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Announcement: Audio Visual Style is moving

All right, I've made my decision. I'm making the switch to Wordpress.

All future entries will be posted only to this blog: http://audiovisualstyle.wordpress.com/.

I'll also be moving some of my older entries to the Wordpress site. I'll still keep this blog online, but I will no longer be updating it. Not for the foreseeable future, at least. Please feel free to ask if you'd like further explanation; the reasons for the move aren't particularly interesting, really.

Thank you so much for your readership and comments. I hope you'll be willing to continue following Audio Visual Style at its new location. Work and personal issues have made it difficult for me to post as often as I like, but I truly enjoy doing this, and I want to continue for as long as I can.

See you at the new site!


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ONE OK ROCK's Europe and Asia Tour — South East Asian fans, rejoice!

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Dates in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and and Indonesia. Niiicee...

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Announcement

I created a mirror (sort of) for this blog on Wordpress: http://audiovisualstyle.wordpress.com/.

It's a free account, so nothing fancy. But I quite like the features available on Wordpress. I'm seriously contemplating moving this blog over to Wordpress. I'd like to explore Wordpress's system more, though, to see if this is a good idea. I'm also open to keeping both blogs updated, but that would take quite a bit of work. If any of you have any feelings on this matter, I'd really appreciate it if you could share them with me!

Oh, I also made an Audio Visual Style Tumblr. It's less structured, and doesn't have the posts that I make here; it's just for photos I wanted to share and random thoughts. Oh, and Kalafina gifs.
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Anime Festival Asia's 2013 events

After making some teasing posts on their Facebook page, the organisers of Anime Festival Asia (AFA) have announced some details for this year's upcoming AFA events. The second AFA Indonesia (AFAID) will be taking place on 6-8 September at the Jakarta Convention Center, while the sixth installment of Singapore's annual AFA event, AFA 13, will be held at the Suntec International Convention and Exhibition Centre on 8-10 November. An AFA Malaysia (AFAMY) event has also been mentioned in the announcement, but there no further details are available just yet. This would be the second AFA event for Malaysia.



Nice to see that AFA is continuing to hold events outside of Singapore.

It's also interesting to note that AFA Singapore will be going back to taking place at Suntec (AFA 12 was at Singapore EXPO). This is very welcome news for me, as EXPO was in the east of Singapore, while I live in the west of the country; Suntec is in a more central location, and a lot faster to get to. Dragging myself out of bed very early in the morning to make it in time for the 9 am screenings of the Madoka Magica movies at last year's AFA was kind of a pain...

I'm very much looking forward to seeing the list of guests that will be making an appearance. I hope they release those details very soon. It's no secret as to whom I'm most hoping to see again...Ka-la-fi-na!

Sources: AFA official site, AFA Channel


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J-Rock Matters Live (ft. flumpool and SID) @ Clarke Quay's Fountain Stage (23/5/2013)

As part of HP's All That Matters Music Matters Live series, J-Rock bands flumpool and SID performed at Clarke Quay's Fountain Stage. Their performances came under a special segment called "J-Rock Matters", presented by the Japanese online publication BARKS.

It was a great show. Best of all, it was free.

I was considering doing a live report, but I noticed that the videos from the livestream of the concert were still up:




I think these convey the experience of the live better than any report of mine could. Any suggestions that I may just be too lazy to write a report will be huffily ignored. I'm not sure how long these videos will be up for, so if you haven't watched them yet, go get to it.

At around 11:30 of flumpool's performance, vocalist and guitarist Ryuta kisses the pick he was using and tosses it into the crowd, close to where I was standing. I normally don't bother going for these kind of things even when they come my way because I'm neither tall nor forceful enough to stand a chance. But this dude who hadn't even noticed what was going on got hit in the chest by the pick, and then coolly bent down to retrieve it. Lucky guy.

Fortunately for me, that dude happened to be the brother I'd dragged along to the show. He didn't really want it, so...

 photo flumpool-pick_zps6b9adb25.jpg
Couldn't have asked for a better souvenir.

So thank you, BARKS, for bringing flumpool and SID to Singapore. I hope you bring other Japanese artistes here as well! Also, hopefully, for free.




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UPDATED 9/3/2012: Kalafina's 4th Album Consolation

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So pretty. Waaaay bigger version of image at source.

Kalafina announced at their live concert earlier today that they will be releasing their fourth album, Consolation, on the 20th of March. EDIT: Kalafina's official blog has corroborated the information. UPDATE 25/1: The album will come in three versions (CDJapan pre-order links ahead): Limited Edition Type-A (with DVD), Limited Edition Type-B (with Blu-Ray) and Regular Edition. I can't actually read the Japanese text on the blog, but from what little I can decipher the songs to the beginning (Fate/Zero OP), Hikari Furu (Puella Magi Madoka Magica ~Eien no Monogatari~ ED), the title track for their single moonfesta and Yume no Daichi (their new song for NHK's show Rekishi Hiwa Historia) are mentioned. I think it's safe to conclude these songs will appear on the album.

Updated: Album covers (click each image for a bigger version)

 photo ConsolationRE_zpsd4144c6f.jpg
Limited Edition Type-A

 photo ConsolationB_zpse3d4fe85.jpg
Limited Edition Type-B

 photo ConsolationA_zpsdc026d06.jpg
Regular Edition

EDIT: According to CDJapan, the track list for the album will be as follows:

1. al fine
2. consolation
3. moonfesta~ムーンフェスタ~
4. Door
5. 未来 (Mirai)
6. 花束 (Hanataba)
7. signal
8. obbligato
9. 木苺の茂みに (Kiichigo no Shigemi ni)
10. 満天 (Manten)
11. to the beginning
12. ひかりふる (Hikari Furu)
13. 夢の大地 (Yume no Daichi)


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Yay, an appropriate moment to re-use this gif!

Based on the Google's typically garbled translation of the source blog, what I'm getting is that the Limited Editions will include footage of their time at Germany's AniMagiC event, the PV for their song Yume no Daichi (yay, more PVs to make fun of recap) and "inclusion of special photo book Deluxe Edition specification". So...a photo book with the LEs? Oh, let's just wait until a competent translator can make sense of this.

I'll let the nice folks of canta-per-me.net furnish you with the few details that are currently available. If you'll excuse me, I'm about to get busy shrieking with delight and dancing with manic glee.
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PV Review/Recap: Kalafina — moonfesta

This post has been moved to the following URL: http://audiovisualstyle.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/pv-recapreview-kalafina-moonfesta/


Photobucket Goat: "I
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Happiness in a package

Yesterday, I got an e-mail from CD Japan telling me that they had shipped my order, and that it would be arriving in 3-6 days. Okay, I could wait that long. When I dragged myself home that same night after a long day of work, I found a package from CD Japan waiting for me on my desk. That's crazy efficient. Well, its contents certainly cheered me up. My copy of Kalafina's Hikari Furu (plus bonus jacket) had arrived, two days before the official release date:

Hikari Furu

The CD. Limited Edition Type-B

bonus jacket kalafina

Bonus jacket

But that wasn't it. There was another, pleasant surprise.
hikari furu bonus jacket 2

So pritteh. And HomuMado is ♥

The one with Homura x Madoka is on the other side of the bonus jacket. The Madokami image on the back CD cover is actually a sticker, it peels off just above where the tracklist is. Did not expect these, were they announced? In any case, they're pretty sweet additions. Will review the stuff I was actually paying for (the music, I mean, and maybe the PV too) later. Excuse me while I go put Hikari Furu on an infinite loop,

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Kalafina's new single is another Madoka tie-in, more Kenshin, and Wolf Children in Singapore

Well, hello, it's been a while. I have my excuses (perfectly valid ones!) for being away, but I'm fairly sure that that's not what you came here to read.

And yeah, I promised a recap of Kalafina's moonfesta PV. It's been forever, but I'm not about to give up on it. Not just yet. But it'll probably take some more time before it's done.

In the meantime, let us all rejoice at the announcement of Kalafina's new single, Hikari Furu, which will be released on the 24th of October.

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More Kalafina is always good news!


The title track for the single will be the theme song for the second Madoka Magica compilation film. The title of the movie, by the way, is Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Part II: The Eternal Story, which is too long for me to attempt to fit gracefully into the previous sentence. Anyway, I'm very excited about all this, which should not surprise anyone who has been and is still reading this blog. I'm going to stop hazarding guesses as to many of you there are.

The single comes in four (whew) editions: Limited Edition Type-A (includes DVD of the title track's PV), Limited Edition Type-B (same PV, this time on Blu-ray), Regular Edition (no PV) and Anime Edition (includes "...bonus DVD with special animation").

It's available for pre-order on Play-Asia as well. The site has not deigned to tell us which edition is which just yet but a comparison of the catalogue numbers suggests that it's Type-A, Type-B, Regular Edition and Anime Edition. But you don't have to take my word for it, we can wait till they provide more info.

I'm not usually interested in Anime editions but that bonus "special animation" (of the Madoka movie, I presume) sounds intriguing...

In other not-so-new news:

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The Rurouni Kenshin live action movie (you know, the one I talked about once or twice or more), which opened in Japan on 25 August, has made a ton of money. It is also, according to the one in-depth review I found that was in English, quite awesome. The movie also been licensed for distribution in over 60 countries. Which is very nice and all, but is Singapore one of them? I think it's likely but they haven't confirmed it why can't they just tell which countries are among those 60+ countries the suspense is killing me here.

Oh, speaking of movies...



Hosoda Mamoru's Wolf Children opened in Singapore this Thursday. Catch it at Bugis+'s Filmgarde if you haven't already. I did, and I greatly enjoyed it. There are several reasons as to why I recommend it but not the least among them is aaaaah widdle wolf kiddies so cute! Okay, seriously, the story is heartwarming and the animation, for the most part, is gorgeous. I'll see if I have time for a proper review.