Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea

7th January 2009, Wednesday

Over the course of the last week as the year draws to an end, you can see plenty of award show or year-end or countdown gig in Japan.
The line-up of artists generally remained the same...from the usual A list to those with a good performance or breakthrough act for the year.
In 2008, there was an 8 year old girl Ohashi Nozomi and 2 60 something uncles Fujioka Fujimaki who broke into the scene circa July 2008..the song "Gake no Ue no Ponyo", the theme song of the latest Studio Ghibli theatrical production of the same name.

Since conceptualized in 2006, grand master Miyazaki Hayao and his lads from Studio Ghibli had been back to the drawing board for yet another comeback after his son's failed project "Gedo Senki (Tales of the Earthsea)".
A story which Miyazaki sensei came out with when staying with a friend at Tomonomura and took him 170,000 hand-drawndrawings to make.
It was perhaps the movie with the biggest box office netting in Japan but then no Studio Ghibli productions fare too badly (yes even Gedo); everyone knows the excellent track records for sure.

Here in Singapore, there are a bunch of rabid Studio Ghibli fans perhaps me, my wife and my La Tendo chums could be part of that demographic group.
On Saturday, much appreciation from Bryan and Yanhui who gave us a movie treat for the birthday gifts we bought them; the timing however was near midnight when we took like one of the last train to town which was really an experience.

Despite the show time, the theater was all packed with many local fans alike to discover the magic of the sea creature known as Ponyo.
101 minutes later many of us were bought by the simplicity Studio Ghibli had delivered with Miyazaki's beautiful visual extravaganza.
The story which resembles Little Mermaid's wish to be a human was very well written without any beating round the bush.
The typical environmental message was strongly heard when the seabed at the opening scenes were polluted by human activities while the former human father of Ponyo, Fujimoto plotting a revenge on the human race.
Ponyo is an infectious little sea pixie who resembles Mei from "Tonari no Totoro" and watching her all drained and exhausted from using her powers, one just can't stop giggling and for the missus, the eyelids getting as heavy as hers.
The tsunami thread mill for Ponyo as well as when she expands Sousuke's toy boat are just scenes to behold.
The old world seas creatures which appear after the flood also revealed the amount of research done and surely up the alley of those aqua-enthusiasts.
The couple beside us were having a great time chatting about the storyline but ourselves as well as Vincent and Miyano at the other side too enjoyed so much we couldn't stop chatting about it.

The nice flow of the storyline was well complimented by the enchanting music by Miyazaki's old chum, Joe Hisaishi who also written the theme song of the movie as mentioned and seen below:

Personally I prefer this over "Howl's Moving Castle" but "Laputa- Castle in the Sky" is still my all time favorite Ghibli movie... I know Miyazaki-san is nearing seventy but I do hope for more quality stuff from him in the future

Japanese word of the day: 崖 ~ga-ke~ (Cliff) There's a scene of flashing signaling between Sousuke and his father at sea which reminds me of my navy days

Limit Cycle without a limit of it's nonsense

4th November 2008, Tuesday

So my 30th birthday went on like any day at work, personally I had not much desire to celebrate on a work day, let alone on a Monday of a 5-days long work week.
But it end with a sour note when I lost my classy hard-back casing for my Shure plug-in earphones.
I had left it on the front compartment of my slingbag which was cramped with whatever gadgets been housed there.
It might had dropped off while I was proceeding to plug my earphones into my iPod while rummaging through the bag for it.
The venue is most likely to be in the MRT station platform and I could had not taken noticed of a hefty hard case dropping off the bag due to the mad rush of commuters at that hour.
When I realized it was lost when I got home it was too late...it surely spoiled the evening and perhaps the next few days for me.
I mean it is just a casing as the missus had stressed but surely it was a part of the package which warrant that high price for the earphones.... it would surely serve to protect the precarious woofer when I am walking about, knowing how badly I tend to handle my properties.
One more good reason to replace a 3 year old Edwin bag I bought from my 2005 Japan trip with valcro tearing off, the inner waterproof lining peeling off and capacity just not enough to keep my everyday tools and seems to be the cause of the spoilage of some of my past gadgets (esp the headphones)

Last Wednesday, me and the guys headed down to the National Art Musuem for this year's edition of the Animation Nation.
After the fun we had last year, we just couldn't give this a miss when the schedule was out early last month.
There were only a handful of features which caught our eyes and with the introduction of a nbew venue of Fusionopolis, the guys weren't too interested in traveling down to such obscure location as Bouna Vista (although I had to be here almost everyday).
The only slot which suited everyone was on Wednesday evening with a double feature beginning with "Piano no Mori (The Piano's Forest)" at 7, followed by Studio 4C's "Genius Party" compilation.

I nearly couldn't reach on time due to bad judgement by taking the bus once again but in the end TW who claimed he would reach at 6.45 was the very last to appear and more importantly is the one getting the tickets from his art scene friend who made the booking.

It was full house once again for this Madhouse Studios 2007 production which adapted from Isshiki Makoto's manga series.
The movie was directed by Kojima Masayuki who was a story artist in several renowed anime series like "Gokusen", "Trinity Blood" and "Gungrave".
We made ourselves comfortable at the bottom right corner of the audience stand which though can be strain on the neck after the show, wasn't too bad a location.
Most importantly we didn't became a nusiance we usually are to too many fellow audiences.
The story entales the encounter of a rather bland goody-too-shoe Tokyo lad by the name Amamiya of who had to stayed in the countryside with his mother (very bland herself who turn out to be a man-hungry auntie as the show develops) to take care ofhis ailing grandma.
Well basically there was a myth that a spiritual entity was responsible to play a piano in the middle of the dense forest.
It turned to be a shoddy classmate of his, Ichinose Kai who had been playing the unplayable piano all along.
Kai-kun (yes I tried to acknowledge when the characters called out that name) was born a natural talented pianist who can play by ear but lack the technique...
Then in come their music teacher, Ajino who was a dashing pianist who had the world on his feet until a traffic accident tore his left arm badly. (more known as "zombie" by his students which we joked as "djombie" like in "The Last Guy PV")
When he found out that Kai was able to play that piano in the forest which turn out to be his custom piano, he was determined to teach him which led to the 2 protagonists meeting in a region final of a national piano competition.

A simple anime without fancy art work, CG or action moves, but the story was tight with mostly likeable characters.
Ueto Aya who was the seiyuu behind Kai did a nice job though still rough on the edges.
Throughout the show TW and myself kept sniggling at how Ajino's unrequittal interest to mentor Kai into his protege with annuedos underlying he might be a pedophilic teacher afterall.
Then how he tried to hook up with Kai's sexy hostess mother...
The appearance of aggressive competitor...the "benjo hime (toilet princess)" Takako (gotta love that name) also spice up the show with the name "Wendy" at the tip of our tongues after that
Last but not least,, we were rooting for contestant No. 46 who precedes Kai, a certain Sasaki Maiko....

After a short interval, we ushered back to the auditorium for the "Genius Party"...This time round we chose the last row in the center block and once again our aura work with no one except for a lone weird Caucasian lady who had the audacity to sit beside Pepsi as the wild ride begins.

"Genius Party" I supposed is Studio 4 C (with their recent take on Detroit Metal City anime series surely hot on my must-watch list)'s clandestine for their artistic people to put up short animated features of what their creative juices can conjure up.
There was a pretty lengthy opening sequence by Fukushima Atsuko highlights how the creative soul of the geniuses are being sucked into this collective feature...or might be an advertisement for X-box with the signature green X-Logo on the cranium of those earthly spherical figures.

Shanghai Dragon by Kawamori Shoji
Kawamori is most famous for the mecha design of those Macross series and it showed with this neo-futuristic show about beings from outer space found their messiah in a mucus-dripping Chinese kid... The 2 space soldiers had to put their lives on the line to protect the kid from being slaughtered by some mechanical minions much like those Geckos in Metal Gear Solid.
In the end with his new magical pen, mucus boy save the day though mediocrely...
A lot of homage paid to his mecha specialty plus some classic tokusatsu shit like Kamen Rider which the boy transformed for a while (which got the weird Caucasian lady beside us in a laughing fit)...My over the top comments about the shocker ans kaijuus his TV hero is fighting got some disgruntled looks from those kids in front of us...love the mock Chinese version of the Rider song!
Also love the way they force Japanese seiyuus to try their best articulate themselves as native Chinese speaking people.

Deathtic 4 by Shimura Kenji
A spoof of Fantastic 4? Not quite
A fully CG feature with a strong European Gothic Macabre style about a land of zombies (djombies) where the stench of death was like Chanel No. 5
The protaganist then found a living frog from a warp zone and sought help from these 3 strange "heroes" from his school... A fat guy with a paper bag on his head and always fart, a human torch like character who tends to fizzle and an aquatic being complete with mask and water tank.
Together this 4 unlikely heroes were on mission to return the frog back to its world while not being captured by the police which are really living papsicans with pacifiers on toddler's tricycle...
It's so madcap, we can't help laughing our ass off...yes the Caucasian lady as well...
And like Shanghai Dragon, the Japanese seiyuus were force to regurgitate liveless French lines from their scripts...

Doorbell by Fukuyama Koji
What if there are more than one you... and it is ruining your life...
With the most butt-ugly characters since Initial D, this creepy tale from the crypt talks about how the lead had problem getting rid of replicas of himself from taking away his existence from everyone who knows him...
Pretty non-chalant shit with a creepy wrinkled "ba-ba (grandma)" out from nowhere...but it's still not the worst

Limit Cycle by Futamura Hideki or we affectionately known as Butamura
20 minutes of real quality crap about all his useless thoughts mish-mashed into a torture show meant for the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.
Done in the arty-farty 80s pop art style which Andy Warhol would get high watching, it just follow this Jame Dean look alike guy talking about anything and everything possible while keep repeating himself and yearning to cliimbgb the Tokyo Tower
For a while I thought TW was well mesmerized by the art style till all 4 of us snapped and I'm sure the rest of the crowd got restless of this piece of crap as we applauded vociferously at the end of the torturous 20 minute...
Really admire the subber who had to endure it all and put up whatever shit the narrator narrates..sometime with an interchange of voices...
Well if you are really that bored, you can catch it here...You had been warned.

Happy Machine by Yuasa Masaaki
We needed salvation after Limit Cycle and with a name like Happy Machine, you would think you'll at least get some...not exactly
It was kind of depressing with this toddler being trapped in a world where he is on his own...making weird creature friends including one that eats flies and move when farted as well as a plant-like creature who survive by drinking our baby friend's urine.
However it did sort of relates the whole back to basic ideology that if we mistreat our earth we would be trapped into a zone without all our safeguards or luxury items...
It stated that it'll be continued but guess none of us care much for that.

Baby Blue by Watanabe Shinichiro
Salvation finally comes in the final clip by the guy who brought us Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo.
A classic "ah jun ge" story we had been craving the whole night relates a guy leaving his home and school in Tokyo, asked his childhood lady friend to go skip school and go on a road trip to Shounan (famous for the beach).
Throughout the road trip, there were flashback of their past like how they managed to snag a grenade from a military base.
Their wayward adventure to Shounan saw them boarding the wrong train to Hakone, having a bicycle race witb a patrol police and encountering a gang of Bosozouku who tried to get fresh with our heroine before the hero blew their vehicles with the grenade.
They finally reach the seaside by sun rise and the romance started to gush in like the waves hitting the shore except the guy had to go and the girl had a boyfriend.
Classic Watanabe stuff with quirky storyline and beautiful background art and up tempo action scene seen in the chase scene.

It was near 11.30pm by the 2nd show ended, and while all smitten by Baby Blue, it was the dreadful Limit Cycle that was the main topic especially when CS nearly lost his cool half way through it all.

Another great time with my buddies in the midst of this Singapore FIlm Society-organized event which we will look forward come 2009.

Japanese word of the day: 限界 ~gen-kai~(Limit) Even for our standard, there should be a limit to crap but obviously Butamura doesn't know that.

I wanna be a Picasso band member!

1st October 2008, Wednesday

After a great night walking down the nostalgic memory lane with TW on Sunday, he seems to be on the roll to seek some more material to relish those good old days.

Our love for Takahashi Rumiko's "Maison Ikkoku (めぞん一刻,)" is well documented as it was the endearing love story which we were addicted to during our puberty.
The uphill task of Godai to win the heart if Kyoko-san as well as finding a path he should lead after graduation was a storyline most people can relate to regardless which decade you are in when you watch the series (the series was referance from the mid 1980s).
The opening and ending themes of the series were as equally endearing to rabid fans like ourselves. Tracks like Anzenchitai's "Sukisa", Gilbert O' Sullivan's "Alone Again" and Matsuo Kiyomori's "Sunny Shining Morning" really builds the mood of the series.
However if we were to throw in the vote for our favorite themes of the series, it surely has to be the various songs done by the 3 men band, Picasso.
In total Picasso contributed 4 songs to the series all of which are melodic ending themes. The direction of "ci.ne.ma", "Fantasy" and "Begin the Night" was so well done, it was almost unparallel even till this day.

With the magic of youtube, you can often find the themes for your viewing pleasure but it seems like some kind sould out there even uploaded the original music videos from Picasso.
Though we had listened to their songs for the past 10 years or so, we never really know how the musicians look like, untile TW sent me the link to the video yesterday....now our lives surely is complete...

This is the original ending sequence for the anime series for "Begin the Night", a song we memorized by heart with the romanji lyrics back in those days:

This is the original music video:

The synopsis of the MV seems to be a romantic rendezvous between a caretaker of a observatory and Ugly Betty (maybe not that ugly at the time this was shot).
The scene began as the final show of the theater and the crowd departs; the lonely bespectacled caretaker portrayed by the lead vocals, Tsujihata was clearing up the rubbish the inconsiderate crowd left behind (seriously do you eat popcorns just to look at the sky?) when his love interest came in behind him, removing her jacket, revealing 7 layers of clothing within.
The actress is actually quite cute you must give it to her...
While singing about beginning a great night with her, he dimmed the light and taking full advantage of his position to put on an extra sky-gazing showing for her alone (itself may have cost her 500yen).
However to ruin a wonderful observation of the constellation and Milky Way, Tsujihata jumped in the foreground for his love confession.
Anyway you can just see the sillouette of Tsujihata which makes him much better looking without the face of course.
So where do the other 2 band members feature in this MV as you might say, they seemed to take on the role of security guards who dropped by the theater for their rounds then quietly leave, as not to disturb a romantic session between the 2...
Wow just when the geeky-looking lead vocals is about to get laid after 35 years of fruitless searching for a mate, the other members have to accept their fate and just watch from afar...
Man I am really aspired to be one of the background member now...'cos they are truly the ultimate losers in this loser band!

Just when you think things couldn't get even worse, I managed to find the MV of another song we really like from Picasso... "ci.ne.ma".
Below is the original animated sequence which truly is a piece of art that deserves the cult following:

Don't you just love the synchronized chime with the water doplet hitting on the brass key? Anyway here is the actual music video..be afraid...be very afraid:

Instead of the key, the chime now is synchronized with the poor little girl who dropped her kitten.
She was genuinely scared stiff when she saw the apparitions of the band in total fashion disaster running towards her. Hope she made enough money from the video to allow her a comprehensive therapy session to mend her mental wound.
For the rest of the video you see the trio of dorks doing their trade from the secluded dirt track to the grass field to even a scary cave; with the damsel in distress now severely wrecked from the ordeal especially witnessing how Tsujihata pull the poor effort to conjure what he think is a dance while the wretched background members listlessly play their accordion and bass respectively.
There is no relation to the cinema-themed love story as the song implies...
This video has no plot or whatsoever and truly has to be one of the worst (if not the worst) music video ever made... This was justified when the band had their eyes twinkled in the most horrendously primitive way.
In the end they wrapped our scarred heroine in their trenchcoat in a manner only Michael Jackson can relate to...

Sometime ignorance is a blessing... "Begin the Night" and "ci.ne.ma" will continue to be two of my favorite songs ever...but hopefully I would not be reminded of those awful videos...

Japanese word of the day: ひどい ~hi-do-i~(awful)Maybe Tsujihata and guys should do a Milli Vanilli and find some pretty boys to masquerade as them, so as to hide their awfulness

5 cm per second of emptiness

30th November 2007, Friday

So on Wednesday I have completed my trio of anime showing on "Animation Nation 2007" and kudos to the organizers for making the efforts to bring in such delectable anime title for viewing and I am sure with the reception seen from each full house showings as well as supposedly favored response for their seminars and short films screening, this one-week long anime festival surely must be a success and future such events will definitely be much anticipated for this anime-hungry nation...

My companions for the two shows this week was my wrecking buddies with the exception of Foo who as mentioned had to commit all his time in bid to get the deal with Lucasfilm...
TW & CS are the best candidates to watch anime with since we had done so while growing up and the aftermath of watching each movie once again justified the notion...

"Tekkon Kinkreet (鉄コン筋クリート)", a masterful rendition of Matsumoto Taiyou's (松本大洋,) 1993 work, "Black & White" which I once read on this American compilation of manga series some years back. French director Michael Arias and the good people from Studio 4°C who gave us the likes of "Spriggan", "The Animatrix" and MVs like Glay's "Survival" & Linkin Park's "Breaking a Habit" certainly carried the eccentric mood Matsumoto sensei wanted to portray in the town of "Takara machi (宝町)"....
There was a mix of authentic Showa element in the streets with many Asian flavors (i.e. Chinese, Indonesian, Thai, Indian), making it a labyrinth with a myriad of clashing colors and artifacts...There were lots of homage paid to classic anime series as well as live action heroes in the show as well as some "Easter eggs" which you just had to keep an eye for such as a large "Arashi (嵐 )" logo on a rooftop, supposedly in tribute to the voice actor of the lead, Kuro, Ninomiya Kazuya of the Johnny's group, Arashi.
Speaking of the voice actors, I felt Ninomiya as well as Aoi Yuu who voiced Shiro did a really good job to capture the pain of the pair of street urchins yet still maintain the fact that they are just children... Famous dorama writer, Kudo Kankuro was the voice of the frigid detective, Sawada (by the way frigid means unresponsive to sexual advances or stimuli)

TW found the show to be a wee bit too violent while CS felt it was not violent enough...
Personally after the slow paced for the first half of the movie, I began to understand what message the story was transcending... the presence of a "black (bad)" and "white (good)" elements in everything, there's a balance between the 2 to keep on in line somehow...
The 100 minute long film was a bit too long and defy laws of physics but still a recommendation for those who like unconventional anime work which may incorporate the Western style of story-telling and out-of-thi-world fashion design such as the diaper-like spacesuit the local gang headed by the Mohawk-haired guy, Choc...

The show that really got to us was "5cm per second (秒速５センチメートル)" done the upstart animator, Shinkai Makoto (新海 誠) who some rave reviews touted as the next Miyazaki Hayao.
A chain of short stories (basically just 3) which encircles the life of a hapless chap by the name of Tagaki who was troubled with the affairs of the heart since junior high till into his adulthood... the perfect "ah jun ge(阿俊哥)" story for the likes of me and my buddies...
The visual treat was simply spectacular as Sinkai and his crew meticulously and intricately do the beautiful artwork for every scene...
The cinematography is one to savor as well with nice pace in the storytelling. The characters are likable especially Akari-chan with her bento... And great background music and theme song of Yamasaki Masayoshi's 1996 hit (a classic track from our J Pop cafe days) "One more time, one more chance" which totally suits the mood of the story...

After the 60 minute-long trilogy, we were overwhelmed with emptiness or what we known as "空虚感"...
This feeling had been long buried in our sad, monotonous past and we were actually glad it was back actually...

CS was the one that got the hardest hit I think as he started his quiet, one-liner self with the usual "tchk", we knew our Pepsiman was back into his prime...
We couldn't stop ourselves chatting about the afterthoughts of the film which for CS was beginning to creep into his system a hour later...making a fool out of ourselves as always...
The film was affecting us for sure but we were saying if it was 7-8 years back when we are still in the midst of our National Service, perhaps the effect would be much more profound...perhaps will drive us up the wall, surely more detrimental to the heart and soul...but that's just us...
After dinner, CS felt an urgent need for a walk and so we pranced around the area surrounding Dohby Ghaut MRT, still deeply absorbed in our thoughts about the storyline, feeling wretched at the same time as we love to do so

Anyway once again a big shout out to the good people of Singapore Film Society, Media Development of Singapore and others for hosting such an event... we will surely be there for the 2008 version, and hopefully be blown away by more fantastic anime shows!

Japanese word of the day: 空 (Empty) Felt so empty after "Byousoku" yet so fulfilling...

Hungry?! Nissin Cup Noodles...

26th November 2006, Monday

Imagine this scenario, you had spending all your lives in a policed state where your every moves are been monitored...
The authorities "handcuffed" you with a bangle which is a mode they will summoned you whenever they had caught you up to no good business...
Once you had deemed to be out of line from their stringent mode of ruling a state of slightly around 3 million citizens, they sent you to hours of reformatory volunteer work...
Apparently they had been hiding a giant conspiracy from its law-abiding citizens, which could lead trust loss to the authority and led to uncontrollable havoc in the form of standoffs and rallies...
Sound familiar?
No I am not referring to some governments in our world today, but the storyline of of "Freedom Project" which I had caught at the National Museum of Arts last Saturday which kick starts "Animation Nation 2007" 's anime festival...(actually no, Tekkon Kinkreet was shown the day before)

Foo had perked my interest few months back with this event though the listing of anime to be featured was quite murky at the juncture...
But after Zero's "ad" on his blog, it was clear that I was not to give the event a miss with some alluring titles to catch...
"Freedom" was another brainchild of Katsuhiro Otomo who gave us the cult hit "Akira" back in the late 80s, but fell a bit short in terms of critics' acclaim and box office with "Steamboy" 3 years back.
The characters such as the protaganists, Takeru and Kazuma as well as the design of the racing vehicle are evidently his style...

Foo, the initiator for this anime festival in the end pulled the plug for his participation due to his dire need to free up whatever time he had away from work to beef up his portfolio to impress the people at Lucasfilm..
However my buddy had previous engagement with his friends for the same show while CS couldn't made it as postulated, and no one from La Tendo was interested, so in the end I asked Foo whether he could make it again before I booked the tickets online...
He managed to cajole Howe Chern to join us for a show as he claimed, "he knew nuts about"...

I had wanted to whet my appetite before the show with a meal at Carl's Jr but a high tea at the Straits Cafe at Hotel Rendezvous with the missus in commemoration for the 7th year since we became an item kind of spoiled it for me as I was stuffed as a Thanksgiving turkey when I met up with them...

Despite not an avid anime fan like ourselves, you can always count of Howe Chern to enjoy whatever company we could provide which always involved corny jokes about old J pop songs and the soccer scene...

The venue for the screening got me marveled as I hadn't really visited the Museum since its revamp years back and the architecture within was a site to be behold, which really captured a contemporary feel in a building with history....

We got there at around 8 plus to collect the tickets and not many people was in sight of the viewing gallery despite claims that it was a full house show...
TW came by and got mingled with the lads a while before joining his own friends for the show...
As 9pm approaches, you suddenly see the audience started clustering outside the hall, mysteriously appearing out of no where...

We were handed a paper with dialogs before heading in and Howe Chern immediately was alarmed that they might be a lack of subtitles and his doubts were founded as the organizer mentioned that the prologue to the series weren't provided by the distributors, Bandai Visuals and they had to use the DVD format which didn't come with the subtitles...
We would love to read the script while the movie was screened, but the they decided to dim the lights...bummer...

Actually I thought it was a movie but it was really an OVA and on that night we caught the first 3 episodes of a 6 episodes long series...so the ending was pretty open-ended whether we liked it or not...
The series began with "This is Love" taken from Utada Hikaru's last album, "Ultra Blue", a pretty upbeat track which got us cozy for the show...
But then when we followed up with 2 more episodes, the repeated opening and ending got us pretty restless...

The storyline surely built up in the end with the lead character, Takeru and friends started to have doubts over the authorities of EDEN, their residence on the moon after Earth by then had became depleted and not fit for living...
It intertwined with Takeru's desperate search for this earthling girl who's photo he found while on volunteer duties on the craters of the moon, which provided some comedy reliefs in an otherwise tense action flicks with the future as a backdrop (glimpses of "Total Recall" was felt)
The ending of episode 3 left me wanting to catch the rest of the series (only available on DVD) and was pretty into the main sidekick, Kazuma who played a big role in the ending...

Of course, the strong presence of Nissin Cup Noodles was immensely recognized to the amusement of everyone..
Takeru and his rivals, Moonshine gang was kept seen sipping the cup noodles for snack while somehow a carton was found lying somewhere in an age old rocket hangar...
Of course the 6 CMs (commercials) of the cup noodles got us in fit as well especially the latter ones, and as my companions mentioned...the show had a strange effect to make you go grab a Nissin Cup Noodle from your nearby convenience store...perhaps it had a strong subliminal message for the sales of the noodles...
We then pondered what if Indomee had sponsored the show...would the nationality of the characters be changed?

Next up Tekkon Kinkreet this evening with my buddies and 5 cm/sec on Wednesday...

Japanese word of the day: 広告(Advertisement)What if Kao tied up
with an anime to sell their sanitary pads...