In other news, some other Minorin fan made an unofficial ‘funsite’. WHY IS IT CALLED A “FUNSITE”?? -dirty thoughts abound-

Now I don’t need to slowly read the Japanese text one-by-one to know what Minorin is talking about. 8D -lazy-

In any case, I hope Bonkurasu will continue to be up, and the server stop eff-ing up. Gah.

- Sentinel011 is being a guard dog at some jungle near the middle of the island. (Actually, he’s just serving his ‘reservist’)

- Ume is having much fun rotting her life away after being hectic and busy and nearly snapped (wait, she already did in some sense) after doing her first semester in her FYP. 3 weeks till the next one starts.

- Iron2000 is also rotting at home, but have been doing so for the past 1-2 months since his semester holidays started.

- Shia is still studying at a local university.

- Serenity has been busy playing for some local gaming championship tourney in the aussie-land.

Hey there

I’m Serenity and I used to run my own blog with animeblogger which was fairly well known amongst the community, but i recently decided that I no longer want to do this job alone. I want to bring a large community my thoughts and views in the anime world and express myself along with friend’s and fellow writer’s so I’ve joined up with Bonkurasu.

I hope to bring this community the best possible anime coverage i can bring. and reviews and views on the anime that i watch and get deeply into.

I love anime mostly because its a story that can’t be told in real life but still holds a lot of moral and reflection to life that can teach us and help us through time’s and challenges we come across.

i will also be bringing gaming coverage of some of the biggest gaming scenes in the world, including interviews with professional gamers and updates in the gaming world and reviews.

Well that’s all for now. i will add more to my intro later ^^

And this post is to dedicate the presents I received (or on hold because the stuff ain’t here yet XD)

- Perfume’s upcoming ⊿ album from ume
- a pair of great sounding Denon AH-D1001 from Lss
- Tonight’s Transformers II movie tickets by Julius_Firefocht from NK-DS

There might be more to come, but I’m not expecting anything more, anyway. ^^;;

Also, many thanks from well-wishes by my colleagues, some SGAB peeps, NK-DS people, janice, jy,” Paner, horcruxes77, chanus_aloba, ArtemisMaster, PolynesianDancer, Keyfob “(from Perfume City Forums), Nocab (from Perfume City irc Channel), Satomi (thanks for the e-birthday card XD), etc (updated as of 5:30pm GMT+8)

And the above is Perfume’s P.T.A picture I saw while lurking the intarnetz. It’s a much smaller version of the P.T.A’s 1 year anniversary wallpaper.

Cosplaying just isn’t fun to me anymore. It felt more like a popularity contest, with major bitching added.

What about my old costumes?

Honestly, I have no clue. Probably sell it after doing some repairs on it, I suppose. But I doubt anyone has my height/size ratio, since I’m kind of skinny/underweight.

However, the friends I made during the course of time when I cosplay, they shaped a substantial part of my life.

No, no I’m not feeling melancholic, just finally decided on what to do with this hobby of mine called ‘cosplay’.

But to the rest of the cosplay scene, and those who still find it fun to cosplay, don’t let this entry get to you XD Cosplaying is all about having fun role-playing the characters you like in their respective costumes.

You might not have been able to access Bonkurasu for the past few days, and probably even up till now, as it is currently undergoing a server move, with some DNS change that is needed to propagate. It happens especially towards Singaporean readers, but it seems like the DNS addressing error is slowly rectifying itself.

Bonkurasu should be fully functional by Monday, April 27th onwards.

Everyone expects their favourite song artistes to be able to perform well during ‘live’ events. Of course, I’d expect the same for those I like, namely L`arc~en~Ciel, Perfume, Minori Chihara, May’n, etc.

From DVDs, I know Minorin could perform well ‘live’. As for May’n, the proof is there for everyone at AFA08 2nd day. She totally blew my mind away with the superb vocals that render her CD versions tasteless. L`arc~en~Ciel on the other hand, almost always sing it differently from their CD versions, but Hyde gets the feeling of the songs every single time, so that’s forgivable.

I had some people telling me on why Perfume have to lip sync, and why couldn’t they sing their songs ‘live’. Many questions come with:

“Couldn’t Nakata vocode on the spot like how Toshiko (capsule’s vocalist) does it?”

I knew there was a reason, but I couldn’t phrase it at that point of time.

Well, not anymore. I just realised on why Perfume doesn’t perform their songs with them actually singing.

For capsule fans, remember how Toshiko -always- sings with a corded microphone? It’s because the vocoder and the sound mixer can only work with a corded mike.

Notice that Perfume -always- performs with a cordless microphone? Now, even if Yasutaka Nakata was there during all of their ‘live’ events, he cannot vocode all 3 of their voices at the same time, even if the vocoder could work on cordless microphones. Hence, it doesn’t really matter if they could maintain their voice while dancing; the fact is that there’s no way the vocoder could work for them during ‘live’ performances. The best they could do is to have their pre-recorded voice broadcast, and have them sing over their pre-recorded voice. They couldn’t do instantaneous vocoding like Toshiko.

Of course, there’s another underlying reason to add as well. You’ll probably understand if you’ve done some form of dance routine in your life, or have tried to speak right after a strenuous exercise.

If not, here’s a test:
1) Do push-ups, as many as you possibly could; for the normal male, about 50-60 straight. For females, probably reduce the amount of push-ups.
2) Try to speak as you normally could while doing the push-ups.

Notice your voice would waver as you start to pant. The same goes for Perfume, if they were to belt out 10+ songs straight, like their ‘GAME LIVE TOUR’ or ‘BudoukaaaaaaN!!!’. For short performances like Kouhaku Utagassen or Music Station, they only need to perform one song, hence they have used the pre-recorded method.

So, yes, Perfume can only lip sync during most of ‘live’ performances ; because there’s no other choice. In fact, they do sing ‘live’ of certain songs that don’t really need the vocoder, like ‘Perfume’, ‘Computer Driving’, ‘Foundation’ and ‘Jenny wo Gokigen Naname’.

Some of you might have noticed that I haven’t been translating for May’n’s blog for quite some time. Or even updating much here in any case.

Besides the periodic work occupying my time, there are various activities that currently take up my time more so than updating Bonkurasu; namely:
- Playing Persona 4;
- building some of my backlog kits;
- doing other various translation projects (Harorangers);
- social life

So whatever happened to the rest of the Bonkurasu crew?

Ume’s laptop went kaput, and left it for servicing, so she ends up playing Persona 4 during weekdays too, since it’s her school holidays now at her tertiary institution.

Iron2000 is busy with school work in university, and besides, this is considered his secondary blog.

Same goes for Shia, but he’s in a bit of a rough patch now, not really good to elaborate on it.

And yellow’s supposed to be a lucky color for me this year, according to various Chinese fortune-readings based on predictions for this year’s lunar year. Looks like Persona 4 fit this theme very well.

There will still be updates here on Bonkurasu, but probably about once every 2-3 days. Minimum twice per week. Hopefully.

Our second anniversary! Its here!

And it had to fall on one of the busier days of the Lunar New Year. Meh.

We’ll be celebrating this occasion, all right, and in the form of more randomness, like how this blog usually is (Though we look like a Perfume blog now, and I don’t deny it. WE ARE A PERFUME BLOG! *bonked 8D*). Ah, and as I’ve tried to say (but failed because of my ever digressing writing), we’ll be celebrating on a later date, on a day which wont be punctuated by endless visits to relatives who try to enquire about every single nook of your lifestyle like psuedo-paparazzi.

I hate reunion dinners.

In any case, this marks TWO years since the day our conquest (Of? Of nothing at all, or probably, probably the internets! Or not…?) began, January 27th. May this day be engraved in our hearts as a solemn acknowledgement of the vile effects sugar has on our sanity, and also in celebration of bad humour, boke and tsukkomi.

Na-nandeyanen-! Hooooooo-

..Ha, this post has veered horrible off-course. Happy anniversary, you bonklers!

Tomorrow’s the start of the new year for Chinese all over the world.

Here’s Bonkurasu wishing all Chinese readers a Happy Lunar New Year!

Perfume in Cheongsum garb. Suitable for Lunar New Year’s wishes. 8D

Yes, Singapore marks the Lunar New Year as a public holiday, since 70% of the population in this country are Chinese.