Category: General

Welcome!

It has been 20 years since I started this anime blog, way back in 4/30/2005. It seemed to only have lasted 8 or so years, and I stopped ever since. I thought that I had no reason to continue, particularly because that was also when social media rose to prominence, with basically Twitter, Reddit, Discord and other things essentially becoming replacement outlets for my writing.

These past few years though, I have come to the conclusion that finally, almost no one reads at social media anymore. Everyone just memes.

It’s not that memes are bad. I have just realized that I am not getting enough discourse that makes it worth the while to share my thoughts. I am very grateful to the few people who still are capable of catching my social media posts at the right place and the right time, and still have the mental and time capacity to reply by either sharing our common joys, or engaging in meaningful conversations.

At best, I really only had a few hundred people I interact with online, at any point in time. I am not a popular content creator, and I did not intend to be, especially at this “ojisan” stage of my life. In the end, I just wanted friends, and I think with social media it’s getting harder and harder to maintain connections with friends.

So this, the return of bluemist anime blog, is an attempt to solidify my thoughts into a more-permanent place, away from the ephemeral, overloaded, and chaotic place like social media. Into a place where shoujo and bishoujo meet again, into a more constant place where hopefully people would return to and read once in a while. I should have done this earlier, but it is always never late.

I have a lot of things in my mind to write, so I hope you can visit again. After all, I need to fill in the 12+ year gap. I think I can.

[Vocaloid for Valentines->]
[Vocaloid for Valentines: Second Time Around->]
[Vocaloid for Valentines: Third’s a Charm->]

Valentines season! What better way to express it than through yet another batch of love songs? Here I am again with a handful of nice sentimental music from Vocaloid! Four years running! Only for you! So if you are in the mood for a little easy listening while you fall in (or out of, or away from) love this Valentines season, please do have a gander at some more of the best Vocaloid love songs. We have a wide array of good songs for the past year. Hopefully this will make you feel inspired and in love, or maybe depressed too, as some of these songs revolve on unrequited feelings… like mine (sob). Haha, anyway here we go again.
Continue reading Vocaloid for Valentines: For You

I actually didn’t start liking Vocaloid since its rise to cultural fame on the summer of 2007. Back then, I was on [Team Touhou->touhou-project]. Touhou music was actually my first major foray into exploring indie music, meaning music that wasn’t necessarily mainstream nor popular. Touhou music was hyper, cute, and anime-like, yet it has that indie appeal in which I would exclaim “Some non-professional musician did this, and it sounds better than some professionally made music? Where do I sign up?” This was also the year of the [modern doujin revolution->modern-doujin], where user-generated, non-professional content started rising in quality and in relative popularity. In a way, Touhou proved to me that there is an entirely other world out there I can aurally enjoy, beyond what commercial anime songs may bring, and more importantly, beyond what actually popular songs could deliver. I would begin to question if popularity still matters to me when it comes to my musical taste, and this led me to Vocaloid.
Continue reading Vocaloid and Me

[Information Overload->]
[Handling Information Overload->]

You think you have it all in control, but you don’t. After all, you cannot control a battlefield. It is a constantly evolving entity. So all you can do, is either continue the fight, or quit. Over my two articles regarding information overload, I am in that constant state of flux, exceeding my limits on what kind of information I have, need, or want to consume. It is a very complex situation to contain, because when I talk about information that sometimes evolves from being irrelevant to you, morphing into being important, suddenly the game changes. As much as we want to avoid, overcome, and conquer information overload, sometimes it really just overpowers you in some surprising ways.
Continue reading Information Overload Rising

I give idols a hard time, figuratively speaking, before they can shut up and take my money. It’s not because I’m exclusively 2D-biased, but it’s because I don’t consider “idols” as a recommended entertainment source in my diet. Technically, I don’t follow real-life celebrities that closely. If you see me talk about AKB48, Mizuki Nana, or other specific examples of who you may call “idols”, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I follow their every move. I am not a Wota (idol otaku). In fact, I have a specific sense of hatred towards the idol business, especially the —48 kind. Their songs are garbage. Their promotion is overkill. They’re killing the JPOP industry. They’re focusing too much on otakus who are the only ones who probably have buying power in this absolutely dreadful world economy. If you consider moe~ness as the current cancer of anime, you could agree that idols are the current cancer of the entertainment culture. These are packaged entertainment properties suited to fit mainstream needs.

Yes, idol entertainment, I do hate them with a passion because of their packaged-ness. Their focus on pandering and not being creative. Their generic, seldom-unique stereotypes. Their fan-relationship lies that could never cater to my real desires of having deep relationships with a girl. I hate the fakeness, I hate it all. That said, we are horribly forgetting something quite important, or maybe it’s just me. Of all the flak I give idols, of all the rants and critiques I give them, sometimes I forget the realization that idols…

Idols… they are human beings too.
Continue reading The Melancholy of Idols

[Vocaloid for Valentines->]
[Vocaloid for Valentines: Second Time Around->]

2012 is a leap year, and that means there’s an extra day in the love month, which only happens every four years. What better way to celebrate this special day than through a third batch of love songs? Here I am again with a handful of nice sentimental music from Vocaloid! So if you are in the mood for a little easy listening while you fall in (or out of, or away from) love this Valentines season, please do have a gander at some more of the best Vocaloid love songs. This is probably one of the most abundant years, as there are a lot of sentimental songs done by our resident electronic vocalists Hatsune Miku, Megpoid Gumi, and Kagamine Rin. As usual, if you don’t like their roboty voice to ruin your listening pleasure, don’t worry, because I also linked “utattemita” versions sung by some of the best amateur singers around Nico Nico Douga. Hopefully this will make you feel inspired and in love, or maybe depressed too, as some (actually, almost all) of these songs revolve on unrequited feelings… like mine (sob). Haha, anyway here we go again.
Continue reading Vocaloid for Valentines: Third’s a Charm

imagine a world
without bishoujo
or hatsune miku songs
or nyan cats
or a bishoujo hatsune miku singing about nyan cats
just imagine

I’ve been blogging anime for almost a decade, and I have not hurt anyone.
Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet.
Do not support them.

But it will most likely be trashed anyway, so…
This blacking thing is just my excuse to update the blog.
I kinda like it, but needs some fine tuning.

This third OVA episode marks the debut of [Sasara Kusugawa->toheart2-sasara-kusugawa], one of my favorite scenarios in the game. While the OVA series is completely filler and did not follow the events of the original game, it’s perfectly fine that way. What we have here is a typical school festival episode, and our main star is more than ready to strut her stuff as student council president. I bet with Sasara’s mature and assertive appearance everything would go well right? Err… not if you’re against Ma-ryan.
Continue reading To Heart 2 OVA: Episode 3