You might have heard it in the past few months: some areas of the Internet are buzzing with discussions on “generative art”, that is, artwork generated from “AI” models that were fed with an absurdly large amount of images as training as a base. There are supporters, there are critics, and techology advances: among all this, this post offers my humble experience with computer-generated imagery. In this post, you’ll be guided by Yumiko, Satsuki, and Maya: the first two are characters created by someone else I know (who wants to remain anonymous) which I then expanded, cooperating with their creator in a certain project from a few years ago; the latter is… well, a character with an interesting history, which will be explained later.

After quite a long time, I was finally able to take a look at this series: a rather atypical mecha show that despite some bad production, still manages to be interesting.

Header image credit: 1840151sudarshan (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA) A while ago I posted a way to download 実況動画 from Nicovideo. One of my acquaintances publishes videos there, and he wanted to collect the various comments to reply in a follow up video (what the Nico users call the コメント返し). When the comments are more than just a few, it’s hard to find where they refer to without watching them on Nicovideo itself, and its UI is suboptimal.

実況? Is it something edible? In recent times, I’ve been watching a lot of VOICEROID実況 (じっきょう, jikkyou, literally “commentary”) videos from the rather famous (in Japan) video service ニコニコ動画, better known as “Nicovideo”. In this case, the commentary actually refers to games: they’re basically a Japanese version of the Let’s Play videos that are all around other places like YouTube. The difference from “regular” videos lies in the “VOICEROID” term: this is a name of a TTS software developed by AH Software using an engine devised by a company called AI Inc.

Following up on yesterday’s release, I’ve released Danbooru Client 0.3.0. This early new release is mostly due to the fact that the QML view file wasn’t installed (sorry!) so part of the UI would not even load (or even crash). That said, I’ve managed to get some extra features in: Fade-in/out animation when posts are being downloaded Support for tagging is back (EXPERIMENTAL): it is optional, and requires KFileMetaData (not yet a framework, but should be distributed with Plasma 5).

After my previous post, development went quicker than expected, so I’ve actually managed to get a real version out. ;) So without much ado… here’s Danbooru Client 0.2.0! This redesigned C++ version brings a few more features compared to the PyKDE4 version, notably: Infinite scrolling (experimental) - Just scroll down to load the next set of posts QML-based thumbnail view Click on the image below to have a demonstration of what’s in this release (warning: 2M GIF file): [!

I’m a (happy!) owner of a Casio EX-WORD Dataplus 5 XD-A4700, a Japanese electronic dictionary. Recently I looked into updating the Japanese-English dictionary (currently the Shogakukan PROGRESSIVE dictionary) installed, because it’s not good enough: too often when looking up odd sentences (like the ones in Fate/Extra CCC) I do not find any matches. EDICT is adequate, and while I can use it on my phone and tablet, I like the fact that the EX-WORD has a physical keyboard along with the stylus, and a very nice kanji handwriting recognition.

[]({{ site.url }}/images/2013/01/mmBvi.jpg)

A few days ago I finally completed (after about 3 months) 神次元ゲームネプテューヌV, or “Kami Jigen Game Neptune V”, the latest instalment from Compile Heart in the Neptune franchise of PS3 games. It took quite a while (approximately 3 months), and I think it’s about time to wrap things up.

Sometimes Christmas presents are really unexpected, and today I found out I was given one such gift: the limited edition of _THE IDOLM@STER 2, _PS3 version. It was quite a bulky box, showing all the main characters from the game (and from the recently-ended anime) (click to enlarge):  Of course, having such a box means that there’s a lot of stuff inside. In fact, once opened, there are two game BDs (one being the actual game, the second being the first volume of Gravure for you!

By browsing through sites, I noticed that the Spanish site Akihabara Denno Gumi Universe has posted a translation of an interview the webmaster had with me through email. Here it is (Spanish language). It feels nice to recall some memories of the past once in a while, especially since I couldn’t still believe that dennogumi.org had been such a resource back in the days…

Recently I had the opportunity of viewing a DVD that I had bought in 2006 but never had the chance of seeing: it was the third season of Galaxy Angel, of which I had already viewed the first two years before. After viewing it, I realized I could have viewed it sooner, as I liked it quite a bit. Not only that, but I brought myself up to speed by getting what was left in the series, that is the second half of the third season (marketed by Bandai Visual as Galaxy Angel AA) and the fourth and final season (known in the English speaking market as Galaxy Angel X).

Well, I found the whole franchise quite good: and after having explored also other bits of it, including the manga and the games related to it, I thought it’d be nice to have a retrospective with my own views. Which is the point of this post.

Some of the oldest readers of this blog are well aware of [a certain hobby of mine]({{ site.url }}/category/anime). Over the years I’ve always wanted to write more about that, including the stuff I’m viewing nowadays, but I found a hassle to collect snapshots from videos / DVDs, selecting them, and so on. Recently I learnt that VLC has some rather complete Python bindings, and I thought, why not make the process automated?

 It’s been a while since I blogged about anything non-FOSS. This time I’ll be sharing some impressions on one of the games I’m playing at the moment, that is,** Ar Tonelico III** (which arrived at my doorstep two days ago). I admit I haven’t been a fan of Gust games (aside from Ar Tonelico, they’re known mostly for the Atelier series), mostly because technically wise they didn’t really perform that well.

Sometimes answering apparently harmless questions on instant messaging can have unexpected results. In particular, I was telling about Danbooru Client to someone and a question popped up “Why don’t you support pages?”. It seemed a nice idea, so I branched off the code (yay for git!) and started working on it. Well, it took me more than a month to get this thing done… I didn’t spend every day coding, but it was a challenge.

A while ago I presented [“danbooru2nepomuk”]({{ site.url }}/2009/10/danbooru2nepomuk-a-nepomuk-tagger-for-danbooru-images), a small program to tag images coming from Danbooru-based image boards. Today I want to present the evolution of that program, that is a PyKDE4 client for those boards.

Today, after some customs delay and courier problems, I finally received the first volume of Tears to Tiara. Having got a PS3, I chose the Blu-Ray version (priced 8,192 yen, quite steep if you hear me): as I preordered it soon enough, I got the first presse edition, which, according to CDJapan, was comprised of a “deluxe outer case”, a “stick poster” and a booklet, in addition to the Blu-ray itself.


So I’ve heard that _Tears to Tiara _is coming in animated form. Being in the middle of playing its PS3 incarnation, Tears to Tiara - Kaikan no Daichi, I decided to take a look at some images that have been recently published on news.dengeki.com. It was already known that the anime would be an adaptation of the PS3 game, which is a good thing (I didn’t like the original character design). Animation is done by _Oriental Light and _Magic (OLM), and the same staff who adapted another Aquaplus game, Utawarerumono (or should I say Underwater Ray Romano ? snicker).

[]({{ site.url }}/images/kurokamititle.jpg)

New season, new anime to see. Since a certain guy kept me telling wonders about Kurokami (黒神), a manga serialized in Young Gangan by Dall-Young Lim and Sung-woo Park, two Korean artists, I decided to give a go to the animated version, produced by Bandai Visual, which has just been out.

It’s been a hot day here in Kyoto. And I don’t mean lame second meanings, just that the temperature was really over the top. As a consequence, we changed our plans: we were supposed to visit the so-called “path of the philosophy” but instead we set for Nijo Castle. Nijo Castle was the Kyoto residence of Ieyasu Tokugawa (I suspect to tell the emperor who was the real person in power) and it can be visited.

I’m aching all over but I managed to write this entry. Today I went to the Ueno area first, hoping to go to the National Museum: however I forgot it was closed on Mondays, so I had to go to the National Science Museum instead. It turned out that it wasn’t a bad choice after all, as the museum is rich with exhibits and has a very good presentation. After that we moved to the Toshogu Shrine in Ueno Park, a shrine that was dedicated to the shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa.

[]({{ site.url }}/images/2008/07/slayers3.jpg)

It’s been a long time since Slayers had aired on TV, basically since Slayers TRY was released, which means more than 10 years ago. Then, this year news told that two new series were planned, and this post is about the first episode (out of 13, aired on July 2nd; the second series will start sometime around January).

Yesterday I got a few novels that I’ve been waiting for a while: _Slayers _(the last two volumes published by Tokyopop, as ) and Shakugan no Shana 2. I bought the latter as a “final warning” because I’m not very sure I’ll ever continue: the first Shana was written poorly and with a plot that didn’t make much sense (but again, I don’t think the animated version was shining in that respect).

[]({{ site.url }}/images/2008/04/ookami_cover.png)

A rather large number of days ago I got the first DVD of Ookami to koshinryo, better known as Spice and Wolf, which I when the first episode was released. I got the limited edition, which came in with a number of extra features (which still don’t justify its ~ ¥6800 price tag, though). The main one is the inclusion of a 300 piece puzzle, illustrated by the artist who works on the original novels.

Interested by some promotional art and by a resemblance of the main female character to my brother’s own Yumiko, I took a look at the first episode of Ookami to Koshinryo, better known as Spice and Wolf. I’m being told it is inspired by a series of novels and that there is also a manga version.

For a change, my brother has found a place (DLsite.com) that sells dojinshi even to non-Japanese people, and also found three non-hentai Final Fantasy XI dojins, which I’m going to cover in this post. For reference, they are available with these prices:

• FFXI-URUSHI-Chaos: 01 - ¥ 735;

• FFXI-URUSHI-Chaos: 02 - ¥ 735;

• FFXI-URUSHI-Chaos:03 - ¥ 945.

When Tokyopop announced _Slayers, Kino no Tabi _and _Scrapped Princess _my interest was piqued: even more when I read about Seikai no Monsho. After getting what was available (three volumes of Scrapped Princess, the whole Seikai no Monsho trilogy and the single volume of Kino no Tabi) I waited for the rest.

[]({{ site.url }}/images/2007/11/patapi.png)

After a long time I’ve finally got hold (thanks, Melissa) of Akihabara Denno Gumi PataPi!, that is the manga version of Akihabara Denno Gumi (or Cyber Team in Akihabara, if you prefer): some of you may even remember a rather sparse description on this very page when it was still devoted to ADG (almost eight years ago, time flies…).

Straight out of my anime backlog, I watched the first episode of Clannad. I don’t know much about the original name (save for the time it took to be released), but I knew that the animation studio who did this series was Kyoto Animation (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Air, Kanon and Lucky Star).

From the already large backlog of new series, I recently watched the first episode of Prism Ark, an anime adaptation of the H-Game _PRISM ARK ~ PRISM HEART II ~ _by Pajamas Soft (I wonder how some Japanese companies get to choose their names…). It is being directed by Masami Obari, who did Dancougar Nova the last season.

I’m back from holidays, and when I got back I found the Saber Revoltech figure I had preordered in May (!) in the mail. This is the package when I pulled it out from the box it came in (apologies for the image quality, I only had my mobile phone to take it):

[]({{ site.url }}/images/2007/07/strikers_dvd_1_cover.png)

Today I got the first Maho Shojo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS R2 DVD in the mail. Even though I haven’t watched it properly yet (I plan on doing so tomorrow) I can say I’m already impressed. Usually Japanese DVDs are little more than improved video tapes: they provide just the bare minimum (and not for a cheap price). However, this is not the case with Nanoha StrikerS.

According to the Anime News Network, Geneon Entertainment has bought the license for distributing Maho Shojo Lyrical Nanoha and Nanoha A’s in the United States. Fans rejoice? I think not. Being outside of the USA market, I view things with a different approach. The companies here in Italy have all their problems, but to a certain degree they care about delivering to the user something more than just the episodes. Extras that can also be an incentive over downloading (illegally) over the Internet.

Since I’ve been aggregated to the AnimeBlogger.net Antenna I noticed a number of new visitors coming to my blog. I’m taking the opportunity (see post title) to bring the attention on a pet project of mine, which is also quite tied to anime.

477 Yesterday I got the first DVD of Dancougar Nova in the mail. As it’s a first press edition, there were two nice postcards inside (one of the Dancougar itself, one of Aoi) and the cover is reversible, again showing either the mech or Aoi (the one shown in this post, which is also available in the gallery). So what has changed from the TV version? As far as I can tell, not much as the first two episodes were the ones with the best animation (along with episode 12) , though the DVD cover mentions something changed in episode 2.

I’ve seen very little talk about this anime, inspired by a short story by Shotaro Ishinomori, despite its obvious quality. I’ve seen five episodes so far (out of 12) and I can say I’m quite impressed by the results.

As expected, I couldn’t keep up with the backlog, so I’m again posting on two episodes of Nanoha StrikerS at once. The first one is still a training/preparation one, while the second has some action in it. But let’s look at them in the proper order…

It seems I can’t quite keep up with the episodes given my limited spare time (considering also I have the second book of The S.T.E.A.L. Saga to take care of), so here I am with a recap of the last two episodes of Maho Shojo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS.

Ok, I _so _tried to keep separate posts for each series I watched. But there are so many, it’s impossible to keep up! (including also my limited time to write). I’ll just present them in reduced form here, along with a few comments.

When I first heard that GONZO was going to make an anime out of the work of William Shakespeare, I can say that I was interested, given their past record with Gankutsuô, namely the visionary adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo.

In an effort to clean up my backlog of entries (curse my tendinitis, luckily I’m going to get therapy soon), I’m posting about the series of the new season that I found interesting. I will start this by talking about the most recent Sunrise production, by the same staff of Mai-HiME and Mai-Otome: Idolm@ster XENOGLOSSIA.

The first episode of Maho Shojo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS was aired in Japan recently, and I got the chance to see it. I admit I was rather interested because I liked both the original Nanoha and its sequel Nanoha A’s. Both redefined the “Magical Girl” genre, that was in my opinion somewhat stale since the end of Sailormoon, with many twists and a lot of added action.

And so again, I watched last week (yes, I am behind) the fourth episode of Dancougar Nova. The title looks promising: Akai Dancougar (The red Dancougar), which implies that there is another Dancougar around, although the opening animation already hinted at that.

Last week (this should show how behind I am in writing things) I watched the third episode of Dancougar Nova. This new episode gives an insight about what the group (nicknamed Team D where D stands for Dangerous - I am getting a deja vu with regards to Tekkaman Blade’s D-Boy…) is supposed to do and more details about the Dancougar itself.

I’ve watched the second episode of Dancougar Nova, titled Choju Gasshin! yesterday. The animation quality is on a good level (after Gravion I wasn’t so sure) throughout the episode, aside a couple of hiccups here and there.

Since almost everyone’s attention is focused on Naruto Shippuden, not many noticed that on Feb 15th a new mecha show was aired. Titled Juso Kiko Dancougar Nova, this anime is a remake/sequel (I need to figure this out) of the 198X series _Choju Kishin Dancougar _(Super Machine Beast God Dancougar), and coincidentally animated by the same studio (Ashi Productions).

By tracking the statistics of my blog, I noticed that many people came here from web pages that linked directly the old multimedia files I had on dennogumi.org when it was still an information page on Akihabara Denno Gumi. However they aren’t here anymore. I also kindly asked to avoid linking them directly when they were up, but I guess some people just don’t read. In short, if you have come here to get movies, or music files, you won’t find them.

Continuing after Mai-Otome, I gave a look to this OAV (first out of four, with the second one coming out in February).


A few days ago I finished watching Mai-Otome. The series itself was somewhat old (started in October 2005 and finished on 30th March 2006), but I got around to watch it only recently. I can say I’m satisfied with the overall result: overall Sunrise managed to create a better series than its sister, Mai-HiME.

Recently I’ve came across a promotional poster for the upcoming Nanoha StrikerS anime. However I think that this highly anticipated third instalment in the series will disappoint a few people, including myself. Why?

I’m adapting this from the infamous Steve Ballmer quote. This is to introduce the novels I bought recently from amazon.com (thanks to NRK for placing the order).

Recently, Galaxy Angel II has gone on air. I was very interested as I found the original series (and its four seasons, plus specials) to be rather entertaining and funny. So, I watched the first episode eagerly when I had a change to see it. I didn’t expect it to turn into a huge disappointment.

While I was viewing [Yamato Video]({{ site.url }}/www.yamatovideo.com)’s latest Samurai Troopers DVD, I noticed that in the trailers section there was a part showing off some footage of Chrno Crusade. As a few may know, it’s written Chrno and not Chrono for some obscure reason. What it matters though is that Planet Manga already edited the relevant manga with the name Chrono Crusade (same as what AD Vision did in the United States).

I’ve already explained in a previous entry that I like to tweak images, extract them from backgrounds and so on. However I didn’t like that I needed Windows to perform my actions, as I want to use that operating system as less as possible. I tried then to use FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) tools available on Linux to see if I could do the same job.

I like to tinker with images. I’ve been doing this since I first started doing amateur web design, back in 1996. At first it was to create images for my own web pages (Sailormoon, ADG) but nowadays it’s like a hobby I do when I have free time. It can be fun.

I got upgrade hardin (my laptop)’s memory at least, bringing it to 1Gb, at last. However I had two 256 Mb modules installed, that means I had to buy two 512 Mb ones. Oh well, I’ll just try to sell those ones. Everything seems snappier now, and even Firefox seems not to clog the CPU when loading pages (I need to experiment more, since I have no clue why that should have changed).

As the terrace in my house has been finally completed after almost a year, I’m writing from there. While I’m relaxing, I’ll write about two items I recently obtained through archonia.com. This time there wasn’t a misunderstanding like with the Tony Taka book I ordered (which the description didn’t claim it was an H book while instead it was), I’m quite satisfied by what I got.

I’ve watched Fate/stay night a couple of days ago and I can say I am quite enjoying this series. The development of the plot is going a little slow so I expect this anime to be 26 episodes long. My only disappointment is that despite Saber is one of the main characters, she hardly gets to do anything at all.

First of all, the strangest oddity ever. On Friday once at the laboratory I was contacted by an Affymetrix representative regarding [this entry ]({{ site.url }}/2006/01/26/badly-written-software-or-policy/). She wanted to know why I wrote it and that it seemed that I “didn’t contact Affymetrix to see if the problem could be solved”. She wasn’t offended or anything (she will even get me in touch with someone from the software department), but nevertheless this is my blog and I’m entitled to my personal opinions.

I got this one last week. Now that I’ve been 20+ hours into it, I guess I’ll write down some impressions. First of all, I’m pleasantly surprised by the quality of the translation. XSeed has done a much better job than Agetec (who did Wild ARMs - Alter Code: F), and they preserved the voices and the opening song (even if redubbed). I like the game system, it’s fst enough and there are platform-like parts that help in breaking up the monotony of dungeon crawling and fighting.

[]({{ site.url }}/images/saber.png) I just got around to see the first two episodes of this anime, which is an animated version of TYPE-MOON’s H game (without the H aspects, luckily). So far I like it. Despite being from Studio DEEN, the animation quality is good (for now) and the story seems intriguing enough to keep on watching. Music is by Kenji Kawai and is also nice.

The few people who know me may have heard of one of my pet projects, [S.T.E.A.L.]({{ site.url }}/interests/), whose draft PDF is available [here]({{ site.url }}/steal/steal.pdf). I’ve been trying for ages to get an illustrator to do some b/w art for it (a la Slayers), but always with bad results. I’ll be trying to commission it, now that I can afford it, let’s hope I can get some results done at least with money…

I recently got myself a couple of new books, thanks to the folks at Archonia: []({{ site.url }}/images/stvbook.jpeg){: .center-image } This is the first one, Sakura Taisen V Original & Format Collection. It’s like a very detailed encyclopedia on the game, including character profiles, sketches, interviews with the staff and the voice actors. It’s quite a thick book: I may think about scanning something in the future, but I’m not sure now.