comedy, drama, romance and slice of life shows/anime/manga.

I would be more than happy to talk about anything that has anything to do with automotives/shows/dramas/anime/manga. I will keep all of you updated about our group events or anything funny or dramatic that happens.

-Riceball

kunkun's Intro

2010-01-24T10:57:00.007-07:00

Hi everybody this is kunkun, member of the Octave Ministry, avid eroge player and japanese translator of this group.

So first, let's clarify some things said on this blog already, we are a group of eight, not supposed to be, we ARE despite the fact two of the eight are not as enthusiastic as the rest of us. We also do not plan on doing only translation projects it just happens to be the only thing we are actually pretty decent at. I would like to do other things but then eventually either some of us lose interest or we just suck at it. It's hard to come up with ideas.

Okay, well I don't really have much more to say but I will be posting quite a lot of things in terms of content as I guess this is kind of a personal blog for the eight of us as well as a group blog. And now to end my post I guess I'll just post up something interesting for all you eroge people, 2ch's voted best eroge of 2009 (top 50 only).

Oh, and be ready for next week as I will be blogging I guess my playthrough of Yumina the Ethereal Forever Dreams, sequel(sort of) to Yumina the Ethereal created by ETERNAL, the team that brought us Aselia and Narukana.

Nothing after the jump is NSFW but the links to the official websites ARE. These games are meant for ADULTS ONLY, it says so right on the box :)
For those of you out there that do not know what an eroge is, they are generally just visual novels with erotic content, so nothing much but there are also eroge rpgs and action games when people want to be different.

---kunkun

I only romanized and added links for the top 10 but it's not hard to copy and paste any of the other titles listed if you are interested. The list is supposed to go up to 100 I think it was but I didn't want to waste blog space and most of the other titles down that end of the list I haven't even heard of before.

2ch Best Eroge of 2009

01　BALDR SKY Dive2 "RECORDARE"
GIGA

02　俺たちに翼はない
Ore-tachi ni Tsubasa wa nai
Navel

03　装甲悪鬼村正
Fullmetal Daemon Muramasa
Nitro+

04　BALDR SKY Dive1 "LostMemory"
GIGA

05　星空のメモリア
Hoshizora no Memoria
FAVORITE

06　真剣で私に恋しなさい!!
Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai!!
MinatoSoft

07　しろくまベルスターズ
Shirokuma Bell Sisters
PULLTOP

08　Dies irae ～Acta est Fabula～
light

09　さくらさくら
Sakura Sakura
Haikuo-Soft

10　姫狩りダンジョンマイスター
Himegari Dungeon Master
Eushully

11　コミュ -黒い竜と優しい王国-
12　ましろ色シンフォニー
13　天神乱漫 LUCKY or UNLUCKY!?
14　ナツユメナギサ
15　輝光翼戦記天空のユミナ
16　スズノネセブン
17　死神の接吻は別離の味
18　アリス2010
19　夏ノ雨
19　白光のヴァルーシア
19　W.L.O.世界恋愛機構
22　巨乳ファンタジー
23　微少女
24　夜明け前より瑠璃色な -Moonlight Cradle-
25　Trample on “Schatten!!” ～かげふみのうた～
26　きっと、澄みわたる朝色よりも、
26　祝福のカンパネラ
28　らぶでれーしょん!
29　クロウカシス
30　Flyable Heart
31　タペストリー
32　花と乙女に祝福を
33　フェイクアズール・アーコロジー
33　Nega0
35　トロピカルKISS
36　ももえろ濃霧注意報!
37　町ぐるみの罠～白濁にまみれた肢体～
38　シークレットゲーム
38　Like a Butler
40　77 ～And, two stars meet again～
40　eden* PLUS+MOSAIC
40　VenusBlood -DESIRE-
43　紅殻町博物誌
43　夢幻廻廊2 ～螺旋～
43　アトリの空と真鍮の月
46　鬼うた。
47　嘘デレ!
48　終わりなき夏永遠なる音律
48　神楽道中記
48　痴漢専用車両2 ～報復の恥辱電車～
51　彼女×彼女×彼女ドキドキフルスロットル！
51　そらいろ

BTW RanpaRuru is my bitch! *nobody edit this*

RanpaRuru's Introduction

2010-01-23T19:22:00.009-07:00

Hello all~
RanpaRuru here making an introductory post. Like the previous posts have said, we'll be using this blog as a sort of log of our activities amongst other things, hopefully it'll be an interesting read for you out there.
My section of the blog is going to be focused on my artwork and gundam models lately. So expect to see some WIP on here. For the gundam, if you see anything that you dont understand, like how I did a certain mod, or what modeling tools i used to do it, just post in the comments section and I'll do my best to answer your question~ They same goes for my artwork, although I'm still learning, I know how tough it is when you're just starting out so feel free to ask anything you want~
I'm also part of our japanese translation team with Kunkun. We're still looking for a good manga to scanlate atm because the previous one, Manabiya, is currently on hiatus due to the author's sickness.
Besides that, I suppose I'll posting anything else I find interesting. I have quite a figures sitting on my desk so I might take a photoshoot with them someday and post it. Likewise, expect to see some silly pictures of me later on down the road as we're a pretty silly bunch.

More details after the break =]

So a little more about me I guess. Still a undergrad student with lots of years ahead of me, so here's hoping I still have enough time to maintain this blog down the road.

Hmmm, games and anime make up a good portion of my life. Been pretty delved into both of them since I was a little kid. Evangelion was the first series I've ever watched lol which probably didn't have the greatest effect watching the end of the world when you're only 6 or 7 years old. I love jRPG's and shooters I guess. Currently playing a lot of MW2 and TF2. Imported FF13 a few weeks ago too, still going through that nice and slow.
Haven't really had much time to work on my Gunpla lately but hopefully this blog will motivate me to crank through it nice and slow while posting some interesting WIP's to look at.

My second Gunpla

Ummm...I also like to draw in my spare time? Though, I'm guilty of not having been able to finish a drawing since last march or so but hopefully I can change that this year. Heres a shot of my current WIP.

Having trouble getting the shading worked out when i actually color it.
You can visit the rest of my gallery here though
ProjectVirtue.deviantart.com

Umm. I guess thats it for now.
My next post will probably be about my Exia WIP. It has some medium level mods? Its my first time working with plaplates etc so i'm not doing anything too extreme.

Thanks for reading =]
RanpaRuru~

Translation Projects

2010-01-23T00:49:00.009-07:00

Hello. As I said in my previous post, I made a post to explain what I meant when I said I would be starting translation projects. To put it simply, I will be translating anything either written or spoken in Korean to English. By "anything" I mean everything from Korean dramas, song lyrics, movies, TV shows, proleague starcraft matches, to things like threat mails from angry Koreans.

Now feel free to leave your request in the comments below.

In order for me to take the request, these are the conditions that need to be met:

a) I need enough free time to translate
b) It needs to be something I'm interested in enough to translate
c) I need raws (an untranslated version) of the thing I'm translating
d) It will always be a translation from Korean to English, NOT English to Korean or in any other language
e) It cannot be something that has been translated or is being translated by someone else

If I do not take your request, it may be for not meeting one of the above conditions, so please read before raging.

*sidenote:
Kunkun, another member of the Octave, does translations from Japanese to English, although I am not quite sure if he's up for any projects at the moment. He does have a manga translation project that's on pause at the moment because the mangaka is ill and no new chapters are being published. The series is called Manabiya and his project is on the blog him and Ranaparuru run together. Here's the link if you're interested:

kunkun's Adventuring Co.

First Post

2010-01-23T00:13:00.001-07:00

Woot, the first post is already taken by me, Hippo! (Basically, no one else wanted to make the post since they're all lazy. =_=)

Your first thought on entering this blog was probably something like:

a) "WTF?!"

b) "What is this 'Octave Ministry'? Is this a newly formed political party?

c) "... What's the purpose of this blog?"

Here are my answers to the above questions.

a) *SLAP* Have you calmed down yet? If so, then continue reading. If not, then repeat a) until you have calmed down.

b) The Octave Ministry is not a political group.
Octave Ministry is the name me and my friends came up with to name our group. I think it was RanpaRuru who came up with it at the time since our group is (supposed to be) composed of
a total of 8 members.

c) The purpose of this blog is to act as log or a journal to keep track of all of the group/Octave Ministry's activities, w/e they may be. A section of this blog may be dedicated to some translation projects me and a few others will be involved in, but none of us really have an idea of what else will go on this blog for now.

The next few posts will be for introducing all the members of the Octave and a post about translation projects.

Welcome to our blog, and if you were one of the unlucky visitors who came across an empty blog, the Hippo gives his apologies.