Obligatory new year post (Girls und Panzer ED vocaloid remix)

Happy new year everyone!

So, here we go, leaving another twelve months behind us. And as well, at least two years worth of stupidity. So, what’s the main thing to learn from the old year?

Right. Apocalypse is the best economy booster there is. If the sales goes down again, we better hire some doomsday prophets. Problem solved.

But honestly, the year started of great. We had a bunch of great shows in winter and spring, which were really over the top. The most outstanding were definitely Mirai Nikki, Sakamichi no Apollon, and AKB0048. All of them count as must-watches.

Yeah… and then it was summer.

As I don’t want to waste my time raging about a series half-assedly written by a 15-year old kiddy, I leave it by pointing to my Sword Ass Online post. Alternatively, refer to Animenz’ 2012 summary post, as he sums up the criticism brilliantly.

The rest of the summer series were just so utterly disappointing, that I had to facepalm at the stupid premises. Mostly moeshit and fanservice. Droppeddroppeddropped.

At least in autumn, it got way better. But after such a weak summer season, expectations were way to high. Many series didn’t get up to the hype, and sadly, some decent series were even forgotten because of that. Well, as the other seasons were already talked about, I’ll just quickly wrap up the autumn season.

The Bad

K

Uh, yes. K. The name already indicates it. “We don’t need reason, we don’t need a name, we don’t even give shit about a plot. Style be enough.” Well, I’m terribly sorry, but that’s not how good series work. I dropped it instantly after episode two, when the main character is supposed to be stabbed to death by another samurai, who made an oath to kill him. That’s first. Next scene, they are happily cooking together. WTF? HOW DUMB CAN YOU BE? FUCK YOU FOR MESSING UP ALL LOGIC THERE WAS.

Okay, ragequit, next.

Magi

Awww. Magi, you could have done WAY better. But there was so much fail in it, I had to drop it instantly. For example, the music. They had a chance, making a super epic arabic tune OST, but what happened when they stood on the bazar? NO MUSIC AT ALL. Come ooooon. And these lame slapstick boob jokes made me facepalm. Can’t watch a series where I constantly think, why didn’t they do this and that better? Dropped, next.

The Average

Psycho-Pass

Sorry, but doesn’t get up to the hype. It’s a very solid, dark series, and has some interesting experimental things in it. The music and style is way over the top. Brilliant setting. Decent plot, but way too superficial. No depth at all. I wonder if I find the time to finish this somewhen.

Robotics;Notes

This series may be quite good, but it is too slow. And I mean it’s quite ssssssssllllllllooooooooowwwwwww. Seriously, how can you call it something like a “sequel” to Steins;Gate if there is so much difference in these two series? Let’s compare.

1) My reaction to the first episode of Steins;Gate:

hooooly shit. “prologue of the beginning and the end” <—- MINDFUCK. Well, that sounds like a coherent plot. I know where this is heading, and there is already enough suspense and a cliffhanger for upcoming episodes.

2) My reaction to the first ep of Robotics;Notes:

Oh, how unique! There is a random bored highschool boy and his tsundere girlfriend. brilliantly unique. Haven’t seen that in a while. Okay, forget this, I want the awesome plot again! Hm, what did they talk about again? Er, random school stuff?? Wait, where is the twist… where is the suspense…. what the FUCK is going on, and WHY am I up late and watching this shit? I’d better sleee…..ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…….. (yes, I fell asleep, because it was that boring) Don’t mind me, this series might not be bad, but the creators have to feel SHAME that they used the name of Steins;Gate for this series. It was just a shitty marketing trick.

The Good

Zetsuen no Tempest

Yep, that’s BONES for you. Always delivering super solid series. That counts for Zetsuen no Tempest as well. But! There is actually more. Any kind of aspect you could analyse, from animation over plot to characters, dialogues (the script writers are GENIUSES; they even quoted Hamlet, and gave it sense and a function over the whole series!!)  pacing, music, background art, world, whatever, is perfectly coherent and fits so well together, it’s almost perfect. Keep this up, Bones.

Code:Breaker

I’m very upset, that almost no popular aniblog wrote anything about this series. Why, just why. This is NOT the generic shounen you might have expected. Actually, this show has two outstanding features, which I really want to emphasise, since no one else does.

1) The series features irony on its own genre

That’s so brilliant. We all love shounen series for various reasons, but that’s would be worth an own blog post. But we also know it’s flaws. That is, in most of the cases it’s terribly unrealistic. But, exactly that fact gets ridiculed by Code:Breaker. The main female character has that part. (“Sakurakoji, Sakura-san”<— Just look at her name, it’s already ironic!) She sometimes behaves just as idiotically heroic like some other shounen lead, (Naruto…) – BUT she’s quite powerless, so she doesn’t kick butt, but instead, gets laughed at. There is a very interesting scene where the mafia corrupts the police, and she just does the moralfag, not realizing the corruption, and bids the male lead not to kill them, as “the police is already there”. In that scene, everyone bursts into laughter, and she gets a lesson on how the real world works. Perfect, just perfect. I’d call it “bug-fixed” shounen.

2) The director.

Holy shit, THAT director is a true master of his art. The manga is long as hell, and he managed it brilliantly to shorten the series to 12 episodes, fast paced, while choosing every scene and characterisation in such a manner, that anything you’d normally call a shounen clique suddenly appears fresh and new! Good job, as expected of the director of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

Girls und Panzer

When it was annouced, I just knew that it’s going to be ridiculous shit with a lot of fanservice. But I was mistaken. Instead, it is BRILLANT ridiculous shit, with FEW fanservice, and amazing production values. Just a “few” “brilliant” words can already make a show great, huh. Well, it really makes much of a difference. Because they took their
hilarious setting seriously, it developed an inner logic for the series. This is a smart way to create a more coherent world and thus a better show. Epic win. And the spoken german, as well as the partially german “troll” subs by Commie are simply best fanservice ever.

Summary

Now, it’s time to draw a conclusion, was the anime year good or bad? What was the best show? Has anything changed in this year?

Well, neutrally speaking, I’d say the year was very progressive.

I mean, we had anything. From underrated interesting new experimental series with idols in space, over devastating shitstorms on the blogs written by blinded fanboys, desperately fighting against any reason and sensible criticism, to overrated, overhyped series with big guns and BADASS styling. It was all up and down. Crazy shit.

 

Yet, judging all series after dramatic composition, a coherent world, the effective use of style, stylistic devices, script, dialogues, and production values, there IS a winner!

And it’s called….

AKB0048!

(*clapclapclap*)

GETS AWARD FOR THE BEST ANIME 2012

No doubt, this is the best show of this year. New genre, Satelight, Script and Music, everything is just perfect. And noooo… this is NOT moeshit. It’s art!

Behold, shounenfags! There is more to see, just open your eyes and try to look a bit behind the veneer! Discover the new world and live happily ever after.

I’ve even gotten poetical now. Wonderful. Then I can finally move towards the final part of this post.

Now… for the late christmas and new year surprise, I proudly present a new remix!
As I’m still a bit new to remixing songs and working with Vocaloid, I again decided to use animenz’ recent transcription to build a remix around. That saves to much time, as I can completely focus on the arrangement and especially on the “sound” of the individual instruments and of the mix, instead on concentrating on the notes.
Yeah, transcribing and remixing really are two worlds apart.

So, now there it is! :D Enjoy! =3

Anyway, I think I improved a lot in this remix, and not only in the mixing, but again I managed to push the audio quality to an almost hilarious extent.

That is, I managed to encode the bitrate to 509 kbit/s.
Remember current “studio quality” being at 320 kbit/s? :P

Well, youtube re-encodes the video, so it might still be 320 kbit/s or less (-.-) but this is as good as it gets atm.

I hope we can get to 192000 Hz, 32bit float, lossless WAV somewhen in the future…    Okay, to be honest, this would be already possible. But the problem is, the filesize explodes to an hilarious amount of data. A normal TV-Size MP3 song normally has around ~4 MB, whereas a lossless file with the above mentioned specs has around ~150 MB. That’s a difference of the factor 37,5. And you need to find a video software first, that wants to eat such an audio file monster. Have fun.

Okay, that’s almost about it, but lastly there is one goodie left to announce:

My piano sheets are available now! :D

I finally managed to add a fucking table in wordpress, a feature that is not supported. But, as stubborn as I am, I entered a CUSTOM HTML CODE for this shit. Yeah, shitload of work. But I guess it was worth the trouble. ^_^

Oh, I will be absent for quite a while as I need to study for my upcoming exams. Shit’s gonna get real soon.

See you everyone! In March, we shall meet again ;)