By popular (ok, so one guy said it’d be a good idea, guess that qualifies it as ‘popular’) demand, I present you all with the FIRST ANNUAL I’VE SOUND BLOG KARAOKE COMPETITION, an event so important I can’t keep the word order straight out of sheer excitement. An event where the two or three I’ve Sound Blog readers brave enough to submit karaoke recordings to be judged by the populace do just that, and we the readers and writers of the blog get to vote on which of the submissions sucked the least did the best. And, if all goes well, we’ll do the same thing next year as well so the ‘annual’ in the title can become that much less of a hilarious misnomer. Or so we can only hope.

Anyhow, the rules and regulations of the contest thingamajig:

-All recordings must be submitted via e-mail to aibumeanscaress[at]gmail.com, posting them in the comments section before the date where the songs are to be posted for judging might lead to unfair bias and also cut down on the hilarity when we realize that everyone chose to do Red fraction. For streaming and standardization purposes, mp3 format only, preferably under 320 kbps. We don’t need ridiculously high bitrates for a karaoke contest.

-Deadline for submissions is July 18th, 2009, 2 weeks after the contest officially begins. On that date, all appropriate submissions will be posted in a blog post and the sidebar poll will decide who did best in their karaoke effort.

-If you can’t find a karaoke or instrumental version of the song you want to do, don’t sing over the vocal version, just pick a different song. Just because you want to show the world your vocal power as you belt out Permit doesn’t mean that you’re allowed to do that. Unless you know something I don’t and there’s actually an instrumental version of Permit out there somewhere.

-Every song must be I’ve. The kotoko single is out, as are any songs where neither composer nor arranger come from the I’ve camp. However, through sheer force of non-logic, Eiko Shimamiya’s “FLOW” would still be available if anyone wouldn’t mind bias against song choice probably preventing anyone from voting for you.

-Keep editing to a minimal. I’m not by any means suggesting you don’t try to clean up your recording at least a bit, but let’s try not to have anyone using Autotune here. Vocoder effects aren’t banned, per se, but it’s questionable why one would want to use them since I’ve vocals have traditionally been fairly naturalistic anyhow.

-Multiple submissions are accepted, but only one song per applicant will be posted for the contest. One per person means that nobody can try and increase their chances at winning by giving themselves mutliple chances. Oh, and I’ll be the one picking which one is the one to be posted.

And, have fun with it! Submissions can be sent in immediately, and from now until July 18th I’ll be taking songs from anyone who wants to send them in.

Edit – Oh, and when voting is over (the end of this month), the contributor with the most votes gets a prize of some sort. So there’s some reason to do this other than just the joy of embarrassing yourself in public.

Well, whoever guessed that the title track from SPYGLASS would be the included video on the album’s DVD, pat yourselves on the back because you were right. Uploaded for posterity (albeit in an abbreviated form and with a video screen roughly the size of a postage stamp) on Utatsuki’s official website, the R&B-tinged song’s inexplicably retro-leaning video is sure to confuse the hell out of anyone who thought they might have figured out what exactly it is Geneon is trying to do with Kaori. Folksy, down-to-earth electronica/R&B crossover artist? Single-member distillation of The Pussycat Dolls sans sex appeal and massive marketability? KOTOKO if she never stopped making Garasu no Kaze? It boggles the mind.

Alright, continuing the new trend of posts not directly related to I’ve (please let this end soon), I’m going to be honouring a user request I said I’d honour a few weeks ago and totally forgot about!

Regular reader Fred Itachi, when I asked for suggestions about new blog content, was the first to come up with this and I think it’s a fine idea: that readers of this blog are, from now on, encouraged to create shit and send it into the blog to be posted in a fan-creation spotlight I’ll get around to creating once I have anything to put in it. Now, that description probably sounds horribly vague and maybe a touch half-assed, possibly because it is. But! (I like big buts and I cannot lie), however, there is a positive aspect to this looseness.

Basically, the idea is that you guys can submit anything you damn well please. Fanart? Welcomed with open arms! Fanfiction? OK, that’s kind of weird, but cool! Fan remixes? I’ll totally ignore the fuck out of copyright law to post these if anyone makes any! A new banner for the blog (736 x 229 pixels please)? Marry me~! Original songs inspired by I’ve in some vague way, shape or form? Probably nobody will ever submit anything of this kind! Cover song recordings? Just as long as they aren’t just you singing karaoke! Question? Overenthusiastic answer!

Now that the open call has been sounded, uhhh… Yeah, if you’ve got anything you want me to put up, send it to me at aibumeanscaress[at]gmail.com and I’ll put it up in due time. Whenever I may feel like ‘due time’ is. Have fun!

Well, it was only a matter of time: in the hullaballoo surrounding infamous eroge RapeLay and the subsequent (admittedly well-justified) feminist complaints against the eroge industry in general, a number of strict restrictions (link NWS) on the content of eroge have been imposed and, Japanese otaku and eroge manufacturers being calm and reasonable like they always are, have one by one proceeded to ban all foreign IPs from accessing their websites because it was the dirty gaijin who did this to them.

Japan, it should be noted, has a long history of throwing babies out with the bathwater. It’s kind of a national hobby over there.

Now, you definitely aren’t asking, why does this affect I’ve Sound Blog enough to warrant an op/ed piece on a blog previously devoid of such things? The answer, of course, is firstly because the lack of justice implied with the reactionary isolationism is unfair to those of us who play end enjoy eroge outside of Japan, myself and anyone else who’s ever supported the good work of companies like JAST USA included, that blocking foreign IPs will do nothing to get the draconian censorship laws they’re fighting (or at least they should be fighting, I’ve found no examples of any legitimate protesting going on) overturned and that it really just makes the eroge community of Japan seem like a bunch of whiny, butthurt, overgrown babies. Of course, that’s only the half of its relevance - the other half is that the hypocrisy of the whole thing has been made hilariously visible recently with regards to a Japanese blog aggregator.

Erogmap, a website that collects eroge news and sorts by the game they’re relevant to, interestingly enough would feature I’ve Sound Blog posts amongst its links to coverage of these games: it’s a useful site for sure (I’d used it to see what other blogs were saying about the eroge I’ve was doing themes for, made only somewhat difficult by the fact that mine was the only English blog in their selection far as I could see), and I had just gotten a fresh batch of hits from their site when I went over there, only to find the following message awaiting me:

“This website is able to be browsed by Japanese or people who lives in Japan.

Some foreigners seem to be having an antipathy against EROGE. Therefore, We prohibited the access from foreign countries, to defend our culture.”

It almost seemed apologetic. Not apologetic enough to, y’know, unblock all non-Japanese IPs and stop being such massive dicks about the whole deal, but reading their use of the term ’some’ in there one gets the feeling even NOG, the director of Erogmap, gets that the whole thing is really stupid and petty. And what else could define this pettiness better than the fact that the writer of I’ve Sound Blog, which they’ve linked many a time over these last few years, can’t as much as go back to their website in return?

Basically, my cry into the screaming void of isolationist paranoia that otaku culture in Japan has become right now is thus: we love you guys. We don’t think the censorship is fair either (especially the really stupid parts like pregnancy being disallowed), and we of the international brotherhood of otaku only wish you wouldn’t shut us out like this.

Now, I’m not going to limit comment-thread discussion, because this is an important matter and all aspects should be open for discussion, but what I would like to request is that anyone reading this who has had good memories associated with eroge share their stories; they don’t have to be long or even more complicated than ‘I really liked this game’, the important part is just getting it out there.

June 24, 2009 may just go down as being the worst day for single releases in I’ve history – three maxi-singles dropping on the same day (albeit two of them reissues from the frankly disastrous “Departed to the Future” box set) is something of an event in itself, but the fact that not a single one of them is really worth buying negates any ‘cool’ factor such an occurence may have had on its own.

Of course, since its sister releases snIpe and L’Oiseau bleu already received their due in an earlier review, I ask only that you draw your attention to the new Eiko Shimamiya release Super scription of data: that, and that you refrain from mentioning in the comments section that snIpe wasn’t actually bad at all, because clearly the presence of the Budokan ‘09 version of Close to me… on the B-side is enough to make that one a must-miss. Now on to the review.