I was browsing the cereal aisle of the internet when I came upon this colorful box of lucky harms(sic).

The best is the confusing limerick which kicks off the “Grab Your Japanese Dream”-off.

Because only limitation
is your imagination

…which makes sense in engrish, the japanese english hybrid, but in standard english it means quite literally that the only imagination which you have is limitation.

Call me bitter and war-torn (please call me war-torn!) but I just don’t know what this is supposedly leading to. How many U.S. acts make it big in Japan before first having some modicum of success on their own shores? If the goal is to find Japanese/American talent why offer English language channels at all? Why make it sound like every anime geek with a Singstar mic has their shot at being some kind of weird foreign exchange idol? –I’d like to exchange Vanessa Hudgens for Fujimoto Miki please.

The deadline is March 31, so if you get off on disappointment, or are looking to rebuild a previously successful career in Jpop/rock/tv/talent (I wonder if Klaha is going to audition?) then sign up today.

Nationalities, sex and age are not asked.

Are we clear? These things are “not asked.” You dont’ apparently even need ID at any point. Hey, I know where Osama Bin Laden is, he’s Grabbing his Japanese Dream! (Or… they translated 問わない which in this context means “will not be a factor” or the more friendly “all welcome” as “not asked”)

So bring on the 90 year old Tibetan throat singers and 3 year old tap dancers.

All that being said, maybe Yochien Ronin needs to sow our evil seed?

The pSKY crew hit Duet last Saturday to mourn the passing of our beloved magazine as the final issue makes its way to newsstands soon. Since most of our dearly beloved had already jumped ship or drown it was down to five dedicated souls to sing pSKY off into the sweet hereafter.

More photos of the awkward undead, in the new Karaoke Feb 08 Album under Events in the pics section.

Not for the easily spooked.

Even if I didn’t love everything about the Coen’s No Country For Old Men I was glad to see them recognized at this year’s Oscars. I consider this a spiritual win for Fargo and The Big Lebowski as well. I’m happy for them. Also loved Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood. But Tilda Swinton for Best Supporting Actress? 

 That was a shocker.

Mostly because I found her performance unmemorable and partially because Amy Ryan was so finger lickin’ good in Gone Baby Gone that it felt like grand theft little gold man.

And that was the title of this entry. I am too clever for my own good sometimes. I think I out-clevered myself into a dilemma –How do I get out of here now? Help!

As a new owner of a Nintendo Wii (Thanks Mom & Dad! Heart!,) I’m just now discovering the joys of that wonderful controller which is a set of maracas one minute and a presentation pointer the next. I’ll write more in depth about these first giddy days of Wiidom soon but I just had to share with you this troubling line of thought I stumbled across on Game Informer in a Preview of The Force Unleashed.

As you may expect, the game uses the Wii remote to control the movements of the lightsaber but not in a one-to-one manner. If it did, the player would need to be a professional fencer to use it. Instead, it detects direction of swing and translates.

What a fun bunch of obfuscation. Who is buying that the reason the lightsaber isn’t controlled in a “one-to-one manner” is because they were concerned that you would have to be a skilled fencer to pull off battles? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Fuck you, Bueller.
Sit your ass down.

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Whenever I check my gmail these days I see this link at the top of the page begging me to sign a petition to save the show Veronica Mars and though I signed it, so as not to be a dick, I think it’s demise may have been for the best.

For any foreigners reading the inu, this may not be the case but in America tv shows tend to run on past the 5 season mark when the heart of the story the creators wanted to tell has all but been tapped dry. I had a pretty intense love affair with Ms. Bell as the wry, witty and justice seeking teenage girl detective and for one full season the show was one incredible high after another but then I seemed to love her less and less with each subsequent year they tacked on.

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Kirito’s new band Angelo seems to be having an oddly timed renaissance. They will be the cover of Rock on J’s March issue, and Kirito will be splurging at length for his cover story in Rock and Read magazine. Oddly the band’s newest mini-album came out in December, so why all the high profile coverage all of a sudden? Is jrock that lifeless right now? Mysterious.

Of course I refer to ABC’s. By which I mean Acid Black Cherry’s debut full length Blacklist. What I mean to say is this: Blacklist is a very easy album to like. But not so easy to love.

So, considering that I’ve never been much of a Janne Da Arc fan in so far as I limit my enjoyment of their unashamedly commercial take on jrock to one or two songs at a time, I’m not sure what about a yasu solo effort appealed to me. I fell in love with the silly fun clip for “Spell Magic” (included in this A package with the three other single PV clips,) in which yasu and friends dress up like Akiba-kei otaku types (or perhaps a pre-record deal The Back Horn?) Of the twelve songs on Blacklist only the singles are absolute must haves and amongst those only the smoky jazz club sounds of “Black Cherry” (helped by my cute friends Pistol Valve!) and “Spell Magic” demand to be played very, very loudly. The rest is pretty much by the numbers hard rock with all of yasu’s usual over the top dramatics and one too many sparkly piano high-diddle-dees. Still, the album never becomes a ballad-fest and stuff like “Murder License” and “Eden” keep things rocking solidly. Forays into funk on “Bit Stupid” come off … a bit stupid. Can’t say he didnt’ try to warn us. It’s hanky-panky = The horndog theme song to late night adults only anime. You get the picture.

Though the title of the album implies danger, the only real danger seems to be what yasu means by “give me your black cherry” and what he intends to do with it once he gets it.

Translated By: Brian Stewart & Takako Sakuma

I remember an old episode of Tales from the Crypt in which a mortician finds out that even in death we still feel the pain of the embalming. It freaked me the fuck out. Then there’s the Stephen King story Autopsy Room 4 from Nightmares and Dreamscapes in which a man who is bit by a poisonous snake is mistakenly thought dead and autopsied. Terrifying.

Now to add to my list of nightmares is the premise of Awake a movie about a young heart transplant patient remaining in a state of anesthetic awareness during his heart surgery in which his senses continue to function but he remains paralyzed and unable to communicate his state. Again, terrifying. That’s not the killer part though, the best part is that he overhears the doctors doing his procedure conspiring to kill him and collect on his inheritance.

If the movie had taken that premise and run with it, I think it could have been one of the most suspenseful movies in years.

It doesn’t.

It isn’t.

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If you’ve never read Akutogawa Ryunosuke’s famous work Kumo no Ito nor read the translation we did of Pierrot’s infamous B-side “Kumo no Ito”. The reference here might be a little confusing. To sum up the story: A bad man does one good deed for a spider during his life and the spider rewards him by extending a single strand of web for him to climb up to heaven from hell. The man starts to climb which draws the attnetion of other damned souls who also attempt to climb the strand. The behavior proves that none of them are worthy, and god cuts the strand damning them all eternally. Kirito often uses this image to indicate an idealist, or sometimes false, hope.

Translated by: Brian Stewart & Takako Sakuma