While I am not generally a major Trance/Electronica/Synthpop fan, there are a few bands who always catch my attention and have me listening for anything they put out there. One of them is Perfume, a Japanese band who also co-hosts one of the top 3 music shows out of that country (at least in my opinion), Music Japan. The first track is their latest, Pick Me Up from earlier this year, the second is Dream Fighter from 2013 (posted online) or 2008 (album released). Listening to them now it is hard to believe they started life playing Shibuya-kei, but even that jazz-based art form with influences from Samba, Wall Of Noise, and Ye-Ye, had enough of the House and Synth flavor to foreshadow where they could end up.
Of all the Greatest Rap Battles in History entries, this one has to be the shortest in terms of actual unique word count, but it still cracked me up. And then they did the Rap Battle of the Five Armies; Enjoy!
A Crow Is White just released their third mini-album in January, called Himitsu, and the first video here is the title track. The next one is their 2013 song Sunny Side Up, and the third one is Hi-speed Muteppou. They are an Art-Rock band from Japan, and they have put together quite a number of quality songs, of which these are only a few.
Another excellent example of Cosplay, this time from the 2014 AwesomeCon convention, the ComicCon event in our nations capitol (unless, obviously, you are from some other country, in which case the correct phrase would be their nations capitol). This video was put together by the Close Quarters Cosplay team. Because I couldn’t stop there, I also had to include their Anime USA 2014 Cosplay Fun video, and I think they made an excellent choice for the music bed on that one. I particularly liked that they had a Cowboy Bebop track running while the Cowboy Bebop Cosplayers were on the screen, but the TommyHeavenly6 was a very nice touch as well.
DarwinFish105 continues to amaze me with the incredible videos he creates, which in the past have included showing the construction of a Life Size Gundam and the building of the Tokyo Sky Tree, among many others. He does all of this at temporal and visual scales which bring the massive engineering projects into the realm of the intuitively comprehensible, so that just watching them allows you to understand what is going on and how it works together.
With this video, he is using the same tools, including a collection of high-speed cameras that many feature film producers would kill to have access to. But this time the driver for the visuals is not the engineering behind the project, but the music bed underneath it. As with all good music videos, he edited what appears on the screen to support and enhance the tempo, style, and experience of the soundtrack. I like the directions he is taking his art, and look forward to continuing to watch and see what new gems he comes up with. If you didn’t recognize the filming site, welcome to Akihabara, with a side order of Shinjuku (or was that Harajuku?)
Crunchyroll has added some tasty new live action videos to its streaming service. One of them is 009-1: The End Of The Beginning, which brings the sexy cyborg spy of dystopian Manga and Anime fame to life. Another is Onna Nobunaga, the epic fantasy about the famous Samurai lord who was (in this story) a woman trying to hide her secret while uniting Japan. They have also added Flesh for the Beast: Tsukiko’s Curse, about a trio of paranormal investigators and all the really strange things they run into. Mind, they already had a ton of great live action stuff streaming, like Time Taxi, which is not only a great time travel what-if series, but has one of the funniest subplots I have ever seen in the form of the Criminal Detective. Another great one is Time Traveller, based on the anime series The Girl Who Leaped Through Time. Just thought I should mention they are doing a bit more than just anime, although their anime is amazing.