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My Wish List & Pre-orders! |
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Overseas Otaku Buying Tips |
Making
online purchases/pre-orders especially for Jpop
CDs and anime/game PVC figures have always been
the best option for me (and many otakus who do
not live in Japan). Listed below are my wish list,
preorders and purchases from these reputable online
companies. Your purchase via these links supports
this site :)
• YesAsia
(Bought my Jpop CD/DVD here)
• J-list
(many 'weird' Japanese stuff)
• HobbySearch
(Comprehensive inventory
but no free shipping
and no shipping cost
provided upon placing
an order )
• HLJ
(very good alternative to HobbySearch)
• E2046
(many figures & rules in resin
kit)
• Play-Asia
(My #1 online shop)
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About This Blog: |
Shin-Otaku
is a blog site belongs to the author, Divine Fang
who is a super otaku wannabe. Here he shares his
thoughts just about anything related to otaku
in this very portal -figurines, anime, games,
computing, jpop, Japan e.t.c. As of time of writing,
he is especially obsessed with:
• Ayumi Hamasaki (since 2000)
• Tekken
6 (hard-core player)
• Suzumiya
Haruhi's figures (all
his figures)
• Learning
Japanese
Set
your screen resolution to 1280x800* or above to
view this site in its full glory!!!
Follow me on Twitter.
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| | | As a PVC figure collector, I just could NOT miss Hatsune Miku (初音ミク). So who the heck is this girl who suddenly pops out of nowhere and jumped into the PVC figure scene exactly? If you would have asked me this question a while ago, you'd see lots of "???"-signed halo on my head. She was discovered when I was lurking around at Play-Asia & Amazon and she was ranked top (#1 on both sites in fact) in their figure pre-order listing. Having that informed, I could not resist but to study more about her. After some 2 hours of consultation with ゴード グーゴル ('God' Google), I was pointed to the mega virtual library, Wikipedia and all following findings.
About Yamaha's VOCALOID
Excerpts From YAMAHA Corporation Official Site: VOCALOID is a vocal-synthesizing software that enables song writers to generate authentic-sounding singing on their PCs by simply typing in the lyrics and music notes of their compositions. The software synthesizes the sound from "vocal libraries" of recordings of actual singers, retaining the vocal qualities of the original singing voices to reproduce realistic vocals.... About VOCALOID Hatsune Miku 「初音ミク」  | While there are English version of VOCALOID softwares available, Hatsune Miku is generally designed for Japanese songs. To date, Hatsune Miku is not all about vocal synthesizing, she has been regarded as a virtual idol, especially among otakus. Proceed for countless derivative works of Hatsune Miku. |
Excerpts From Wikipedia: Hatsune Miku (初音ミク) is the first installment in the Vocaloid Character Vocal Series released on August 31, 2007. The name of the title and the character of the software was chosen by combining Hatsu (初, First?), Ne (音, Sound), and Miku (未来, Future). The data for the voice was created by actually sampling the voice of Saki Fujita, a Japanese voice actress. Unlike general purpose speech synthesizers, the software is tuned to create J-pop songs commonly heard in anime, but it is possible to create songs from other genres... Before that, head to Miku's very cool official page and download some MP3 samples there. You'll also learn that Hatsune Miku is a 16-year-old idol who is 158cm in height, weighing 42kg and enjoys pop and dance music.
Pre-ordering Status Of Hatsune Miku Figure
As of time of writing, I am aware that the allocation of GoodSmile's 1/8 scale Hatsune Miku which is set to be released Sep '08 at Play-Asia is full. However, Yesasia (ridiculous price for figure usually) is still taking pre-orders but they have an 'early-bird' deadline which is on 16th May 2008, only 4 days left from now. Locals (KL, MY) might just want to secure their copy at XiaoLoong in which their 'early bird' deadline is on 16th May 2008 also.
| | | Above: Hatsune Miku 1/8 Figure by Good Smile company (released Sep '08) |
| | | Above: Hatsune Miku Nendoroid (getting a re-run July '08) |
It is simply amazing that the craze of Hatsune Miku extends to '痛車' ('Itasha' basically means custom painted car): | | | Above: Hatsune Miku Painted Mitsubishi FTO Hi-Res Wallpaper (1200x800) |
I would really like to point out who the first cute babe cosplaying Miku is but unfortunately this pic has been sitting on my PC for quite a while and I could not recall her name. However the second and third picture shows the infamous cosplayer Usagi-chan and Arisa-chan.
YouTube Videos
The fame of Hatsune Miku didn't end just here, in fact, she skyrocketed her fame on YouTube since her debut. Doing a simple search of "Hatsune Miku" or "初音ミク" on YouTube returns a significantly great amount of cool and impressive videos of this virtual idol. I had gotten myself down and dirty digging some worth watching YouTube videos for you readers :)
To make life even easier for those who dislike streaming videos, I have provided a direct download link of some Hatsune Miku videos in a single rar file. (For your info, I'd normally keep good YouTube vids on my hard drive :P ). Listed below are the videos in the rar file. I highly recommend using VLC player otherwise have K-Lite codec installed on your PC for video playback.
• Hatsune Miku - Hare Hare Yukai.flv
• 『創作のミクエリオン』.flv
• 【3DCG】くるっと・おどって・初音ミク【ねんどろいど】.flv
• Hatsune Miku - Miku Miku wa Uchuujin.flv
• 千の風になって Miku Arrangement.flv
• 合唱組曲『ニコニコ動画』 featuring 初音ミク Special-Edition Ver.flv
• 雪、無音、窓辺にて、Solid Snake & Hatsune Miku。（修正版）.flv
• FFX-2 Real Emotion - Miku.flv
• melody.flv
• Evangelion OP - Zankkoku na Tenshi no Tense - Miku.flv
• ZOE Beyond The Bounds - Miku.flv
If you have made your readings until here and have watched a few vids about Miku, you'd realize that Miku gains big part of her fame by... umm... COPYING! Please do not get the wrong idea, no bad impression here, it is because that IS part of Miku's 'job'!
Extras
There are just too much to show you about Miku and if this carries on, your browser's scrollbar would shrink needle thin. I was going to post some random pics of Miku but there are just too many out there! Go Google them!
| | Above: Hatsune Miku Hi-Res Desktop Wallpaper (1920x1200), Source: Unknown |
That's all folks!
PS: A few of above videos are in which their origin are songs and openning of anime "Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu" a.k.a "The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi". Future entry shall feature the fame of this super high-profile anime as well as its figurines. Heck I am a big fan of Suzumiya Haruhi! | | | |
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