i love how there's a holiday monday (where the postal system is dead) right when you're expecting to receive stuff in the mail. >:\ thank goodness today made up for it. i received my new silver soprano sax and my jubei-chan 2 dvds. :D each with its own pros and cons, however, i am still extremely happy i got them. finally. *_*
for the sax, omg, it is so tiny. when i opened it i was all giddy and excited, of course. it comes with so much stuff, too. all the accessories you'd ever need for it, really. o_o everything from a little screwdriver to tighten up screw thingies on it (which i've never done, really o_o) to a cleaning cloth. and when i saw the mouthpiece and reed i just sat there and laughed. then i was like "awww, it's so small!!!" the reed is like the size of a clarinet reed (if not smaller @_@).
as for the bad stuff, when i first tried playing it, it was much harder than i expected. in fact, about half of the notes i played sounded like i was learning the sax for the first time. little did i realize that i had to put the mouthpiece on as far as it could go. x_X see, on my tenor, to be in tune, i only put it, like, half way onto the headpiece cork. for my soprano, apparently, it needs to go all the way in. and even still it's very slightly off-tune, but not horribly. and not to mention that i couldn't even play the lower notes properly with the mouthpiece out that far. i don't know why that is, but i just couldn't play them. i felt like there was something wrong with the instrument. and for some reason it wasn't sounding in-tune at all when i played with music designed for b-flat clarinet (it sounded like an entire full-step or two off-tune), so i thought maybe this was a weird soprano (c soprano sax? *dies*). but then i got the bright idea to push down the mouthpiece and everything was fine. x_x;
still, there's a few notes that are kind of off. the easiest note, c-sharp, totally sounds weird. it sounds like an off-tune c-natural. maybe the fingering is supposed to be different (and i don't mean the low c-sharp with the pinky finger key). i don't know. you'd think that'd be a universal fingering: pressing no keys at all. also, when playing the high d (not the one with the freaky-super-high-note-buttons on the top) it seems to sound a little off, as well. i'm only hoping this sounds weird because i haven't been playing much lately. or at all. i'm sure my tone's suffered very much. but to the point where some notes sound good and others don't? O_o but it's so fun, and i'm glad i have it. *_* i must practice tons. *_* my lips hurt like i've just been in band class. *_*; ah, memories. *_*
as for jubei-chan. um, this is rather upsetting. i don't know if i mentioned on here if i ordered it or not. i saw the sequel on ebay all over the place, and i resisted for so long after the crazy ayashi no ceres experience from before. -_- the last thing i wanted was to have my second favourite anime ruined by super-crappy-non-fun-engrish subtitles. -_- so i saw it on some random anime dvd site which clearly looked like it sold bootlegs, but i've actually ordered from them before and it wasn't bad at all. the subtitling wasn't all confusing and crap. so i felt pretty safe.
well, i watched the first two episodes of jubei-chan 2 this afternoon. my worst nightmare is now a reality. i now own a crappy bootlegged copy with hard-to-understand subtitles (probably done by some chinese person who doesn't speak english). it's not as bad as ceres, however, but that's not saying much. it's still pretty bad. the worst part about the crappy subtitles is that the characters' names are really messed up. they translate either the meaning of the characters' name (the kanji) or the chinese equivalent of how you'd pronounce the japanese kanji in chinese. but in this one, for some reason, the names they are coming up with don't even sound like chinese. o_o it looks like they just randomly went "klajsdfoiaueoijcag" and said "let's make that the translation of jubei!!" -_-;;;;; it's like that for every character except jiyu. for some reason they got that name right. O_O and felicia (felisha?) is translated pretty close, i think. somethings they put "forisa" or "felisa" which is close enough, i guess. -_-;
okay, aside from that, this new series has some interesting differences. just some tiny spoilers that will make you want to buy these crappy dvds, i'm sure…
there's another lovely eyepatch. for a different person. it's a blue spade. *dies* so that means two people claiming to be yagyu jubei ii.
hajime is a punk. *dies*
the poorly-drawn characters joke is back, i think. one of the villains is always drawn like that one annoying ninja guy in the first series. x_x speaking of the animation, it looks…different. in the action scenes it's better. O_O it's not any better (dare i say it's a tad worse?) for the normal non-action scenes.
shockingly, they get lost in the infamous jungle/swamp place several times in the first episode. again.
and i knew there was going to be a new student in their class before i ordered this; the scene which i was totally expecting would happen happened. that is… maro freaking out and making the new girl a member of the new student lovelies, of course. and, omg, sachi has a totally different look. totally different hair. i barely recognized her. O_O and that reminds me of how the voices changed for some people. x_x jiyu's voice sounds different, one of bantaro's followers sounds different (the little one). yeah, i think there's others, but those are the main ones i've noticed.
let's see. there's an interesting thing going on with koinosuke. i won't spoil that though. actually, i think i spoiled it for kley already. or someone. i don't know. >:D
mikage's back. i don't know what happened to her husband. shirahatamaruotomesama isn't back, however, and neither are her followers. maybe i'm wrong, but i think they would have made an appearance by now if they were going to be in it.
and the best thing which happened so far: a kodomo no omocha reference!!! it wasn't even subtitled properly (or barely subtitled at all), but i totally got it. one of the main villains is a guy with sunglasses, and felicia tries to explain him to jiyu and she says he looks like "rei-kun" while turning into a super deformed sana-like character with the XD face. i feel so proud of myself for picking up on the reference, too, especially since it wasn't subtitled, like, at all. i think it said something like "it looked huangxu" or something equally dumb. -_-
i really want to make a layout of the new yagyu jubei ii with the spade eyepatch. *_* but good luck finding j2 pictures on the internet. one can barely find j1 pictures. -_-;;;
american idol today. yeah, whatever, i really don't care who wins. -_-; go fantasia. -_-;;; game one for the stanley cup today, too. go tampa bay. abc: anyone but calgary. -_-;;;
i have stuff to do.
