Summer Anime 2009 List

I’m a bit late in posting about anime series to be shown this summer 2009 basically because I’ve been too busy tending to my seiyuu stuff and BL dramas. However, looking at the list of series to be shown, summer doesn’t seem interesting especially when compared to the last winter and spring schedules. It’s a bit sad that there was nothing much to look forward to (IMO). Anyway, for the sake of recording, here are series to be shown this summer, arranged alphabetically.

Hetalia Fandub Craze – Bringing Nations Closer One Dub At a Time

Marukaite Chikyuu - Hetalia's ending song

Everyone who is into Hetalia has probably heard of its amazingly adorable ending song, Marukaite Chikyuu sung by Italy’s seiyuu, Namikawa Daisuke. It has a catchy tune, stupid lyrics and very cute visuals. The first time I heard it, it stuck and I ended up listening to it in loop for weeks (until Romano’s character song was released~). It’s a great hit among fans and non-fans alike (I know, I managed to reel a friend into the fandom because of this song).

Suddenly, someone had a great idea (if you know this wonderful person, please tell me) to make a Marukaite Chikyuu version for his/her country. Taking a karaoke version of the song, someone rewrite the lyrics to fit the words in their language and sang it with the karaoke track. The project was made people amused and happy. Soon, everyone wanted to pitch in an sing Marukaite Chikyuu in their own language. And thus began the great craze of singing the ending song in different languages.

More than the paper craft, the doujin game, the MADs/AMVs, I love this project of singing Hetalia‘s theme in different languages. I do not know if it’s the participation of people from all over the world or the sheer creativity of some members of the fandom, but I’m really glad that this project started and is continuing even now.

While I was searching around for the various fandubs, I became curious of other countries and their languages, even those not even in Hetalia yet. I am thankful to those who wrote the lyrics and translations with their fandubs because I feel that I’ve learned something, even if it’s just lyrics to a simple song. It’s also amusing that some contributors even changed the lyrics to fit their countries’ cultures (like changing the food or personality of the song). All in all, this project is amazing and I hope that there will be more contributions. It’s not only making Hetalia more accepted in communities — it’s also bringing people together. I cannot particularly say how, but seeing the comments in each fandub and sharing in the excitement whenever a new fandub is up makes me think that way :).

In Youtube, there is already a playlist organized to collect all the fandubs in one place. However, there are new ones as well as some which are missed. Here’s a list of the fandubs I collected some time ago, arranged alphabetically by language.

I’m still including names of countries in parentheses even though it’s mostly obvious where some languages come from because some of the fandubs are pretty specific with the country they want to represent (like French for Canada). Each link leads to their corresponding YT video.

• Hetalia original version (Japan)
• Cantonese (China)
• English (Canada)
• English (UK and US)
• Estonian (Estonia)
• Finnish (Finland)
• French (generally Canada and France)
• French (Canada)
• French version 1; version 2; version 3 (France)
• German (Germany — and probably Prussia?)
• German (Austria)
• Hebrew (Israel)
• Hungarian (Hungary)
• Indonesian (Indonesia)
• Italian (Italy)
• Korean (Korea)
• Latin-Spanish (…?)
• Latvian (Latvia)
• Malay (Malaysia)
• Mandarin (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan)
• Mandarin (Taiwan)
• Polish version 1; version 2 (Poland)
• Romanian (Romania)
• Russian version 1; version 2 (Russia)
• Swedish (Sweden)
• Spanish version 1; version 2 (Spain)
• Thai version 1; version 2 (Thailand)
• Vietnamese (Vietnam)
• Visayan (Philippines)

Sadly, the Filipino-Tagalog one seems deleted and I don’t know where I can find it again :(. Anyway, if there are more fandubs in YT, please tell me. Other than that, enjoy how a little silly song has become an international sensation :D.

To everyone who contributed to the project directly or indirectly, you are awesome >v<bbbb

Going for Gashapon

gashapon line in robinson's place ermita

Japanese merchandise (real ones, not those ones you buy in 168/Divisoria and then sell for twice the price at some mall) are hard to find in the Philippines, if you do not know where to look. It’s quite a hassle for my sister and I to order stuff from online, too, since the post office in our place is probably the most unreliable post office in the world. Most of the time, anime fans can buy anime merchandise at Greenhills (Wasabi Toys, Great Toys) or some odd anime shop in malls. The appearance of gashapon machines (capsule machines) made everything happy and gay, though. It’s both an oasis and a quicksand, those machines. They can either make you so happy you want to bust the gashapon machine … or too frustrated you want to kill the employee watching over the machine because you can’t get what you want.

Aside from gunpla and figure/candy toy collection, we’ve been into gashapon collection for quite some time rather than going to Comic Alley like everyone else and their mothers. My sister and I have made raiding gashapon stops in toy stores a hobby. We invest on our “raids” a lot. Fortunately, we often get what we want (after a number of tries? XD). We didn’t realize how big our gashapon collection was until we decided to open the capsules and arrange them on figure cases.

Spring Anime 2009: Do you have enough time for watching?

Spring is promising a wonderful and long list  of anime to watch, which is a bit bad for my viewing habit, my sleep schedule and for my work. Here are, as usual, the list of anime to start this March-April-May
, their previews (if any), short info and my decision if  I should watch them or not. Sadly, I seem to like almost everything and only left out a few compared to the previous seasons ^^;.

Again, no pictures because I am super lazy. My verdicts will be YES, NO and MAYBE.