YouTube Channel

So I know I haven’t posted here in a long time but I just wanted to update that I have made a vlogging channel on YouTube that you can click to get there here.

Writing blogs proved to be too much for me, especially with school so I wanted to try something different.

If you want to know when I make a new video, please click subscribe and write in the comments if you have any suggestions for future videos!~

Thank you!

Laela

Hoshizora Kiseki 星空キセキ

I’m baaacckk!~ I’m hoping to get through everything that I meant to in the past before I move on to bigger and better things with this blog! And since I haven’t been here in a while, feel free to send me some suggestions for posts.

I’m still working on getting through all my stuff from Japan and I hope to get through the spring anime that I never finished, but for now have this:

Hoshizora Kiseki

星空キセキ

Watanabe Akio   渡辺明夫

Matsubara Toshikazu   松原俊和

2006

28 minutes

This can be watched for free on Hulu here.

Title Translation

星空　ほしぞら　starry sky

キセキ　miracle; wonder; marvel

• This is supposed to be written in hiragana. Words are sometimes put in katakana to add emphasis.

Translation: The Starry Sky Miracle

No Spoiler’s Review

Hoshizora Kiseki is a 28 minute Japanese animated short film that was released in 2006. If you’re looking for something short and sweet, this would be a good anime for you.

Kozue, the main character.

The story line revolves around Kozue who loves stargazing and is in the Astronomy club at her school. She goes on a trip to see a meteorite fall from the sky when she meets Ginga, a strange boy in an astronaut suit.

This anime was fairly good a executing the story considering the amount of time they had to work with. They somehow managed to get a lot of information across about what was going on in the plot.

It’s an underlying romance story which I felt whatever about, but for what it was worth, I thought it was okay.

**Just a little side note that you should watch a little past the credits. There’s extra scenes that you can watch.**

The Spoiler Review

I don’t know if it was just the version I was watching on Hulu, but the video was slightly crappy quality with high saturated frames that were kind of annoying to watch at times. Also, one of the things I dislike about subtitles is when they are yellow. It’s such an annoying color and I would so much rather have white subtitles!

Ginga, the more interesting of the two.

Anyways, the art style was okay although there were a couple times that the characters looked a little weird to me. The characters themselves were okay in design, but Ginga was the only one that was relatively interesting looking.

As far as the plot goes, I don’t know how I feel about it. It was okay (this whole show is just generally okay). There was nothing spectacular about it and given the time frame, it made the story a bit cliche.

And was it just me, or did anyone else miss the whole thing about Ginga being able to know everything about the stars/satellites or whatever? I didn’t realize anything about that until I read the Wikipedia page for this anime.

And that whole scene he was naked was just really weird! Or maybe I would have been fine with it had it been animated better, but just watching made me cringe a little.

I see, my body is naked.

In one of the classes I’m taking this semester, my teacher talked about how to look at films and the way they are made; how each angle and the framing of a shot can affect the way a story is told. From that, I was able to notice really interesting shots that were in this film like the one I took a screenshot of below:

There was another part that looks like they maybe didn’t have time or budget to make a scene out of it but I still thought it was interesting so I took a screenshot of it too. It’s a part where Kozue is trying to get Ginga’s attention which can be seen below (Ginga is the one sitting in the front row seats of the planetarium):

All in all, if you have some time to kill and you don’t want the commitment of a full series, this one could be a good one to watch. I thought it was an okay short anime for what it was worth.

I didn’t mean to write long paragraphs for this review. For now on, I’ll be going back to the way I usually post with bullet points. It’s so much easier and takes less time! And its definitely easier to read too.

I hope to work on more interesting posts instead of just doing reviews so look forward to that!

Packing for my trip to Japan!

Right now, I’m in the middle of packing for my trip to Japan which I’m leaving for on Monday~ It’s hard to pack because I’m only going for ten days and I want to take EVERYTHING with me!

Here’s an explanation as to what I’m doing in Japan and why I’m going since I don’t think I really told anyone… Whoops!

Also this post is going to be long! But since I haven’t really posted this summer, I think you guys deserve it ;P

This trip is called the Tomodachi Inouye Scholars Program. It takes 23 students and 2 professors each from 4 different universities to Japan to bridge relations between the Japanese and the U.S. after what had happened with the tsunami and earthquake. (Here‘s the official site for it).

One of the professors from my school brought this program to my school to have people apply to go. It was really competitive! This was because 130 people applied for the 23 spots!

Since there were so many people applying, we had an application process first and then 50 people were chosen to be interviewed. Out of all those people, they choose the finalists to be able to go on the trip!  And I was one of those people!

I’m so honored that I was one of the people that they chose and I’m super excited to be able to go!

When I’m there, I’ll be traveling to Tokyo and Hiroshima! We’ll be visiting some sites in both places (like temples and museums) and meeting some students from the partner universities: Showa Women’s University and Hiroshima University.

My Main Goals While Traveling

• Speak in Japanese as much as I can!
  • I’ve studied Japanese for 7 years and my weak point is speaking so I need the practice!

• Meet as many Japanese students as I can
  • This kind of goes with the speaking part because I need someone to talk with. Out of everyone going on the trip, I’m the only one that can speak Japanese! So I definitely need to find Japanese people to talk with!

• Go to Harajuku and go to ALL the shops!
  • I’ve been obsessed with Harajuku and Japanese street fashion so this is a definite must do on my list. I was looking at our itinerary though and I saw that some students from Showa Women’s University will be taking us there and I’m so excited that I won’t have to beg anyone to take me!

What I’ll Be Looking For

• Anything to do with Attack on Titan or Tokyo Ghoul!
  • Especially Tokyo Ghoul right now because it’s my new obsession! I just finished reading what’s been translated so far and it’s sooo good! I definitely recommend it~~
• Manga in Japanese
• Any street fashion person I follow so I can take a picture with them!
  • This means: Minori and Elleanor. They’re the only ones I can think of at the moment~

Anyways I think that’s it for this post right now. Maybe I’ll do one or two more before I leave but I’m not sure right now. If not, I’ll be posting a TON when I get back so you can look forward to that! (And I get back on August 7th)

A New Post After a Super Long Time…

My life has been kind of hectic since the end of the school year. A lot has happened to me and I’ve been working a lot of nights at my job, making me so exhausted when I come home and during the day that I can’t bring myself to do anything.

First things first, though, I want to say thank you to all of those who have come across my blog and have taken the time to read it. An even bigger thank you to those who comment and ask me questions. You guys are amazing and help me continue on with this.

Some things that have happened recently is I got all A’s an B’s this semester so I’m super proud of that! Other than that, I have some amazing news!! I’LL BE GOING TO JAPAN THIS SUMMER!

I’m going as a part of the Tomodachi Inouye Scholarship and its at the end of the month! I’m so excited since this is my first time in Japan!

Another thing that’s happened was that my friend and I went to Walker Stalker Con in Boston and I got to meet Steven Yeun and Lauren Cohan!

I started reading a manga called Tokyo Ghoul which is also a new summer anime that just came out. There’s only two episodes out so far.  It’s really good and I love it! I’m liking the manga better though. The anime doesn’t do it justice.

I’m starting a cosplay for Lulu of League of Legends. I’ve bought all the things I need just for the hat so far. I’m hoping to start with that first and go from there.

My username on LoL is laelatwilight if you want to find me!

There’s a whole ton of stuff going on in my life right now but it’s giving me more to write about here so it’s coming up soon!

And please excuse this long, unedited post! It’s really late tonight and I’m watching a pretty bad horror movie that’s distracting me xD

It’s kind of been a while…

So its been about two weeks since I last posted and it’s because of the amount of schoolwork I’ve had to do. It’s been crazy because all my teachers decided to pile things up on the last weeks of school.

At the moment I have a Japanese test and composition for tomorrow, a paper due Monday and two due on Tuesday. I would so rather not be doing this and I just can’t wait for the semester to end already.

I haven’t been able to keep up with what I wanted to do for this season at all and because of that I had to make a tough decision. I will finish working on and writing about the series I’ve already written about which would be:

• Selector Infected WIXOSS
• Fairy Tail
• Akuma no Riddle
• Mahou Shoujo Taisen (Magica Wars)
• Captain Earth
• Brynhildr into Darkness
• Kamigami no Asobi
• Soredemo Sekai Utsukushii
• One Week Friends
• Mahou Koukou no Rettousei
• No Game, No Life
• Atelier: Escha & Logy

So after May 20th, expect to get many posts!! I also have so much I want to do this summer with this blog!

I’ll give another update about what I’ve been doing and what I’ll be going to do next week so you can look forward to that!

Just a side note, I binge read the Attack on Titan manga (I had already watched the series) and now I’m even more hooked than I was before! Because of that, I made an SNK tumblr blog that you can see here.

I really want it to be an interactive blog so please feel free to send me asks with questions or requests!

Atelier’s Escha & Logy: Ep. 1

Atelier’s Escha &  Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky (Ep. 1; Aired April 10th)

*SPOILERS*

This show is one of the ones this season that didn’t impress me like Black Bullet (which I’m currently working on a post for).

• Atelier was adapted from a video game and it definitely had those moments that it felt more like a video game and less like an anime. It was something that could be seen in some of the dialogue of the show where it felt just kind of off.

• I really liked the character design though. It wasn’t too over the top, but it had interesting elements like Escha’s hat and tail.

• The alchemy in the show kind of confuses me (with the purpose and such). This comment probably doesn’t make sense, but I hope they tell more about alchemy in the future episodes.

• And apparently Escha and Logy aren’t that great at alchemy?? I don’t understand why they would send them out on missions when all we’ve seen of Escha’s alchemy is her making an apple tart.

Escha and Logy on their way to do nothing important.

• I liked how the opening showed a lot of world building. The song was okay though, but I think it fit the style and feeling of the show.

Asuiro by Rie Murakawa

• The ending video could have been better. It was just zooming in and out on the girl who lives in the ruins and they could have done so much more with it. I love her character design though!

Fuyumidori by Haruka Shimotsuki

This isn’t a show that looks like its going to have character development or a deep plot, but who knows, maybe it’ll get better. I’m definitely interested in the Ruins in the sky and who is the one that lives there.

My Tumblr Page!

Okay so this is my last post for a couple days (I do have other posts I’m working on at the moment)!

I started working on my tumblr page and I’ve been starting to look for GIFs/photosets of the anime’s I have caught up to.

So far I’ve only reblogged Akuma no Riddle stuff but that’s the only anime I’ve watched all the episodes that have come out.

I’m working on trying to put a search bar on my tumblr so it’ll be easier to search for things, but for now it has to wait because it’s almost the end of the school year for me!!

Anyways, if you’d like to check out my tumblr, you can find it here~

Enjoy!

P.S. And for now on, whenever I post a personal update, I’ll be using Deadmaster for the default header just because using ‘Blog Update’ is getting kind of annoying to me

No Game, No Life: Ep.1

No Game, No Life (Ep. 1; Aired April 9th)

*SPOILERS*

This show is definitely one for gamers!

• It’s similar to Sword Art Online for all those SAO fans out there! Even the main guy’s voice actor also did Kirito’s voice!

• It seems like it’s a “perfect world” but there’s probably going to be some catch to it eventually. It also doesn’t have that life or death feeling SAO had- or at least not yet.

• And yet again, brother/sister love! I swear this is the fifth show I’ve watched that’s had it! It’s like weird fanservice-y incest

• World building is fantastic – the coloring of everything is stunning.

• The character design was interesting for every character – no one was over the top, but there was no one that was too plain

• I found it interesting they were able to make simple games like poker so intense and make you sit on the edge of your seat

• The opening was fun and upbeat, but it was kind of confusing that they put it at the end of this episode.

Opening Theme

This Game by Konomi Suzuki

Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei: Ep. 1

Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei (Ep. 1; Aired April 6th)

*SPOILERS*

• I liked this show, but I can already tell the Blooms are going be really -really- annoying.

• My favorite part was the fight sequences!! There’s nothing better than a show that has great fight sequences! And the insert of magic was a nice touch and blended very well.

• This is also another anime that has twin love in it – they keep it a secret but apparently they’re both on the same page?? It’s interesting that this season is the season of twin love.

• Another thing I know that’s going to bother me is how useless the sister is. She’s a part of the prestigious group, but she does nothing useful yet her brother, who is in a lower group seems to be a whole lot better?? Maybe I missed something and they switched places or something?

• I love the design of the magic they use!! It’s really pretty and I can’t wait to see more of it!

• There was just an opening theme for this opening, but it had a good song and the fight sequences worked well with it.

Opening Theme

Rising Hope by LiSA

I liked how they had specials about how the magic works and stuff, but it still left me a little confused. But they added in that there were people who used magic that didn’t know how it worked either which was nice to know for all of those people who can’t understand it.

And another note, the main male character’s voice is also the voice actor of Gray Fullbuster of Fairy Tail which I love!~

One Week Friends: Ep. 1

One Week Friends (Ep. 1; Aired April 7th)

*SPOILERS*

Only one thing needs to be said: THIS IS THE CUTEST SHOW EVER.

• I love the different animation style! It’s refreshing to see something new – use of softer colors works really well.

• I liked how Yuuki’s friend had all the words of wisdom – Yuuki must go to him for everything!

• I’m curious to see if there’ll be any other people to make a group of friends or if they story is just of Kaori and Yuuki although the story would be perfect either way.

• The opening theme was sooo cute!!The song was really good and I liked how the animation looked like a watercolor painting.

Opening Theme

Shards of a Rainbow by Natsumi Kon

• The transition into the ending theme was something I liked. I liked the song and I liked how in general, it fit with the opening theme – had the same style.

Ending Theme

Playing an Instrument by Sora Amamiya

And here’s one of the images they used for the promotional posters. I love it!!