Laughing Man's blog on imeem

"Just like in Old Country!"... or not.

Laughing Man — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:24:28 -0000

No I'm not from Eastern Europe, but after playing GTA IV my love for modern Russian/Slavic music was reawakened, and Ruslana's radio antics still amuse me (hence the post title). Thus I've dug around the site looking for the Vladivostok FM music, and been very happy with what I have found. So I've put together a playlist with all 13 songs from the station, plus a number of other tracks from the same artists. Have a listen and let me know what you think.

Thank you R* for bringing this music to US attention.

Jillian Goldin and Zircon

Laughing Man — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:02:35 -0000

I have been a fan of Jill/pixietricks ( http://www.jilliangoldin.com ) since she first released "Prayer" on OCremix.org back in 2005. With each successive piece she's done, she has only gotten better. She recently released her first solo album "Origins", and it's truly a work of art. However, I think her work becomes even better when she collaborates with other artists, in particular Zircon. When the two of them come together it is always pure awesome, in particular their work on the album Antigravity called "Breathing You In" blew me away.

Here I've uploaded a few of her tracks from Origins, her work with Zircon, and her other OCRemix submissions, so take a listen:

In addition I've also uploaded Zircon's most recent album, which is pretty good itself. All of which you can see on my profile.

More Megaten

Laughing Man — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:53:40 -0000

I have been a fan of the Shin Megami Tensei/Megami Tensei (Megaten is the standard shorthand) genre ever since the original Persona first came over to the US. Thankfully it appears as though we mono-lingual people here in the states will not be getting passed over much at all anymore (I'm still bitter about the whole Persona: Innocent Sin thing). For those of you unaware of the Megaten series/genre, it's kind of complicated. Recurring themes are cross-religious symbolism and spirits; questions about good/evil, light/dark, order/chaos (all in a fairly inclusive rather than oppositional sense, usually), and a general distrust and/or hostility towards the paternal/tyrannical god figure. A rather controversial aspect of the series that kept it out of the US for so long was the specific (less than endearing) use of those religious symbols and the questions posed around them. In fact a handful of the stories end with the defeat of God at the hands of the protagonist, sometimes for the better, sometimes not, but always for reasons that were completely justified. The art and themes in the Megaten genre tend to be pretty dark, and apocalypse-like events are more or less the standard (sometimes personal, sometimes global).

In any event, it looks like we're going to be getting Persona 4 here in the states (my guess is sometime late next year, behind the times, but with fringe stuff like this I can hardly complain). It is set for release in Japan this July, and I've nabbed the full 17 minute long trailer. I've put it up here and on the Persona 3 group (one of them anyway). The preview is entirely in Japanese, but at least that means no spoilers right? In general it looks pretty similar to Persona 3 in structure, but without the extra controversy of teenagers shooting themselves in the head to awaken their powers (which was the standard method of "casting" in Persona 3). You can also see it embedded right here:

It looks as though the art for this iteration has gotten a little more cute, though word is that they used the lighter look to soften the blow of the yet darker themes. Persona 3 got pretty bleak from time to time (though the Persona games have generally been some of the lighter works of the Megaten stuff, the Shin Megami Tensei titles proper usually being the darkest), so I'm curious to see if this theory holds true, as right now it's all still pretty much rumor.

A couple more vids

Laughing Man — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:09:44 -0000

So I've put up another AMV that I picked up a couple years ago, along with an old favorite of mine, Atom Bomb by fluke. I've always been amused by the Atom Bomb video, as they focus a great deal on a character from a game that had zero character development.

New Upload

Laughing Man — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:55:58 -0000

Just uploaded a new AMV by Koopiskeva, whom I am quickly becoming a fan of. So far everything I've seen him assemble has been beautiful, I'm going to have to dig up some more of his work.