Those that have read the “Whos’ Stephen?” page would know that apart from blogging about anime and video games, I also like to write electronic music. Well, today my first two albums, withStyle and CheCheChe, are being released under the Creative Commons license! Feel free to send the mp3s to anyone you like (or even don’t like?) or use them in YouTube videos or whatever else you might want to use them for. It’s all good, so long as it’s not commercial. If you want to use any of this music commercially let me know, and we can probably work something out. My third album is also nearing completion and will be released here under a Creative Commons license when it’s ready.

withStyle

CheCheChe

Have you been wondering what the small bit of inactivity lately was about? Well, here’s my answer–or part of it anyway–my new website project; sauceplz.org.

It is basically wikipedia for files. You load a file and will be presented with a page unique to that file where information about the file can be listed. You could, for example, load a page from a manga and add tags for the artist, manga name and page number.

That’s part of the inactivity, I’ll try and have some more posts up soon, but there’s a few other, as yet, unannounced projects I’m working. Hopefully I’ll have more to say about that soon.

Ever wondered what it would be like if you were about to drink a can of melon soda when suddenly it transformed into a cute, young girl? Yeah, me neither–but this bizarre concept turned out to be a win, in my opinion. It sprinkles a fresh twist on the harem genre with a main character that is…well…not some wussy, girl-fearing loner. Instead he is a mountain of sarcasm, topped with a thick layer of innuendo and narcissism.

Kakeru Daichi is a 16-year-old high school student and collector of aluminum soda cans–he has also been, for all 16 years, single. While on his way home he stops at a vending machine to purchase a melon soda, but he does not anticipate the coming disaster that would unfold. He gets home, has a quick shower and then takes a refreshing sip of his newly purchased lemon soda…only he finishes that sip with a cute blond girl locking lips with him. The girl, known as an Akikan, is glad to have finally transformed into her human form, however; she’s not so glad to find Kakeru lacking any form of clothing short of a towel over his shoulders. Needless to say she freaks and sends him flying with her strange carbonated beverage powers.

As it turns out, this is not an entirely unusual happening. Soda cans turning into girls have been relatively prevalent lately and are under investigation by the Department of Economy. Leading the investigation is Hidehiko Otoya, a government official who also happens to be flaming gay. He appears at Kakeru’s doorstep with his assistant and starts feeling him up before he even introduces himself. Kakeru is somewhere between panic and shock at this point, so the assistant steps in and tames the overly foward Hidehiko and drags him out the door. Kakeru leaps from disaster to disaster, each more disasterous than the last and all the while still pantsless.

The premise is certainly an odd one, but the writers did an excellent job of shaping it into something hilarious. The comedy in the show is very blunt and always tries to push the boundary just a bit further. I’m really looking forward to more episodes of this show and is definitely at the top of my watch list so far from this season.

The music provided a perfect accent to the quirky hilarity that had me laughing all throughout the show and at the same time was quite catchy. Many people underestimate the importance of audio in video medias–try playing a Tales game on mute and you’ll understand what I mean. Audio is a very important aspect in the creation of a good show and this one handled it brilliantly. Not only was the music great, the voices matched perfectly–it’s hard to capture so much sarcasm as Kakeru’s character, but they pulled it off flawlessly.

I highly recommend anyone that likes a good laugh have a look at this show because it is absolutely brillient. Just don’t watch it too late at night or you might get some angry phone calls from your neighbors.

Gallery

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and enjoy whatever other holidays you enjoy around now! More on the characters in the picture in coming days–it’s a great show called Toradora, for those pre-emptive enough to have a look before I write my review.

I was hanging out with a friend of mine and he showed me a new card game he got recently called Zombie Fluxx. I had quite a bit of fun playing it and it’s a very cool idea for a card game. Most card games have some set goals and rules that you follow, leaving you shaking in your boots when you look at your cards and see you have nothing of any use. Not Zombie Fluxx–in this game the goals and rules can be completely turned around in a single round, but don’t let yourself think that makes it confusing. It certainly makes you think a bit, but it’s a very ingenious way of doing things.

There is just a single deck of cards that everything is mixed into, at the start of the game each player draws three cards–if any of them are zombies you lay them infront of you and keep drawing until you have 3 cards in your hand. From the start of the game there is actually no condition upon which a player can win, the players actually have to introduce a goal themselves by using a Goal card which can be drawn from the deck, just like anything else. On your first turn you draw one card from the deck and then you can play one card from your hand if you want. The turn doesn’t necessarily end there though. Say, for example, you use a Play 5 Rule card; you can now play more 4 more cards. If you are lucky you might now be able to play a Draw 5 card or something of the like, allowing you to draw a few more cards than what you already drew at the beginning of the turn. There is also event cards that allow you to do nasty things like taking another turn or sending your zombies to another player. As you can probably guess; it’s bad to have lots of Zombies…mostly. There is a few Goal cards you can play that can completely turn the game around for the seemingly hopeless; some goal cards require you to have many zombies, like Zombie baseball…some even require that you have ALL the zombies in play! There is also mean things you can do, like play a Goal card that requires you to have Zombies to win when another player has the Zombie Repellent card.

It’s very enjoyable because there is literally no way to know when another player is about to win the game. If you like Zombies and you don’t hate fun I highly recommend you give this game a try! It’s only about $10 on ebay, how could you go wrong?