Birthday of Ayanami: Daykeeper

Yes, I took the plunge and bought the watch anyway. I wasn't sure about getting this that I had to ask around for people's opinion. I've had mixed feelings and I had mixed reactions from others as well. But I had a good excuse to finally get it, ok? It's not some kind of random purchase, ok? ^^;

This is part 1 of my Birthday of Ayanami series of posts on March 30th. Rei's birthday is actually based on Megumi Hayashibara's birthday, her voice actress. Megumi is also my favourite voice actress. Unfortunately she hasn't had much work lately since she's raising her family, but she still have some recent work, like Paprika, Evangelion movies and Slayers (at least it was just released here). March 30th is also Ayako Kawasumi's birthday, my second favourite voice actress... but I'll talk more about that later.

This is Daykeeper Relax Plus Plugsuits Edition, Rei Version... What a mouthful. Since this is the Rei version, she gets the first picture... Plus it's her birthday!

The watch was available in 3 versions including Asuka (red) and Shinji (light blue). As of this post there are actually other versions that is grey black coloured based on Kaworu and bright pink based on the new female pilot, Mari, from the new movie.

The reason why I bought this was because the strap on the watch I was wearing was about to fall apart... So I started to look for a new watch. I thought about getting something cheap, but I didn't want it to break easily. So I looked around for a nice Casio. One of the thing that I hated about the old watch was the light. It was too low... So the light was important. I found a really nice one, it had a compass and I was impressed by the illumination.

So I thought I decided on Casio, but then I suddenly had the urge to look around for anime-related watches when I got home from looking at watches... I researched some more and I kept going back to Relax Plus. This badly translated Japanese into English description somewhat piqued my interest: "RELAX PLUS is a small metal parts, most of them wrapped in rubber and PVC. PVC material by using a rubber belt, negative ions generated by friction. As its name implies you want to watch just RELAX!!!! Tamenai [wut?] high moisture permeable and breathable PVC sweat Quick dry effect of the fiber. Can comfortably wear it during the hot summer."

Either way I was sold since I was looking for a watch anyway. Thankfully the Daykeeper was back in stock at Hobby Search! They were the only one that had it and it was 15% off! Done deal. A couple of weeks later, trying to keep my watch intact as possible, the Daykeeper arrived!

And this is the content in the box... I played around and took photos of it right away because I was already planning this March 30th post.

Nice packaging! The inner case is a lego brick type of packaging. Supposedly if you have more Relax Plus watches, you can stack the cases... The plastic that surrounds the watch is quite unique.

Very intricate casing, I gotta say. It's like a giant bubble wrap.

Umm... I pretty much winged it when I set up the watch since I can't read all of this. Anyone that knows Japanese well and willing to translate, let me know. I still don't know how to make the watch beep hourly ^^;

And here's the watch! I'm a little disappointed because it's not as white as in the pictures... The top number is the hour, middle is minutes and seconds at the bottom. I have to press the top left button to check the date, kinda hard to press sometimes, but at least it has a calendar. I wasn't sure if there was a calendar or not... It does have an alarm too, but hard to setup. I need to read the manua... Damn, I forgot I can't read it...

The strap is made of PVC and metallic pieces. I'm surprised how the strap worked actually. It straps on like one of those watches with metallic band. Stainless steel, baby!

EVANGELION

You can also remove the timepiece from the strap if you need to replace the battery. But here you can actually see the buttons on the watch.

A close up of the timepiece. I haven't removed the plastic sticky part on the face of the watch, just so it can be protected and last a bit longer.

I gotta have a picture of the watch and Rei, right?

So I've been pretty much wearing it ever since I got it. It gets dirty easily, especially in my line of work, but it's easily cleaned. Hopefully the strap lasts, but I know they sell replacement straps for this line... I don't really want to replace the strap though...

Otaku Consumerism & Dubs

So a few days ago I found out there's a watch with an Evangelion license, called the Daykeeper (Relax Plus Plugsuits Edition). Not only is it Evangelion, but it's also made to look like the watch they used in the movies (or an existing watch that they use for the movies). There are three colours with the same design, but they are labeled according to the characters. Red is Asuka's, blue is Shinji's and white is Rei's...

Pictures of the watch are from Hobby Search and Rakuten.



REI'S??? Of course with that label and the prospect of having the same watch as Rei, I was all hyper and was dying to have it! I know some of you have heard me on Twitter just hyping it up. The only concern I had at first was how it would look on me... A white wrist watch on a guy? The people I talked to said it wasn't a big deal though no one liked the design ^^;

Ok, so with that concern gone, I took a closer look to see what kind of features this watch has. Alarm clock, stopwatch, water resistant... And then I look at the above picture. Uh oh... no calendar. One thing I look at my watch is the date. So if I get this I'll have to know what date it is... Unless of course someone who has this kind of watch can tell me if there is a feature for a calendar on this watch.


The above picture shows how it's strapped on. Very interesting strap. I've been trying to research more about this brand called RELAX PLUS, but not much about the calendar or other features. Plus most of the sites I go to is in Japanese and there's only so much Google Translate can do.

The other thing I found is that they also make different colours of straps! So if white doesn't work for me then I can buy an extra one with the colour I like... BUT that defeats the whole purpose of having an Evangelion watch!!! GUNDAMMIT!

To get this watch or not get this watch,
that is the question.

Before I continue... Apologies to Wolfheinrich because I haven't worked on the next 4koma much... I've been kinda panicking, trying to find another job this past week, plus my friend dragged me to 2012, even though in the end he hated it himself. Not to mention the long lineup and the fight during the lineup... Fun fun fun...

Next up is a couple of DVD and Blu-Ray news I found through AnimeNation and Anime News Network.

It is the local release of Bandai's Kurokami: The Animation. Honestly, I tried reading the manga and I could not finish the first volume. It was a bit too confusing and the story was all over the place. The only reason why I got the manga was because Park Sung-Woo is the artist, one of my favourite Korean artists. So the anime is even further away from his character designs.

So what's the point of talking about the anime? Bandai is releasing the first 6 episodes in a 2-disc DVD set in Subtitled Japanese and in English Dub for $40 and also the first 4 episodes on a Blu-Ray in English Dub only for $30. I thought there wasn't anything wrong about this until I saw the details for the Blu-Ray edition... DUB ONLY?? This worries me and of course it was one of the topic of the day the next day on AnimeNation.

Apparently one of the reasons for Dub only release of the Blu-Ray is that there is no regional restriction between Japanese and North American Blu-Rays. So the Japanese company is worried that people will import it from North America, which is typically cheaper... SO!? Why not make your release the same price as the North American release and have the both audio on it?? AAARGH! Ok fine I won't even buy this series, but I'm worried that this is gonna set a precedence for future Blu-Ray releases.

And it was only a few days before this news was released that the Japanese DVD release of Shangri-La has been shortened from single 2-episode discs to boxed DVD release. It sounds like Japan's sales of DVD are down as well... Obviously because they're expensive, so it's nice to see Japan somewhat adapts the North American release system. Though who knows how much they priced that box set... So why not make it cheaper? Price it the way it's done for the North American release. Then we can get that Japanese audio in the Blu-Ray releases here... Of course it's not helping when there are over 10,000 copies of Endless Eight DVDs are being sold -_-

The point of showing the dub-only release of the Kurokami Blu-Ray leads to my stance on the ever-present Subs vs Dubs argument. I personally don't mind if people like dubs. That's their choice. I personally do not like dubs because I've heard a bad dub of Legend of Lemnear years ago. It was a sexy anime with character designs by Satoshi Urushihara. The voice that came out of the character just killed the whole thing for me. I couldn't finish watching the very short anime because the dub was awful.

These days it's about the same... Very ear cringing dubs just killed it for me. The last dub I saw was the Evangelion 1.0 movie. Shinji's voice was so bad that it killed some of the dramatic moments... and even the comedic moments. It would've been better if they somewhat use their natural voice instead of trying to imitate what it was like in Japanese. And that goes with all anime. I pay attention to the female characters the most in anime, so if they don't sound right in dubs then I won't even listen to it at all. So now I don't take chances anymore with dubs and go with subs.

Now for a counterpoint... I also have heard a bad Japanese dub. I remember watching an early episode of Angelic Layer and cringed as much as I did while I was listening to English dubs because the voice actress was trying to sound younger. It only happened in 2 of the 24 episodes, or even half of an episode, but she sounded ok the rest of the time. Generally the Japanese audio is always a better watch for me because I would not be distracted by the English dub.

The other counterpoint... I have heard good English dubs. A lot of them were the Ghibli movies that used actual actors. They sounded great! I wouldn't mind watching them in dub if I have to. Especially Kiki's Delivery Service, my favourite Ghibli/Miyazaki movie. I loved both the Japanese and English edition. The English songs were great!

Ok... enough rant, but at least I've finally put it out there.


And lastly... something I've read recently from AnimeNation News as well... Yamaha is releasing a couple of Voiceroids; a male and female voice synthesizers.

The thing is... they're synthesizing the voice that of a very young boy and girl. Tsukuyomi Ai is the female one and pictured above. Yes, she sounds exactly as she looks.


The boy is named Tsukuyomi Shota. Now can you imagine what some people are gonna do with these two? Yeah... Very interesting things, that's for sure. Check out the AnimeNation link to get some of the voice samples.

Sometimes I really hate the otaku and consumer in me. I just want to get and get but I really shouldn't have because I don't really have the money for it. Ok I may not get the Voiceroids or the Kurokami DVD/Blu-Ray, but the watch is something I really want to get. I'd love to upgrade to Blu-Ray but if it costs me the Japanese audio and subtitles, then what's the point? I really hope they don't ruin future Blu-Ray releases because someday there might be something I really want to get...

The Ayanami Rei Shrine

One thing lead to another and now I have this huge collection of Ayanami Rei figures and merchandise.

It was around the time of late high school or end of high school that I discovered Evangelion, rented a tape from Blockbuster. They didn't have volume 1 of the series but I watched it anyway. Very confusing since it was the middle of the series... but the name Megumi Hayashibara stood out. See when I was back in Jakarta, I was shown Voltes V and the only female member in that show is named Megumi. I must've had a crush on that character that I have quite a love for the name "Megumi".

I watched some more and saw that she plays Rei Ayanami in the show and since it was the middle of the series, it was a scene where Rei was in a glass tube full of some kind of liquid. I was fascinated by this; cloning, blue hair, red eyes... After this I went and looked for the first volume and became very enamoured with Rei... which lead to finding out that she was going to have an "action" figure by Kaiyodo. I grabbed the chance to get one... now she has multiplied and was cloned at my expense.

This is the old compilation picture of the "shrine" which became my first post at DannyChoo.com. I wanted to do something unique for my first post... so this was the most unique thing that I could do at the time. The photos above were taken sometime last year around the same time.

AAAAH! All the Rei has been stolen! No, not really... just moved so I can add that extra shelving on top of it.

This is one of my big project this summer... which is to clean my room and get this new Rei shrine finished. Well 1 out of 2 isn't too bad...

I had to clear the front of the Detolf shelf so I can get to my other Ayanami Rei figures.

This is the first level. I didn't add the Fraulein Revoltech yet, but it's somewhere in the midst of it later. Darn... that new maid figure is covered X( She kinda looks like a princess being protected by the other Rei when I put her in the center like that.

The first level is where I placed the first musical box from Sega Prize...



Here's the second level. It's the smaller space so I tried to fit what I could in there such as the trading figures and the ones where she lies down or sitting down. Hmmm... I have an idea for that Rei sitting on the desk. Hopefully that comes to fruitition.

The second level is where I placed the second musical box figure, also from Sega Prize...



And finally the third level. You probably notice two similar looking figures. The two in swimsuit are both the same except for the paint jobs. I like the tan on the right one, but I like the bikini on the left. The one in the gym outfit/bloomers has one of my favourite faces.

Here you can see the other angle of the first level. I couldn't take this picture til late night because at the time my bed was filled with boxes of figures...

You also get a better view of Bandai's Voice I-Doll Superior figure with 10 voice clips from the anime voiced by Megumi herself! I think it's got the best face and hair colour from all of the figures here...



Here's an overhead shot of the first level to show the late addition Fraulein Rei and a better angle of the figures in the middle... mainly the new Maid Rei ^^

I also do like Asuka, but not as much as Rei as you can see here... There are a few figures that I really wanted of her, such as the Lolita dress, the colour change ones, the Cancer figure... but I wouldn't really get her unless I had to buy both Rei and Asuka. The surprise figure is the one in the center. I didn't think highly of that until I actually got it; fell in love at first sight.

Here's another angle of it showing the lolita dress Asuka better. The colour change figure is the one with the transparent dress. If it's cold it changes to black, but since it's summer here it becomes transparent, which is why I got her... heheheh.

As much as I love Ayanami Rei, I don't have anymore room on the shrine for anymore figures. I hope there aren't anymore that I'll get because it's just full right now! I can move it far to the back of the shelf, but I won't be able to see them anymore... Right now I can barely see some of them already. Ah, such is the life of the Ayanami Rei collector...

EDIT: Someone requested the "winter" or "cold" colour version of the temperature-changing Asuka figure, so here they are.

Yuri Mania 14: Gift from Yaku - Coloured

Art by Yakuri Moe
Colour by Lightning Sabre

After a Thursday evening filled with undoing, changing colour, making layers and changing brush sizes, I finally finished colouring this art work drawn by Yaku! I could have done it the way I did the last artwork I coloured, but this one is special since it was especially done for me and these are two of my favourite anime characters! I really think I could do more, but I'm not that good enough in colouring yet... I can always call it a work-in-progress and of course am appreciative of any constructive criticism and advice. ^^

Previously seen as a rough sketch before in this blog. I'm really glad when Yaku inked the lines to make it sharp for me so it was easier to colour... but umm... did she have to use that nickname? -3-

Anyhoot... colour schemes... I knew Rei has to have a pale skin, but I know Saber is quite pale as well. Saber has some warmer colour in her than Rei. The trademark hair colour has to fit as well, but I opted not to even look at samples of their hair colour since I know them by heart. Plus Rei so many shades of blue in other fanarts anyway. So I went with my own choosing. The red eyes for Rei was easy, but I wasn't sure what shade of green Saber's eyes should be. I know this ain't perfect, but I can always go back and change it later, especially if I improve.

Hmm looking at this again, I think I should've made Saber's ribbons darker... I also wanted to use a little bit of trademark colours in the schemes. Saber's swimsuit has been white for many other art, so I kept it that way. I can always add stripes to it once I get used to colouring curves ^^; Rei's swimsuit colours are based on the Eva unit 00, thus it's a yellow suit with gray trim. I would've prefered the blue Unit 00, but I don't want to conflict with Saber's too much. So as for Saber, I made the float tube behind her to be the trademark silver and blue armor scheme. That float was one of the last things I coloured since I have no idea how to do it... Thankfully I came across Yamada's posts on DC.com that had a float in it. ^^

One of the things I wanted to improve was also shading. I didn't do any shading on the bunnygirl Mikuru... so I wanted to try it out. I saw a little bit of samples from Gelbooru.com and also looked at RadiantDreamer's colouring tutorial. I think he uses a tablet though, so he has better results. The above art is done without shading. Not too much difference since I've only begun doing it this way. Hopefully I'll improve again. Good thing this is all in the computer so it can always be revised. I really wish I can draw too because I want to add a swimming pool in the background... I can always Photoshop one in, but that's cheating >_< I made multiple layers and also learned how to make layer set in Photoshop. So convenient with that layer set now. I made sure that every colour has different layers this time around, so now I can always change the colour of the float and Saber's & Rei's swimsuit. Anyone got a better colour scheme? I'd love to add a logo on the float, but I was too tired to think of one and how to do it... Probably the design on Saber's armor.

And finally I was messing around with the colour scheme again today before I posted this and did an ecchi omake. Since Yaku called me "Ecchi-Man" then I might as well make it ecchi, lol. A thousand pardons for messing with your lines, Yaku ^^;;;

NSFW NOSEBLEED ALERT!!

Ehehe. Anyway... I started this around 4 PM on Thursday, but with many distractions, I didn't really finish til 3 AM... So adding with the stuff I did today, I'd say about 9 hours? Yikes! Did I really do it that long?? 0.o

EDIT: I loved it so much that it's on my phone now :P