Shiokara-Bushi/ Squid Sisters Melody: Lyrics and information

Squid Sisters: The iconic pop due of Splatoon

Splatoon, the one game I bought an entire system for, just recently came out with their CD soundtrack aptly named Splatune.

Within the 2 CD soundtrack you get various songs and SFX from the game. Mainly you get most of the multiplayer/lobby songs on the first disk. While the second disk is filled with the Splat-Fest, single player campaign, and special SFX and two special songs. But out of everything I was most excited for the Squid Sister battle song. The song's tittle is actually called Shikoara Bushi.

Shiokara-Bushi or Sea O' Colors Bushi is an interesting title itself. Shiokara deals with Sea O' Colors, or what the Squid Sisters are known as in Japanese and bushi is the suffex for folk songs in Japanese, but along the word simply stands for melody. Either way, bushi can be used in both context on this CD soundtrack, since we do get an alternative, or rather a more traditional version of the song.

Track 19: Shiokara-Bushi
Track 35: Shiokara-Bushi (Traditional)

The traditional version of Shiokara-Bushi is more what you would hear during a festival; taiko, shamisen, and the flute along with the singing of the song and bursts of traditional chanting show how varied the song actually is. Though on the tracklist it is just the one I typed above but when putting it in my player you get an interesting title, Ganso Seicho Shiokara-Bushi (which contains kanji I don't know the entire meaning) but people have translated it to Original Traditional Salted Fish Melody. I'll go look up the kanji later and see if the common translation is accurate.

But honestly, that isn't the thing that I was the most excited for. The lyrics are in the booklet. Here is a picture of the lyrics that I took, it may not be the best; but here it is.

Shiokara-Bushi lyrics: In hiragana only

From what I can gather, this is a bunch of gibberish, but I'm not exactly sure; there are no words I can actually pick up to translate and there is no actual sentences and verbs or anything. But I'm not exactly sure.

I initially bought the CD soundtrack just for this single track, but I haven't listened to everything yet. I will make an actual review once I listen to the entire 2 CD soundtrack. But I do actually like the music in Splatoon, so most likely this purchase wasn't bad for me.

Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma-Overview

Out of all of the current Weekly Shonen Jump series that I'm currently reading, none hits closer to home than; Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma. Since being a Shueisha title it is printed in English by Viz, but this is one title I am glad they translated and put out into English.

Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma Volume 1 Cover

Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma deals with a story of a young boy by the name of Soma Yukihira who works in the kitchen of his father's restaurant. Soma's lineage of working in a common place kitchen restaurant leads people to believe he's not an actual cook and deals with common place food and has no ideals of traditional cooking techniques or even the grace of actual lineage.

Soma by the request of his father, encourages his son to leave the nest and safety net of Yukihira (the family restaurant bears the same name as the family) and join Japan's top cooking school Totsuki Academy. Passing his exams and being a bit haughty during the entrance ceremony leads Soma to have a bad reputation among many classmates, but throughout the manga it is emphasized that those without the ability to make their dreams reality and who will not keep pushing forward are going to be expelled and not worth it. And with a final graduation rate of only 10%, Totsuki Academy makes good word on what they say.

While many traditional shounen pieces depict leveling up and traditional battles Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma does their battling in the kitchen akin to Iron Chef (the good one, the one made in Japan). The actual title in the English release being called Food Wars most likely stems from the meaning of the Japanese work Shokugeki. While I have never heard the word before this manga, shoku means food and geki can be used for fighting with weapons, or weaponry itself.

But within these battles aren't just a way to test which dish reigns supreme, they come with some of the highest risks imaginable. Whenever a Shokugeki is decided people put things or even themselves on the line, therefore creating more tension within the actual story. While the Shokugeki isn't used very much within the start of the manga, it is used over and over and is a central point of all deciding factors within Totsuki Academy.

 A group of first year students from Totsuki Academy

The characters in in this manga are varied within the manga, the image is just a small sample of how varied the characters are; people are various body sizes and ages. You won't get characters mixed up which is a great thing, because now a days distinct characters are a good thing since I remember reading a lot of manga and getting various characters confused because of how similar they look in both body and face.

This manga is a breath of fresh air in the shounen genre, while it has it's serious moments and some ideas not grounded in reality, it strikes a good balance between the two. If you like cooking manga like Bambino or What Did You Eat Yesterday, this might be a manga to look into picking up. As a currently weekly publication, it currently is on about Chapter 138 in the WSJ print and Volume 9 in English print. Just be warned that there are ecchi themes within the manga, so that's just something you have to deal with.

ONE's One-Punch Man

One-Punch Man, or commonly called One-Pan Man (pronounced Wanpan Man); is a hilarious web comic created by a person who goes by the name of ONE. But to be honest...Most people do not notice his work because it gets overshadowed by Yusuke Murata's redrawing of the comic. But is this actually a bad thing? In ways it really is, because it seems that people cannot appreciate ONE's creation of his story.

Many people cite ONE's problems as not drawing as well as Murata, which is kind of obvious. You're pitting a pro against a person whose just drawing a web comic, an is a manga artist as a hobby. Most people can only cite ONE's art as the problem, which to me is somewhat a valid comment but at the same time I have a slight inkling that people are spoiled and demand for "beautiful art". But is wanting beautiful art such a bad thing? To me yes and no. For someone who has been reading manga and watching anime for a long time, you see how styles change and evolve; the switch from 90's style to the current 00's style is vastly different.

But back to ONE and his web comic, it's not bad. Sure it does look simple at times and anyone thinks that they can draw better than him, but once you get further along you see the progress he has, and how good he is at drawing detailed scenes and fighting now.

Taken from the One-Punch Man web comic

Even though it's just rocks falling all over, the composition in the piece does show that ONE does know what he is doing. There is focus in the piece and shows that he does know what exactly what he is doing.

Taken from the One-Punch Man web comic

Also thanks to ONE we have the beloved main character Saitama, who looks dull and boring but just wants to have fun being a hero. But it isn't just that fact at all, ONE's story contributes much to the characters; how they act and how they interact with the world around them.

Taking that credit away from him, just because his art isn't the most amazing and visually pleasing out there is a disservice to One-Punch Man, to ONE, and to Murata as well. Murata is a fan of ONE's work and has done a few collaborations with him. But based on his stories alone, ONE is an amazing story teller getting his story Mob Psycho 100 picked up and serialized on the internet from Weekly Shounen Sunday.

If you ever get a chance to read One-Punch Man or Mob Psycho 100 by ONE, try to look past the art if you can and see how story telling is done, and how a good story can just grab you and makes you want to read more.

Odin Sphere HD release for Playstation Family

Odin Sphere:Leifdrasir

Odin Sphere is getting a new HD remake called Odin Sphere: Leifdrasir, which is going to be amazing. The reason why it is going to be amazing is because it's a remake of a vastly beloved game from a small developer, but every game this company has pumped out has been amazing as a whole and when you look at each part. 

Vanillaware, founded by former Atlus employees and spearheaded by George Kamitani have created a very niche visual artscape and game design that isn't very much dealt with in Japanese games now a days. George Kamitani from the games he has produced takes a love of fantasy and a love of food; which only increases the visual punch the games have. Though eating in his games serve a purpose not many games will have you do the physical act of consuming or making food; which is odd since food is necessary to our survival.

But back to the remake at hand, an HD remake is going to be a good thing for this game as it lets more people play this game, or for people like me; have a physical copy with a modern console. Also Vanillaware is still including the standard PS2 version in the remake if you want to play the original game, which is a very stellar and stand up thing that they did regarding their own IP.

Main Characters and their voice actors

The game is being released in Japan and North America for sure. For Japan it's being released in January 14, 2016 and is going to be on the whole current Playstation family; PS3. PS4, and PS Vita. Japan also has an accessory pack for the game as well that includes a pouch. I'm not exactly sure what the images are going to be but it's a standard accessory pack that Japan releases.

I reserved the Japanese version for the PS Vita and the accessory pack as I really enjoy buying my games on the PS Vita and having physical copies. Once the English version gets released I will make sure to buy the English version for the PS3 and most likely the PS Vita again. My only hope is that Atlus doesn't force an English only dialogue on the game, as they have a nasty habit of not giving Japanese language dialogue on games.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake, the Hype is REAL

It's not a con, it's real guys, it's REAL. Final Fantasy 7 is going to be remade for the PS4, with the chances of it eventually being multi-platform as well.

When Final Fantasy 7 came out, that was the time I was already living in Japan. At first I found it really hard to make friends. I was in another country, so mom bought me a playstation and a few games, one of them being Final Fantasy 7. Through this game, through gaming I was able to meet lots of friends.

I remember one thing fondly, and it's going to be the oddest thing too. It was the weekend and I was playing up in my room during the summer, really hot day and the floor was super hot. But I was in Sector Six, specifically the Wall Market area trying to get all the stuff to crossdress. None of my friends could get Corneo to pick Cloud but I did it. I remembered running over to the phone and trying to dial in to get to their phone number on the naval base. I called so many Japanese people that day on accident.

Eventually that same day I told my mom that I was going out to the base to go over to my friends house for the day and made the hour long walk to go meet them. I bought a giant can of Coca-Cola for 120 yen and a can of CC Lemon as well.

This was during the time that the internet wasn't so great, you know when dial up was a thing.

I have such fond memories of this game, and most Final Fantasy games up til 10 actually. I cannot wait for this to come out. I'm still surprised that it is coming out to be honest.

Kuroshitsuji/Black Butler-Undertaker Scale Figure Impressions

Oddly enough perusing through Amiami the other day I saw the preorder for the Undertaker from Kuroshitsuji/Black Butler. From what we have gathered about the Undertaker is he's a renagade shinigami but has some sort of relation with the Phantomhive family, and currently a great interest in Ciel.

If you haven't read the manga yet, we get to see the true nature of the undertaker and get to learn more about the Shinagami's job, and why the Undertaker defected. Another interesting thing to learn about the Undertaker is that he's most likely really old as his scythe is different from everyone else. While everyone in the modern day within the Shinigami have modded their scythes to resemble tools; even the other Shinigami mention that his scythe is an old model.

What is odd about his scythe that we can see has to deal with the fact that he's using a skeleton and oddly enough the skull has a thorn crown on it. This is an odd allusion to Jesus, which would make sense giving the timeline of the story.

Another interesting thing that the Undertaker has is a mourning chain. This also is where we learn that the Undertaker knew the Phantomhive family. Each locket is detailed quite nicely just like in the manga. Though it is really interesting to see see the lockets in color.

I really enjoy how Kotobukiya got the smile of his down, as it is the most interesting and unique feature of him. It's rather a creepy yet cute facial expression of his. Also I enjoy the scar and how it looks on his face, I am really excited for him.

The Undertaker figure is 1/8 scale from Kotobikiya and is about 12,000yen roughly depending where you may order it from. The figure will be released on October 2015 if there are no complications with manufacturing.

Bloodstained-Igavania on Kickstarter

Growing up I played a lot of Castlevania games, and I mean A LOT. In fact I really like the concept of Igavania games; though more people will know and refer to them as Metriodvania. Well however way you want to say it, there hasn't been a good track with Konami this year and dealing with their IPs, so now Koji Igarashi the producer of Symphony of the Night has put out his own kickstarter campaign for his new title Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.

Though we only have concept art it does look really promising so far.

Igarashi has already stated that he's using 2.5D for the game and is taking inspiration from Guilty Gear Xrd as inspiration for usage of the Unreal Engine and will be focusing on shading ASAP to get a more painted/anime feel. Which if you haven't seen Xrd's graphics go check them out because they look pretty sweet and I think they'd lend well to Bloodstained.

Another great thing, and this is just a personal like on my side; our main character.

Our main character is named Miriam. While games don't usually have female protagonists Igarashi stated in a small Q and A that the main reason of my the main character was chosen to be a girl dealt with his previous workings on Castlevania. Whatever the reason my be, I am enamored with her design and how well it fits with the gothic and stained glass theme they're giving overall. Also... Even though I know that's a part of the curse on her legs, they look like cute tights instead.

 The main villain of the game, Gebel looks pretty awesome as well and looks like a mix between Alucard and Soma which also fits well in this. We don't know much about the characters yet but again the concept art does look promising.

While they're are many tiers since this is a kickstarter, I decided to go for the $60 tier and secure myself both a physical copy and the artbook. The kickstarter edition does include a few things not included anywhere else:
-The SwordWhip: If you went to swordorwhip.com it was a voting for items that you wanted to see or something (I'm not sure as I just answered whip), and is a limited item that joins both clans together.
-One special boss which is how you get the SwordWhip
-Kickstarter edition slipcase

Now I will have to get a PS4, because there's no way I'm just buying a glorified steam key and I don't like the Xbox (I already have a computer).

Though just a final note on this kickstarter, Igarashi has come out and said he has most of the cost of production secured but will only happen if he can prove there are people who want this type of game which is why Igarashi went to crowdfunding. It wasn't that they weren't confident with Igarashi but said that these games have no fanbase, so that's where we come in. If you want to donate go ahead, but as I'm writing this the campaign has already surpassed  2 million dollars. With it having a slated release of 2017 as well may bring people off of it.

Please everyone remember that this is kickstarter and there are risks, if you're uncomfortable with donating; or in other peoples cases have been spurned by video game kickstarters I do not blame you for not helping even if you want it to succeed. This is my first video game kickstarter and I am really anxious about it, but I do know the inherit risks with these kinds of things.

Funding for the project ends on June 12 at 8pm PST so if you want to donate here is the link again.