GUMIGUMIGUMIGUMI

Moar GUMI komiku.

Heya~

GUMI tripped :(

GUMI tripped again :(

The world of Science keeps changing...

...but you just can't see it.

Unless you're in academia or want to pay a subscription to an online news feed you mostly won't read!

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/11/white-house-lau.html
A scheduler for teachers and scientists who want to get together and promote education for science! Cue cheesey relationship jokes.
Note: For all the amazing teachers I know that read this blog, resource: http://www.nationallabday.org/

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091126/full/news.2009.1110.html
Everything inside a microbe, broken down. It's like decoding a huge amount of code! On the same level, I wonder if we can use this information to program an extremely realistic artificial microbe...

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091129/full/news.2009.1114.html
First HM's brain is dissected, next the full structure of a Glutamate Receptor is revealed. Tis a good week for Neuro. If we can get an accurate kinetic model for Glutamate I'm sure our project will do well.

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091127/full/news.2009.1111.html
Being exposed to more hostile environments means developing a better immune system. Who would have thought? :V Seriously, isn't it common sense that being dirty means that you'll be exposed to more things and thus try to develop immunity from it? I guess its the whole "cleaner = healthier" mentality... but being clean prevents you from being sick as long as you're clean. If a clean person and a "dirty" person were to go into the "dirty" environment... then yea the clean person would get sick first. :/

Pandora Hearts Anime

Dude Ada's breasts are a lot larger in the anime than in the manga...


Or maybe I just didn't notice in the manga...


Is this supposed to emphasize her "growth" contrast over 10 years? :V


Speaking of which, episode 17 is like the sole reason to ever watch this show. Both Sharon and Ada, what can be better! A bit of Break is helpful too, I suppose. :V

UTAAUUUUUU

A Utau is fine, too.

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/nm8157801

On the topic of Utaus, Teto sounds pretty bad but actually one Utau (Hiyori) is a REALLY good singer. I think I put that on my facebook but didn't make any mention on my blog. Too bad she doesn't get a long of songs produced. :(

HM's Brain Dissected

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091125/full/462403a.html

Pretty special news, they're putting all the information online too I think (although I don't know if that's public access).

Video Game Releases

http://kotaku.com/5410256/how-the-world-reacts-to-a-new-release

yeah, probably. :V

Random thought on Relationships

From what I remember in Genetics, there were the following classifications of Relationships:

Mutualism: Both benefit each other
Commensalism: One benefitcs, other other is neither harmed nor helped (or probably more realistically, not harmed/helped to a significant degree)
Parasitism: One benefits, the other is harmed
Antagonism: One is neither harmed nor helped, the other is harmed
Competition: Both are harmed by each other's presence.

Also a relationship where neither is harmed nor helped... I don't think that one has a name either, but seriously, that's just a "normal"/boring relationship, isn't it?

Well back to the point. Obviously the best type of relationship for any living organism to have is Mutualism, but it doesn't always work out that way. That being said, Commensalism really isn't a bad thing and I'm not sure why some people would get irritated or angry if one person benefits while the other isn't really harmed (or helped). I mean why not?

Parasitism is something I'd be more against for moral issues. Logically the person with the advantage can do it because it is benefited, but if another is getting harmed its really quite grating on the mind. The person being benefited will easily become classified as "selfish" and will not likely recieve much sympathy from people if those people think like me. However, when breaking it down to basics everything is basically "Parasitism"; I mean, as people with a need for consumption, we need to eat and therefore eliminate one to benefit another. However the general thought process is "If there's an alternative that's better, or you won't lose anything in the first place, its best to avoid this type of relationship".

Consequently, there is another form of "Parasitism" where instead of one guy taking advantage of another, it is another sacrificing him/herself to let the other become benefited. I think this is called Altruism or something. While ideal romantic stories, I don't think this situation is typically realistic and people that come to this conclusion are either in an extremely rare and dire situation (therefore the relationship is acceptable) or just stupidly noble (which is stupid).

Antagonism is something that cannot be understood, and only happens in human nature. In general you never would want to harm anything unless you get something out of it (Parasitism). However Humans will "take revenge" or do something irrational just to see others get hurt. In most cases, this is the WORST relationship because there's no reasoning behind it.

Competition would be worse than Antagonism if it weren't for the fact that in many cases Competition is unavoidable. Food stock, for example, forces animals to evolve and become more "fit" in order to be the one less harmed by a declining or changing food stock. The curious thing about this relation (again pertaining to human relationships) is that many people would engage in competition just because. Both are harmed, one comes out more harmed than the other, but everyone is still like "lets do it!" However, because both are being detrimented I am feeling slightly less critical towards this kind of relationship, since both are recieving some sort of damage. I'm just more or less confused at why anyone would want to engage in a relationship like that.

So in summary, Mutualism > Commensalism > Competition > Parasitism > Antagonism.

I bet what a wrote is totally different from what people would think what would be here judging from the title. :D

Pandora Hearts (Manga)

http://www.onemanga.com/Pandora_Hearts/34/01/

This is the best intro page ever.!

Of course this has nothing to do with the fact that guys get 80% of the spotlight (last 20% is Alice) and this is a rare opportunity for moe. I do not harbor any feelings or ill-will by the fact that most of the girls (namely Sharon and ADA) get shafted for most of the manga.

NOPE NOT AT ALL.

...

Endless Da Capo is Endless

This news is long overdue (I heard it ever since yesterday night) but DC IF is being released by mangagamer.

I sense this is a ploy by Kotori to regain control as my top favorite character on my anime list...:V


Also they said they're going to release DC II, eventually, but they don't know when. Which is cool because I think I like the chars in DC II more than DC, Kotori excluded.

Source:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-11-19/mangagamer-adds-koihime-muso-more-da-capo-games

Also, clearly I am not squealing as much as I used to. Shame on me. :<

Why MIT is awesome

This is how famous MIT is.

Akuun says:
"you guys were mentioned in pani poni dash! The main character from Half-Life went to MIT! You guys must be awesome!"
oh
Thomas says:
really? the main character from half life? huh
how interesting.
Akuun says:
yes
Gordon Freeman has a PhD in quantum physics or something from MIT
and he spends a solid chunk of every game whacking stuff apart with a crowbar.
Thomas says:
physics PhD at work.
Akuun says:
indeed
oh wait, theoretical physics

Catgirls in White School Swimsuits

... are apparently a more popular theme than I thought.

If anyone remembered the last figurine I got, it was a catgirl in a white school swimsuit.

Here's another one.

http://www.kotobukiya.co.jp/item/page/pvc_yotsunoha_nono_w/index.shtml

Subtitles

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1111/2?rss=1

I guess I should start watching anime in japanese subtitles instead of english. :V

Goku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

"On their way to a University, they study their hardest, but once admitted, they sit around watching anime!!"

- Zetsubou Sensei

There has never been a truer statement than this.

Bread

Less inappropriate but equally amusing to the previous post:

http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/11/exclusive_interview_baguette_b.html

MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, YEARS OF RESEARCH ALL RUINED BY a bird passing by.

Well it could have been worse. It could have been droppings.

"Engineered Penis Raises Reproductive Hopes"

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091110/full/news.2009.1075.html

I know most of you can't access this but just look at the title.

Now, maybe I'm still immature by thinking this is amusing. Or maybe I've just been to 4chan too much to think of the implications this can have.

...yea, I think its 4chan. Oh this is so funny. :V

...OTL I fail as a human being.

Shugo Chara Ep. 98

EPICCCCCCC


Seriously I thought that (especially when I was talking with a friend of mine about it) the 2nd season of Shugo chara was getting quite lame and fillerish... Especially with the end to the Lulu arc being quite disappointing (she didn't even get to have an appropriate chara transform!!) but then...

NADESHIKO IS BACK

EPPIIICCCCCCCCC

ITS LIKE AN INSPIRATION TO A WHOLE AUDIENCE NEVER TARGETTED BEFORE

EFZ Encounters

This is actually going to be remarkably similar to that 27 EFZ players thing on WoE forums ( http://efz.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=moejoe&action=display&thread=377&page=1 ) except that it will use the theme I came up with a long time ago ( http://enigmatic-cube.blogspot.com/2006/10/possible-random-story-arc-stemming-from.html ). However that was just a short "intro" story paragraph so I'll first explain a bit of the environment.

The general theme as already mentioned is almost something like pokemon with cute girls (Moemon?). Actually, Sekirei covered the theme pretty darn well, except in these cases the girls are chibi-sized (about knee to hip length on average?) because that's how they look like in EFZ. Generally each one has an element, class, and weapon associated with them. There's no real overarching theme to this whole concept except a few things:
-The setting is medieval fantasy
-The girls are summoned, either accidentally or on purpose, to their "owner".
-There are "feral" girls who attack humanity out of hatred (representation of CPUs). They are generally weaker because they have very little concept of strategy and the ownders with their trained girls (...that doesn't sound right) beat them all the time.
-the exception is the Angel class Kanna who doesn't really appear except in dreams. My character tends to have these experiences a lot since Misuzu is pretty closely associated with Kanna. :V
-Owners battle each other in tournaments and random spars for training, of course.
-In a later period there was discovered a sort of "portal" to an alternate dimension that only the girls could enter. The owners could still communicate with their familiar (I think that's a better phrase) and explore the inner world. Apparently the inner world is smaller than the outer world and people from all around the outer world can easily access this portal and engage in spar fights with random people encountered in the world. They can even use their familiars to communicate with them! However, occasionally if the familiar gets too deep into the fight they might lose communication with their owner. (<--- elaborate description of netplay)

I think that's about everything. The following is a record of a travelling alchemist's encounters which relate to these sort of things. Take note that these are his (ie, My) experiences alone and may not include some people that are involved in the world of EFZ. The encounters are in chronological order.

=======
CodeName: tekkenchild
EFZ Character: Mai - Light - Paladin - One-handed Sword
Description: Stubborn and slightly arrogant, yet has a strong sense of virtue. Strengths are in Defense and Distance, using his familiar's powerful weilding of light associated with her sword to keep opponents at bay from afar.

CodeName: Spatula
EFZ Character: Mishio - Heat - Spearman - Spear
Description: Sage/Librarian. Kind-hearted, yet unforgiving in battle. Very aggressive and headstrong with a strong sense in punishment (at least to the alchemist). The familiar controls the temperature of the metal spear through magic and uses to emit sparks of electricity and/or fire when needed.

CodeName: TReusbucks
EFZ Character: Misuzu - Life - Alchemist (like his owner!) - Formless liquid
Description: Myself. From other people's records, tends to be aggressive and a trickster, but extremely clumsy. Tries to charge through and dodge everything through the use of illusionary feathers, but often fails. She's been getting better at it, though...

CodeName: Raven
EFZ Character: Mai - Lightning - Samurai - Katana
Description: Lone warrior. Arrogant and has an outward personality that seems to look down on others, but in reality he wants others to get better, especially in his country. Recently was horrendously defeated at another country which made him lost most of his motivation for fighting. Style tends to be extremely fast and tricky; really hard to pin him down when he's on his aggressive streak, and even harder to keep your defense against him.

CodeName: linalys
EFZ Character: Mio/Mayu - Illusion - Shapeshifter - Varies
Description: Ninja, good friend and accomplice of Raven. Style changes almost in every battle, hence its hard to keep track of his style. One thing seems to be for sure, though: Whenever an opponent thinks his familiar is down, she strikes without warning, in the most unexpected way.

CodeName: FFD
EFZ Character: Misaki - Force - Monk - Fists (used to create powerful forces)
Description: Part of the militia. Extremely eager, really cheerful yet always up for a fight. Really good with combination links, though a bit weaker in defense and offense (as in getting the hit in). Can sometimes blow a fuse, but ALWAYS likes a good spar.

CodeName: Atheist
EFZ Character: Sayuri - Electricity - Magic Knight - Wand
Description: A wizard and childhood friend of TReusbucks. Obtained his familiar a bit after TReusbucks did. Is still trying to develop his skills, but his aggressiveness has become more strong lately, as well as his combination skills. A really happy-go-lucky guy, kind of thinks his friend is "cool!" because of this familiar thing although TReusbucks is really more like "eh really".

CodeName: Akuun
EFZ Character: Mio - Ice - Ninja - Shuiken
Description: Never actually met the owner, however a really nice and trustworthy person. Said to be a wanderer. Although opponent's familiar is small in stature, fights extremely well both defensively and offensively. Although his face was never seen, became a good friend to talk to whenever there was a local portal to go to. A lot of training exchanged between Akuun and TReusbucks.

CodeName: BlitzWing
EFZ Character: Mai - Wind - Knight - One-handed Sword
Description: A nobleman and really amiable person. One that has went to the "holy land" for mostly ambassador purposes, however it is said he is also inevitably getting some training there as well. His skills are very fine-tuned and errs very minimally. Very upstanding person.

CodeName: Leviathean
EFZ Character: Varies - Earth - Pupils - Spirit?
Description: A priest, and one of the first characters that uses multiple characters. Generally raises his familiars like orphaned children. The fighting is said to be necessary to the familiar's growth which is why, even though he's a clergyman, he engages frequently in battle. Thus, his skills are quite high as well. VERY good at defense.

CodeName: Amoirsp
EFZ Character: Akane - Wind - Puppeteer - String
Description: A merchant that happens to also stumble upon a familiar. Although not extremely skilled partly due to his occupation, he's really eager to learn and enjoys discussions on the subject of familiars. Through various training, much under Leviathean through portal battles, he is getting better.

CodeName: Nephi
EFZ Character: Nayuki - Water - Enchanted Warrior (sleep) - Frogs? {OOC: I'm obviously running out of ideas here}
Description: A young yet powerful upcoming owner, still a student at a local school. Uses a local portal to engage in communication and fights with the outside world. Eager one day to meet other people he has encountered from portal battles...

Other people that I've played, but can't really make a profile outside of being a side character (SORRY!! >.< As you can see I'm already losing my sense of creativity with the last entry :V):
db, Mizunashi, nolo, Chipz, Zaido (he was sort of a senpai-type character, in a way), pragany, MayFTW, Dax, VMan, Evospace (VAMPIREEEEEE)

Virtual Idol Obsession

A friend of mine recently asked me why I was so obsessed with GUMI, after hearing that for the first time ever, I bought an import (not just an import CD, the first ever import) from Japan: kv(livetune) and Yukimasami's album "Crosslight" ( http://www.yesasia.com/us/crosslight-japan-version/1020340894-0-0-0-en/info.html ). It's a reasonable question to ask considering my extremely eccentric actions from last week (although ironically, the CD is not entirely GUMI, and my favorite song on the CD isn't by her either; although in retrospect, I don't think there IS a CD devoted entirely to GUMI out yet).

To trace the origins of this particular interest, one would have to go back to before Miku was even known about, when the first instance of her is passingly mentioned on the ANN website with some rather mediocre samplings. Ironically I think what was written was something about an anime being made based off this virtual singer, although I never heard anything about any anime (BRS exempt, I doubt BRS was even out when Miku was first mentioned in ANN) about Vocaloid. In any case, while the image was cute and the concept intriguing, I never took an immense amount of interest. I downloaded the Vocaloid program and tried to play around with it, but in the end my interest never got that high since her voice was still distinctly different from a real person's voice.
That's not to say I didn't take any interest in Miku's later songs. There were of course good songs, one of the ones most notable for me being "World is Mine". "World is Mine" is probably the first spark that told me, "this can get good". Miku's voice, as stated earlier, does not match a human voice but it can still work well, like an instrument with a particular tune. Good Miku songs such as "World is Mine" do exactly that, using Miku's voice not as a limitation but as a unique tone and style that no other human being can match. Hence, when composed correctly, Miku's voice sounds really nice.

So, good character design and a voice that can fit depending on how the song is constructed. Good job, Miku! What about Ren, Len, Luka, and other Vocaloids? They are, in my opinion, not much different from Miku. Ren has a higher pitch than Miku; Luka has a deeper pitch than Miku. But overall the distinction between their voice and a real person's voice is still the same. There's still that barrier that says Virtual Idols remain in the virtual (internets?) realm, and real people are in the real world. Their voices just cannot match a real person's voice.

So. GUMI.

Lets start from the very beginning. When GUMI was first announced, before her picture was presented, I was curious. Megumi was going to voice her. The person who did Ranka Lee from Macross F. First, Ranka Lee. As a character, I didn't like her too much; I mean, she was cool, but Sheryl was cooler. And that's pretty bad because Sheryl is an onee-san character, those are not usually the ones I think are more moe than the younger types. However, Megumi's voice while singing is still really nice. I mean, the only real reason I watched Macross F is because of the songs and nothing else. Great, there was a plot. Great, there was mech fightings. But the most awesome was no doubt the final scene, for that 15 minute medley; that was just epic.

Ok, I talked enough about Macross F (I forgot if I made a writeup on my blog about it before). I only spend two days watching that anime anyway. More onto GUMI. Her character was announced, and was probably drawn by the cheapest artist they could get their hands on (I'm assuming the company, unlike Crypton, doesn't have loads of money to blow especially with their failure on Gacktpoid). It was unattractive and seemed like a complete failure before the product even came out. I mean, what was the main motivation behind people to use Miku? It was her character. Otherwise Miku would fade to the backgrounds, just like previous voice synthesizers (Kaito and Meiko were not even HEARD of before Miku came along). Naturally failure in character style would coincide with failure in product.

...Or so I thought. The great thing about the fanart community is they can compensate for a bad character design, so that issue was much more minor than I thought. What they absolutely excelled at, was GUMI's voice.

The first thing I ever noticed when I listened to GUMI was "she sounds so much more real!!!" Anyone will tell you that the first time they listen to GUMI after listening to so many other vocaloids. And that's really the first key spark for my sudden interest in GUMI. But her realistic voice wasn't the only thing that was appealing; she was also still appealing in the synthetic sense. She can do songs similar to Miku's style and still do awesome in it; yet she can also do songs sounding more towards reality, and while not quite like Megumi herself singing, yet, she comes pretty darn close.

This is the difference. While Miku, Luka, Rin and the other vocaloids are sitting in your computer monitor, singing as best as they can, they can't reach out to you and say "I'm human, listen to me". No matter how cute they are, how much fanart is drawn, they're still... instruments.

But GUMI.

Admittedly, GUMI isn't there yet. GUMI is not Megumi, like I said. But you can see her hand stretching out to you from the monitor screen. She wants to reach you with her voice. The rest of the Vocaloids are standing there, in their virtual realm perfectly happy (and rightfully so, they're quite good there as it is). GUMI is trying though. GUMI is trying to become real.

Miku was the first step in virtual idol. She provided everyone with a personality, a display of the potential for virtual idols emerging into reality. But Crypton was happy with Miku's success, and the Vocaloids after them are modelled remarkably similar to Miku. GUMI is the NEXT step. Built by a company that knows they're not as famous as Crypton, knows they're competing against a nationwide sensation and knows people are labelling them as just copycats. But because of that they tried hard to make a much better model. And that's what GUMI is.

What will happen with the next step? It's pretty hard to say. But GUMI in my opinion was as big of a significance as Miku was, purely for her improvement. Professional Musicians will diss GUMI because she's still not there (still too Miku-ish?) while Miku fans won't look at GUMI because they're busy with... Miku. But GUMI, you are changing the world even if people don't see you.

Besides, GUMI has green hair!

Moar Da Capo, wat

Its like it just keeps going over and over again...!

*looks at title* wait a minute.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-11-01/new-d.c-da-capo-anime-reportedly-announced

So what, are we on Kotori's grandchild now? :V

What would be more interesting is if we were PLAYING Kotori's grandchild. V: