If you’ve been following Animated Meanderings for a while you might have come across some of my comments regarding the flood of comment spam I have to deal with on a daily basis. It all happens at the backend, since I queue comments for moderation in any case (which would explain to anyone wondering why their comments don’t appear immediately).

Regardless – it has reached a point where I have to clear my comments of something in the range of 100 – 200 spam comments per day, and over weekends it gets much worse. Bots never rest, after all. As you will also already probably know, I’ve been looking for a solution for a while now, and it appears that Disqus has offered me that solution. I hope.

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For once, I’m moving away from Crypton’s Vocaloids, and on to another Vocaloid by a different company who has a pretty large fanbase of her own – the reason I’m doing this should be apparent by now – yesterday, 26 June, was Megpoid Gumi’s second birthday.

Or anniversary. Depends on how you feel like looking at things. Whatever floats your boat.

Image below from Piapro.jp

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Those of you who have been following Animated Meanderings for a while now will probably remember – vaguely – that I did a post regarding the rather unfortunate and untimely demise of South Africa’s only print magazine that focused exclusively on anime, manga and japanese culture. I’m referring, of course, to Otaku Mag.

For South Africa, it was pretty revolutionary – the anime scene at the time was very much underground, or rather, completely invisible, and the magazine itself did a lot to bring the genre into the light. If anything, we can probably credit them to some degree with the eventual appearance of South Africa’s very own dedicated anime channel, Animax SA.

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In keeping with the general Miku madness found here – I offer you another Hatsune Miku song. It’s not new, exactly, having been posted on Nico a little over a year ago, but I thought I would share it anyways. But before we get to the fun stuff, just a quick few updates.

The Anime Summer 2011 Preview page has been updated – I’ve added the info for Appleseed XIII which will be released on the net in the next couple of weeks – so go check that out if you’re interested – there’s a one minute PV for you to drool at as well.

The second update concerns the Animated Meanderings Facebook page, which has gotten a few additional likes and now has a total of 40. Okay, so it’s not a lot, but it’s more than the 8 I started with ^_^. So I’m happy, and want to take this oppurtunity to thank those who have been supporting me so far. Of course, it’s not in the same league as the Hatsune Miku page, which is now rapidly approaching 200,000 likes, but I never had any intention of competing there anyways :)

So … back to Miku – this isn’t a funky video so much as it is just a music track, but the track itself is almost as cute as the illustration below – click on the image to have a listen. I’ve included the romaji lyrics as well.

There - isn't that cute?

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We’re moving on towards June, and with that comes the latest anime release cycle – with a whole raft of new series about to come our way. The bulk of these will start airing in July, but the first couple of OVAs will be making an appearance in June already. Borrowing some info from Moetron, I’m going to be giving my (now usual) uptake and thoughts on what’s coming over the course of the next three months.

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It looks like Miku and her fellow Vocaloids are set to continue their slow take-over and assimilation of the world. Apart from the recent airing of a Toyota advert in the US featuring Miku (the Toyota Corolla being her official car – wonder how much Toyota forked out for the pleasure), it was recently announced that Miku, Luka, Rin and Len would be strutting their stuff at the 2011 Anime Expo in Los Angeles on the 2nd of July.

Hajimemashite, Hatsune Miku desu.

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I’m not going to beat around the bush. Apart from that rather unfortunate Twilight episode, I’m quite fond of vampires. Not fond as in looking to meet up and cuddle, but stories surrounding them. I suspect actually meeting one (provided it’s possible) may change my point of view. Vampires in anime tend to fall into two distinct categories: There are the cute, (usually female) well-endowed ones, which, depending on the situation you’ll be quite happy to let them take a bite (Rosario+Vampire, Karin), and then there are some that are a little more violent.

Blood: The Last Vampire drops fairly neatly into the latter category, although our protagonist spends her time hunting monsters rather than eating people. This may be a good thing.

Set in Japan in the mid-1960’s, we meet Saya, the last remaining pure vampire and hunter of chiropterids, bat-like monsters who live by consuming human blood – pretty much vampires themselves. Except, not as good looking.

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I came across another AMV that more or less blew me away and decided to share. Especially since I’m still trying to find something to write about :p

But apart from that I’ve been sharing few and far between anyway; it’s been a while since I lasted posted up an AMV. Before the actual AMV though – here are the details (including the download link):

Editor: Darklydone
Title: Electric Emotion
Song: SHE – Atomic
Anime: Metropolis/Nebula – Tripshots feat Hatsune Miku/Yogurting(Promo)/Jungle wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu
Premiered: 01 June 2010
Download link (you’ll need an A-M-V.org account)

Enjoy the AMV!!

I’m sitting with a particularly evil condition right now, commonly known throughout writer’s circles as writer’s block (yes, we’ve all been there).

So, being in a particularly evil frame of mind – I’m going to force you all to listen to a new PV that was released on NicoNico a few days ago (10th April if I’m right). Composed and arranged by Noah, with the lyrics by M.I.O – here’s いいわけ Love Song (the hiragana read as iiwake). If you like the tune (and I definitely do) – you can download it here, although you might need a Nico account to do so.

Although I haven’t managed to cover all the new releases taking place this season, due to the fact that the first of the series have started airing I’ve decided to finish off the previews with this particular post. If you’re wondering what I haven’t covered, you can see the full list of releases on Moetron’s post – and as you will quickly be able to see, the list of releases was massive. I’m going to be updating the Spring Releases page here on Animated Meanderings with a list of the anime I’ll most likely be following – and which with any luck will eventually be reviewed.

Assuming of course, I can find the time to watch them all. Read the rest of this entry »