SMASH! - the Sydney Manga and Anime SHow is a convention happening every year in Sydney, and its goal is to celebrate the culture of Anime, Manga, Video games, and Cosplay. Saturday, August 10th 2013 at 9am the Sydney Exhibition Center Darling Harbour opened its doors for over 7000 pop culture fans from around Australia and even overseas. Aside from big companies like Madman and KingsComics smaller circles and clubs were given stalls to sell their own merchandise; Anime@UTS was no exception. We had badges, post cards, phone charms, even panda hats.

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It was an amazing experience! So many people, so many good cosplays, so many things to buy, so little time! (Though, this time I didn’t buy anything). There were special guests from Japan as well, not only the main ones listed on the site, but also 2 very special people: 8#Prince and kz. These guys make Vocaloid music, and they are not just some nobodies, these guys are famous, and I mean super famous, look at their profiles on Vocoloid wiki and see the songs they made. After SMASH there was a Vocaloid night party where they were preforming, WOW that was epic! Thats the type of club I want to go to to have fun. What killed me though during that was when kz played Irony and Reunion, I just started jumping up and down like crazy and shouting out the lyrics, as these are my favorite ClariS songs. All the feels!

Overall the day was amazing, I cosplayed Accelerator from Index, my friends and follow club members also cos/crosplayed (pics down bellow), I got to see some stunning costumes and just had an overall fun experience being at a convention. Most of my good friends were actually volunteering this year, helping out either at the information desk or at Vocaloid night or just helping out everywhere they could. Ruben wrote up his thoughts on his first time working at SMASH!

NHK news made a small article about it, so if you can read japanese here is a link.

View album on Imgur

Last week I was contacted by a marketing research organization on behalf of Commonwealth Bank in regards to their iOS mobile banking app. Basically its a focus group where they showed up slides of the new software and asked us questions about how we feel when seeing these new features. It sounded like an interesting thing to do on a Thursday evening, especially cause they gave me $80!

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At first we were shown slides of a notification screen and an email that will be posted/sent out to all customers using their current iOS app to notify them of the amazing new update. I was a bit skeptical at that point, because they really don’t need to do that, since iOS7 will have automatic updates enabled by default.

But then everything changed when the fire nation attacked, they showed us a prototype of the new app. Woah, it looked nice. All my worries that it wont  fit the new iOS7 interface and general feel were gone. It was perfect, the developers have done a great job, the buttons matched the iOS7 buttons, the home screen had a blur, same as most parts of iOS7. The new features looked good, and they have updated the old features, like doing a quick transfer between your own accounts is much faster and easier.

Its is a very welcome update, and I can see that they are on the right track, hopefully they can release it in the first days of iOS7, cause a lot of people were a bit pissed off when it took Commonwealth 2 months to update the NetBank app for iPhone 5.

I would love to write up more about it, but I can not disclose any more information about the new features or serious improvements. We will just have to wait and see when it comes out.

I am collecting the Blu-rays for the Studio Ghibli movies. I love the studio and most of their movies, so I have set out to collect all of their BluRays! I mentioned in a post before as to how I started my collection, and now when Porco Rosso arrived I can blog about how my collection has grown.

Kiki was given to my for my birthday in February by my good friends from the anime club and Porco Rosso I ordered myself, because it is my second favorite movie out of all the Ghiblies, so I had to have it! Lets see how long it will take for me to finish my collection.

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Why have I not seen this movie up until now? Its a Quentin Tarantino movie, yet I have just watched it last week! Well, to be honest, I haven’t seen any of his other movies, but I have heard very good things about them and some people even say that he is a genius when it comes to film making. There is no reason why it took me so long to watch Kill Bill, but I am grateful to German for making me watch it (just like that: “we are watching this movie now, no buts!”). I will just give a brief overview of the show and wont get into much detail, so there will be no spoilers.

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The story revolves around the main character ***** (played by Uma Thurman) who was supposed to be killed along her friends and fiancée during their ‘wedding’. She wakes up 4 years later after a coma and is seeking revenge. Then we slowly learn of her story, and also how and why this whole “incident” happened.

Why is this show so amazing? Of course the plot - it is easy to follow, and all makes sense in the end. Then the actors - wow, just wow, all the actors preformed magnificently, I think even some won an Oscar for their acting. And of course Tarantinos crazy story telling techniques and camera angles. Heck a good 15 minutes of the first Kill Bill was made as an anime and then another 20 or so minutes were in black and white. As most of his other movies this one had a lot of killing, blood and pure violence which is just so much fun to watch. Another aspect of these movies that I really loved was that when the action was happening in Japan, the actors who played the yakuza were actual japanese actors who I have seen in japan made yakuza movies and they were speaking proper japanese. Same goes for the old Chinese guy.

Overall it is a great movie, which I would recommend everyone to watch.

Going into my list of all time favorites alongside Shawshank Redemption and V for Vendetta.

10/10

My holiday is over, its time to go back to Sydney, my current home, where my friends and loved ones are eagerly awaiting my return. It was fun, this month flew by very quickly. I got to see my parents and meet some of my high school friends as well as my best friend German (Herman - Гера). He left for Austria, I left for Australia.

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This time I didn’t have any trouble checking in and I got my tickets to Sydney straight away. I managed to evade a overweight luggage fine, by 100g, my suitcase had 23.9kg in it, PERFECT!

Now I am sitting in Helsinki airport, waiting for my next flight to Singapore and the later of to Sydney.

The title reminded me of the opening song of the TV series Superjail! The series is seriously psychedelic, so I will not recommend any sane person to watch it. Anyway here is the song:

(DO NOT WATCH IF YOU CANT HANDLE GORE AND PEOPLE DYING)

See you guys in Sydney soon. Im arriving on Friday in the morning, but will most likely be dead, so I will see people either on the weekend, or once semester starts.

I was introduced to this game by my friend Patrick. I remember that day well, it was before one of our club karaoke sessions, Pat came over and said something along these lines: “Hey Vadim, I know you love juBeat, here is a game that will test your skills even more. Its called Super Hexagon.”

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At the time I didn’t know what I had gotten myself into. This game is seriously addictive. Why? well because you want to beat it!

The mechanics are rather simple: turn the small triangle in the middle around the hexagon and try evading the incoming lines. There is always a gap which you can go through, the thing is… with each level, the speed of the lines coming towards you increases. To clear the level you need to survive for 60secons. Of course you can go over and prove that you are the very best, like no one ever was, cause you dont have to pass that test, that is not your real cause. There are 6 levels overall: hard, harder, hardest, hardester, hardestest, hardestestest. Each with its own color scheme and tricks. In the beginning you have 3 levels unlocked and then by clearing them you unlock the other 3.

You don’t think its hard? Well take a look at the trailer.

The game is available for PC, Mac, iOS, Android and BlackBerry.

Finally after over 6 months of playing it, I finally managed to clear the hardestestest level and complete the game!

Thats it, its over, I’m done… or am I? This game doesn’t have a end, you can keep on going, keep on improving your score, keep on bragging to your friends at how awesome you are XD.

Is the game good? You bet it is. Could anyone play? If you know how to touch a screen or press a button then yes! Would I recommend it? To anyone and everyone now!

Simple, addictive, insanely fun.

10/10

The summer 2013 anime season is already in week 3 so I might as well say what I am watching and give some recommendations, just like I did in 2012.

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My friend Seb wrote up his mini review of this season and what he is watching on his blog right here.

So I am watching 12 things this season… WOAH…

• Free! - KyoAni, hype, swimming, bishounen, hype, naked guys, etc. Its amazing! #nohomo
• Gatchaman Crowds - It gives me the feeling of Tiger and Bunny, but the main girl is sooooooo crazy, she makes Nyaruko look normal.
• Genshiken Nidaime - The third season of an anime about otaku in a university anime club. Loved the first 2, loving the manga, definitely a must watch, cause the are referencing new anime and thats just so cool.
• Gin no Saji - an anime about agriculture, somewhat like Moyashimon. Made by the same guy who made the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, so the artstyle looks very similar.
• The World God Only Knows Season 3 The Goddesses Arc - If you know the first two or the manga, must watch. If not, go watch the first 2 and read the manga.
• Railgun S - continuing from the previous season this is a prequel to the Index and Railgun series.
• Servant x Service - Resembles Working!! a lot and has the best OP of the season hands down.
• Danganronpa - Mystery anime with a survival game similar to Mirai Nikki, based of a game, should be good.
• Kimi no iru Machi - The manga was good, had high hopes for the anime, not that great so far…
• Shingeki no Kyojin - Best series of last season by far, and I would even say that its the best series this year, it has generated way to much hype. The series is very solid and has a good premise. If you dont trust me, here is a link to a first impression video by AnimeZone.
• Wata Mote - amazing manga, amazing series. Unpopular girl trying to live a normal high school life and is failing, but in a cute way :)
• Monogatari Series Season 2 (Zenmonogatari) - Best show ever: 3rd season. Shaft is doing it again. The animation, the quality, the character development, the plot!

So there you have it. Its a big list, so I have no idea how I am supposed to keep up to date with all of this, AND do well in my studies this semester… Буду стараться, чё!

(gif by my good friend mad)

I went to my good friend Clara’s blog and saw an article about Pixar. Well Pixar being my favorite western animation studio (Shaft, KyoAni, Ghibli are still my top3 in japan) I just had to read it. It is a interesting theory by this guy - Jon Negoroni but its so crazy that it might even be true! Hey they even mention time travel to fit in Monsters Inc and Brave.

As Clara put it, she was:

blindmown.

I concur! After reading this theory I have the sudden urge to to rewatch all the Pixar movies in the chronological order that he made as if they were connected.

“Great minds discuss ideas;

average minds discuss events;

small minds discuss people.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

Today I finally finished this great game. Wow, just wow. I really love puzzle games and I can say this is a very high quality puzzle game. It makes you think out of the box (or should I say cube XD). I am talking of course about Antichamber.

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You start off in a dark room wondering what you need to do. Then the sign says jump, so you jump! And you fall. In this game you cant die, your character doesn’t have a health meter, you just walk around and solve these puzles and figure out where the hell do you have to go next. Seriously this game bends your mind. Say for example you have a choice go up or down, you go up and end up where you were then you naturally go down and end up in the same place again!

Don’t even try to understand the map, its impossible. Trying to figure out where to go next is hard, but a piece of advice: don’t go seriously out of your way to get somewhere. If its near impossible, but requires you to build a bridge of blocks and it takes you more than 5 minutes to do it, stop, that’s the wrong way. If I had to compare it to anything, I’d say its a lot like Portal, but you dont have distinct levels and there is no GLaDOS leading you to cake.

To sum up this game will make your brain hurt, it is just that good. So if you have a PC I strongly recommend you get Antichamber on Steam now!

9/10