Movie Rant: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Yo, minna!

It's been a while, gomen! It's raining a lot here. Don't get me wrong, I like the rain, with the chilly air and shady atmosphere... And what goes well with the gloomy weather? A Tim Burton movie!!

 So Sweeney Todd just aired at home and I took the time to watch it. And I absolutely love it! A friend of mine recommended it to me and both of us like the macabre and Tim Burton, so why not? Simple synopsis of this movie is that Benjamin Barker, a renowned barber returns to London from 15 years of imprisonment on false charges and wants to take revenge on his family and becomes a demon barber... Tadaa! Simple, isn't it? I wanna talk more about the story but you guys might not wanna hear it. You should go check it out someday!

 I'm a huge fan of Tim Burton, so I expected a lot from this movie and of course, it didn't disappoint. I didn't think I was going to watch a musical though ¯\_〳 •̀ o •́ 〵_/¯. But I love musicals, win-win, hehe. The thing I love about Tim Burton is the whole style and atmosphere of it all... I mean, look at The Corpse Bride! It's all so gloomy and monochromatic colour palette, what every movie set in the 1800s should look, with the smog and all that. I've always had a thing for the dark and macabre, so it suits me very well if I do say so myself ₍₍ (ง ˙ω˙)ว ⁾⁾.

 And what's an awesome movie without an awesome cast? There's Johnny Depp who plays Benjamin Barker/Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber himself; there's Helena Bonham Carter portraying Mrs Lovett; Judge Turpin played by the awesome Alan Rickman, and there's Timothy Spall who plays Beadle Bamford. I squealed at the ensemble since there are so many familiar names, from of course, the Harry Potter saga!!! It's great to see Bellatrix Lestrange (Bonham Carter), Snape (Rickman) and Peter Pettigrew (Spall) all in the same movie outside of the Potterverse.

 A movie of eccentricity should have the King and Queen of Disguise in it, eh eh? Well, either one should do the trick, as what Depp did with Edward Scissorhands, Alice in Wonderland, The Corpse Bride... If you don't notice him anywhere in either of those movies, that means he's doing a jolly good job of acting hehe. So anyway, Depp portrays the main role of Benjamin Barker/Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber himself. Can he sing? Of course he can! And he does it well too! I'm no movie critic but whenever I hear him sing, there's a hint of sadness to it even though he's well lost his marbles. Why wouldn't it be sad? He's thrown into jail for years and comes back only to find out his wife 'dead' and daughter becoming the ward of the one who stole Lucy (his wife), Judge Turpin.

 Oh, oh! There's Jamie Campbell Bower too, playing the sailor that helped Todd, Anthony Hope! If you don't know him there, then you might recognise him as Jace Wayland from the movie The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. And he could sing very well too (Johanna)!

 The soundtracks? I particularly took fondness in those sung by Johnny Depp, like My Friends, Epiphany, Johanna (reprise).... Helena Bonham Carter also has a good singing voice too, with The Worst Pies in London, haha... Of course there's going to be gore and horror here and there, but oh come on... It's a nice musical! You should go watch it!

.:MIMI TACHIKAWA:.

WSC Update: Day 2

Konbanwa, minna!

Despite it's been a while, I'd like to continue my post of my WSC...

So anyway, back to June 7th 2015. The second day of WSC. There's the Bowl. A time where teams work together to achieve major points, and where my team, as usual, falls apart every time.

Since my team is made up from the school's disbanded underground drama club, we turned up with our PAC shirts. It's been a while since I've seen us in the same red blacks, so it was sentiment. 

Team PAC 529

It also stands for 'People Are Crazy'

 We agreed with one another that if the question was based on that person's topic, they'd use the clicker to answer. We split the 6 subjects amongst ourselves, so each of us got 2 topics; I, as usual, took Arts & Music and Literature. We did that to avoid as many mistakes as possible, because only the person in charge of that particular topic would know the right answer.

Our clicker selfie!

 We fought. A LOT. I think it's natural for teams to fight during the Bowl. The teams I'm on, at least. Because we fight over the clicker, and we contradict whether the answer we chose was right or not. There's always a storm in the Bowl. But I guess the tensions were higher this year, because I was the only girl on the team, and I'm usually a hot-head- being with naturally short-tempered boys made the team explosive. Literally. But we managed to cool down during half-time, because that was the moment when we took our alpaca adoption oath!

Us with our brand new alpacas!

So begins the second half. More fights, more brawls. I noticed this year they have the Lightning Round, where you match a design of a shirt with the particular options given. We got all 12 Lightning Rounds, alongside Mystery Rounds, in the bag! If only I could say the same with the Bonus Rounds, which of course, cost us more than 2500 points =-=. We bagged the last round, me and Rafiq jumped out of our seats screaming! But I wish SyD could've given more emotion. I mean, we bagged the last round, didn't we? We didn't during our first WSC together, I guess it was more of a redemption for me. We fought again, and I was more mad with SyD, because he made it look like Rafiq contributed to our many loss of points. Rafiq played the peacemaker between us but we lost our heads. He left, but SyD didn't do anything to stop him. I was pretty cross, so neither did I.

We went down to the canteen for lunch. When we queued up, I noticed Rafiq didn't join us so I got worried. I mean, we were very mad at him before, even though he was trying to calm the both of us down. So I called him, who turned out to have left for the toilet. Heh ^^;

We managed to get a shot of the medals before they gave them away during the ceremony

Long story short, we came back from lunch and had the awards giving ceremony. Okay, EVERYONE was down in the dumps, because none of us were convinced we could win anything. For some reason, I had my hopes for something in debate, maybe an honourable mention at least; I got an honourable mention during my first WSC, and I was in the showcase too, so I thought there was nothing wrong in hoping. But of course... I didn't get anything for Debate. So we practically surfed through the awards ceremony, hearing the crowds scream when their names were announced or displayed on the honour roll. Really, that was absolutely depressing. That is, until they announced the awards for the overall Challenge.

For the Challenge, they give out medals for best students in each subject, but then there's the overall award. I'd been watching the names scroll over the screen, wishing our names would be somewhere there. And guess what? I SAW MINE. They were going through the list of silver medalists for the overall Challenge. AND MY NAME WAS THERE. I WAS A SILVER MEDALIST!

I was absolutely shocked. I gawked the whole time. Rafiq was ecstatic. He was grinning and clapping, cheering me to go get my medal. I smiled back at him and quickened my pace. It was the school director who put the medal around my neck. He was about to shake my hand; recalling what happened with Ian Leng, I bowed and said, "Sorry." He was all, "Nah, don't worry about it!" I came by to my seat all happy. I flipped the silver medal in my hand. I felt jumpy, coz this is my first WSC medal. SyD wasn't all that happy for me though. He kept using his sarcastic ways to go at me (sarcasm hurts when you use it at the wrong time).

Then they have this award where they give a medal to the top scorer from each school. Atiqah won the junior division medal, while I got the one for senior. That makes it two for me. SyD insisted on wearing one of my medals. I didn't argue because we fought too much already. They have this new category: Champion Scholars. My name was on the honour roll, so all these awards felt like total redemption for what happened in Singapore last year. SyD wasn't happy as much. I was a bit offended. Rafiq kept pushing him and said, "Can't you be happy for her?" I guess he would be happy when we'd go for the Globals. We waited for our team number to crop up but when it took too long, I started to lose hope. But there it was, Team 529. I screamed and cried, hugging my knees. SyD had no expression at all. We couldn't do anything anymore. Before we left for home (me, my uncle's apartment), we took pictures together.

Team  KOPU

A selfie with the team

 .:MIMI TACHIKAWA:.

WSC Update: Day 1

Ohayo, minna.... 😌😪

It's 1 in the morning, due to me waiting for my turn to charge my phone 😫. I'll try to update real quick so I can get some sleep. There's still the Bowl after all....

So June 6th marked the beginning of our wars in WSC. Being the senior, we had collab writing, the Scholar's Challenge and of course... Debate. And me, being with a new team is gonna be a new experience for me. (EXPLANATION: These past years, I've been through countless debates. So I've many teams before. But the only thing unchanged is that SyD has always been my teammate. We've been on the same team ever since we started joining debate competitions. So we know how we both debate, and the only thing is the 2nd speaker of our team [he's usually the 1st, I'm the whip].)

I woke up to Eir Aoi singing Ignite (my 6 am alarm 😓) and put on my tux. It was hard to dress up and fix my tie and everything with that sliver of glass in my room 😫. But we got ready and eventually met the others for breakfast. We went to eat at the mamak's, Barakath Noor, which was a few blocks away from where we stayed.

On the way to breakfast

This is completely candid, believe me

We left for Fairview International and when we settled, we took more pictures!

Team 529 (from left): SyD, Rafiq Shahmie (our new teammate), me
[not taken at Fairview :P]

Team Kopu ready to roll

The place is beautiful. Since it's an IB (International Baccalaureate) school, the layout of the school is similar to AISM, the venue for WSC back when I first participated. Quite a deja vu for me. The place had lifts, a view of the Wangsa Maju, and cool other stuff like arts by their students on display and swimming pools!

The school canteen

The school building from the 4th floor

The swimming pool + the aerial view

The whole KoPu team!

The hall was on the 4th floor and when we entered, it was quite unnerving coz some were looking. Maybe it was coz we had these black suits on and we walked in a massive black suited crowd, XD. We got ourselves seated, got the Net ready, took out our modules and took selfies... a lot of selfies.

Our team numbers (in orders A, B, C):

TEAM 529: SyD, Me, Rafiq

TEAM 125: Atiqah, Syu, Ika

The opening ceremony was cool, like usual. But Daniel Berdichevsky, the Alpaca in Chief wasn't there. I found out from the FB page that he was away to host the Perth round in Australia. So Burch Wang, the Head of Social Stuffs and Jeremy Chumley were the only ones there to host the opening ceremony. I didn't see Zac Ellington either :(. He hosted my first WSC back in AISM, so I was really looking forward to seeing him.

The third years of the team

There was a slight schedule confusion at the beginning of the events between the printed schedule and the PDF given in the email. The management went with the PDF, which means the juniors would debate first and the seniors would have to do collaborative writing first, much to Atiqah's dismay (as ones with experience in WSC, SyD and I were in charge of training Rafiq and the junior team how to debate. But we didn't have time to since we had an exam prior to the term hols).                                                                    

First off: collab writing. I took the topic 'the art of losing is hard to master'. I guess I got too passionate about the thing coz I found myself drilling into the essay... Hehe... My hand hurt, coz I was writing with a pencil. I got so stressed out, but when I turned to the side, I saw SyD banging his head on the table and Rafiq sleeping. So this is what it's like being in a team with boys... ಠ_ಠ Mind you, I haven't been on a team with boys since the disbandment of my DigiClub, so yeah. Back to the point.

After the writing thing was done, my team had to split to get ready for the Challenge. I went for the Arts and Literature first, and believe me, the questions were much harder and more intricate than the junior's Challenge. The questions were sort of like 'these questions are gonna prove whether you studied or not MWAHAHAHA' kind of questions. I almost gave up, but I forced myself to keep going. There's only 1 hour to answer 100+ questions after all. After the Challenge ended, I gathered up with Rafiq and SyD, talked about how we did in the Challenge and got ready for the worst.... DEBATE.

 Our first round was against MRSM Gemencheh.

Team MRSM Gemencheh (AFFIRMATIVE)

The motion was 'THBT superheroes should be allowed to break the law'. And we had this mega brawl about Batman, coz he's the only hero we know to drive a car to get anywhere, and we only had examples for heroes getting stuck in traffic. So yeah. At least it worked. I got intimidated by the first speaker because she talked so quickly I didn't have time to jot down ANYTHING. SyD was shaken too, coz when it was his turn to speak, he didn't sound as convincing. In the end, the debate was accepted, making it our first loss in the three rounds.

I was quite sad, but Rafiq pointed out that I was more shaken than sad, coz my hand shook violently even he got scared. Sorry, bro ^^;. So we went to our 2nd round, where we went up against students from Wesley Methodist School.

Team Wesley Methodist School KL (AFFIRMATIVE)
From left: Yan Sheng, Ian, Nigel 

The motion was 'THBT democracy acquires anarchy'. 0.o Exactly. NONE of us understood what the motion meant. We spent most of the prep time searching up the meaning of the motion, and only looked for our points at the last 6 minutes. I was the whip- my job was to listen to everybody's arguments and whip- so I was covered. Those two were in a bit of trouble. Being the negative, we were hoping that the PM would shed some light on this thing. So the 1st speaker, Yan Sheng (who looks a lot like my senpai btw XD), goes up and turns out they had nothing. Great. We're on the same boat =-=. I thought SyD's gonna save the case like he always does, but he goes and presents our case saying that the motion made no sense. Good job, SyD. At least the motion was rejected in the end. You see, when we crossed the bench to congratulate each other, I finally noticed the hardships of being the only girl on the team. Ian Leng came to shake my hand, and I hesitated. I shivered, coz I was scared he was just gonna grab my hand and shake it, like Asees did back in my first WSC. Then he said, "No?" I smiled nervously and shook my head. I told him a shaky "Sorry!" before I scuttled out the room, completely embarrassed.

I was completely glad that we were against an all girls team from MRSM Besut in the last round. But prior to that, they had a room confusion with SMK Dato' Haji Abbas.

Team MRSM Besut (NEGATIVE)

The motion was 'THBT it's ok for men and women to have different rights'. Funny, when the adjudicator asked for our team number, Rafiq and I chimed, "529". The adjudicator smiled and muttered, "Synchronised!" Okay, I totally went overboard during my speech in this round. If I wasn't angry in the previous rounds, I was mad at this round. Coz I was mentally exhausted from the democracy thing in the 2nd round and I was hoping for a good argument to get rebuttals from- since this motion was WAY easier than the 2nd- but that team had such few things to say, despite those guys having so much points to take... I lost my head.

DISCLAIMER: I'm gonna explain my team's debate styles to further enlighten this round. But if you're not interested, you can just skip. I don't mind. So anyway, my team usually has our case slowly increase with aggression as we go from one speaker to the other. But this year, it's kinda mixed. So we have our 1st speaker, SyD, who has that loud tone when he speaks, but he doesn't speak with anger. He speaks clearly, as if explaining the case to a child, as if mocking the other team. Nice. Then we have Rafiq, the 2nd speaker. The way he presents his arguments are very.... gentle, fatherly. He talks like a political figure! That's good, but sometimes SyD tells him to get mad to make his points matter. And me, well... everyone knows me with a short temper, as a ticking time bomb. I use my flaw as an advantage in my debates, because when I'm mad, I'm good at making a point. And hey, it works! Sometimes ^^;.

 I was really letting out steam there, even though I missed a point or two. You know I was mad when my voice gets squeaky. People who know me personally would know ^^;. When I closed the case, the adjudicators jotted down some notes and said 'Wow'. I don't know what that means, but... whatever. The motion was accepted, so that makes us have 2 wins out of 3 debates. My team gathered up and were all 'YAAAY'....

A selfie before we left for Wangsa Walk

We gathered downstairs with our teachers (MRSM Besut and Kota Putra went together coz our teachers are married to each other) and Teacher Salwa asked my team about how her students did when we went against them during the last round. On the way back to the hotel, we made a detour at Wangsa Walk! YAAAAY!!!! But the downside was we went there with SUITS on, so yeah. We had staring eyes. We were like an entourage or something, haha.

My dinner, hoho

 After many brawls, laughs and wandering around, we settled in for Texas Chicken. We had even more laughs when we told each other our experiences during our debates, so it was really stress-relieving. 

 And to think if that wasn't enough, we had more fun while waiting for the van to arrive. Team 529 are complete wackos, so we treated ourselves to a bit of a nostalgic childhood game, Pepsi Cola, where we have to jump onto each other's feet to win. Weird, right? It's less weird if you've seen someone play it. SyD suggested it, I was all in. We had fun, and I had smiles on till I went to sleep, worrying about the Bowl the next day.

More updates!

.:MIMI TACHIKAWA:.

WSC Update: Day 0

Konbanwa, minna 🙌!

Nao here! I was about to write another entry, but I lost the Internet connection, so I'm making it up tonight. And huhu, this is the first time I'm updating this blog on a phone... 🙏

So anyway, why Day 0? Coz today I only had the trip to reach to KL from my school. I slept halfway, duh. Typical me 😋. Unlike last year, I don't have the camera with me (I completely jammed the thing after last year's Globals, my bad ^^;). That is the reason why I have this phone with me. Hehe.

I'll enclose sone pictures later. I just got back from having dinner with the teachers and this kouhai who came along on the van (we were the only students who went to KL by van 😓). The rest? Partying at Sunway Pyramid since 8 in the morning =-=. When I called SyD up before we parked in front of the hotel, apparently I interruped him at the movies. Sorry 😑.

The school sent two teams for the Scholar's Cup, one team in the junior division and one for the senior. Since I recently had my birthday in June, I qualify for the senior division so this is gonna be the first time competing as a senior. The junior team is Atiqah Sani (my batch mate), NurSyuhada and Nik Zulaikha (2nd years).

I've gotta go study up for WSC now. More updates to come, Nao out! Mata ashita ne!

It looks pretty, but believe me: it's smaller than you think

The little troublemaker tags along

The view as approached KL...

.:MIMI TACHIKAWA:.

Self Expression Much? LOL

Ohayo, minna...

So I'm going on hiatus again (SCHOOL ;A;). Before that, I'll do a quick update. Those who know me personally will know that I am extreme introvert. I mean... I do go out a lot, but I don't talk to people. I don't socialize. I just... go out.

Most of the time... I don't even go out. Just coz.

 When people tell me to express myself, it's through art. Drawing. Writing. Whatever. But with Girls' Night coming up, I'm taking it to the next level. So this year's theme is Magic. The first thing that comes to my mind? FAIRY TAIL.

The number one guild in Era, Fairy Tail. The manga was written and illustrated by Hiro Mashima, and is currently airing its 2nd season.

Yup, I'm gonna cosplay. But not all the way, tho. It's more of a DIY. Coz, you know... I'm a girl, and save the indecency of running topless everywhere. Since I have this dark blue shawl, I am absolutely torn between having to cosplay as Gray Fullbuster or Jellal Fernandes. I actually wanted to go for Natsu too (GAAAH!) but my pink shawl has these blue polka dots on them... and Natsu's hair is not full of polka dots... Pass.

The Ice Mage every fangirl drools over... Gray Fullbuster

Jellal Fernandes

 I don't go full throttle with the clothes... I'll use whatever I have that matches their colour schemes. Jellal's eye mark (there-->) is so cool! But I don't have a lip pencil to draw it on with... Marker? Let's hope it doesn't stain.

Hey, Fairy Tail's core is magic, so if you think that it doesn't fit the theme of my Girls' Night... haha, joke's on you. I know, I know... 'Why aren't you cosplaying as the girls?' Erza, Lucy, Juvia, Levy, Evergreen, Mirajane, Lisanna...

They're all pretty, I admit... But their clothes are highly inappropriate for a middle schooler. But what about Gray? He strips all the time! But he still has decent clothes. Erza and Lucy have these completely revealing outfits that make parents doubt that they should let their children watch Fairy Tail.




.:MIMI TACHIKAWA:.

Anime Rants: Kiseijuu: Sei no Kakuritsu

Konbanwa, minna!

Guess what? Guess what?

The promotional poster for Kiseijuu

I'm so hyped up right now, so expect a lot of updates from me :D. Earlier this year, I saw an advert on Animax about Parasyte: The Maxim (Kiseijuu: Sei no Kakuritsu) where alien brain-eaters spread their spores on Earth. It looked cool because the eerie setting made Animax look absolutely hardcore (you'd agree with me- coz all it airs is stuff like Assassination Baby and Lucky Star). I didn't start with the anime right away, though. I did a little searching about Kiseijuu, and it turns out it has a manga made prior to the anime. And to be honest, Kiseijuu is a huge achievement for me, because it's the first online manga I've finished ever. Not after having severe migraines, of course (flashing black and whites of the page-scrolling =-=).

So, quick intro about Kiseijuu! Kiseijuu, or Parasyte is a manga series written and illustrated by Hitoshi Iwaaki. It's an old series too, having to be published from 1988 to 1995. Seeing only the covers remind me of a lot of oldies like City Hunter or Cowboy Bepop. It has 10 volumes, and it's of the horror and sci-fi genres. The anime adaptation, Kiseijuu: Sei no Kakuritsu (Parasyte: The Maxim) aired in 2014 and ended in spring 2015, ranging around 24 episodes. Recently, it's been adapted into 2 part live action films in Japan: Kiseijuu: Sei no Kakuritsu (Parasyte: The Last Maxim) and Kiseijuu: Kanketsu-hen (Parasyte: The Final Act). 

The cover of Parasyte's first volume

The promotional poster for the first Parasyte live action film

The manga didn't have much of an emotional effect on me... because I don't get in the hype while reading manga as I do with anime. Well, except for that one chapter in Chocolat no Mahou, but.... Nevermind that. But then again... I did get a little teary while reading Kiseijuu. Okay, a LOT teary. SPOILER ALERT: the part where Migi got severed from Shinichi's arm and Shinichi was barely surviving... WHY?!?!? I've only gone halfway through the anime (episode 6, it hurts my little kokoro T^T), but since I already know what's gonna happen next... I don't mind having a little watching hiatus.

So what do I think of both the manga and anime? Well... The first thing that caught my eye was the art styles.

A screenshot from the anime's opening; only drawn in the manga's art style

The original screenshot from the opening, with the anime's art style

 Well... The anime's art style sure made Shinichi stronger (and hotter) than he originally is, that's for sure... even with his nerd glasses on. Fair warning: the manga is EXTREMELY graphic. You've been warned. Not like the anime's any lighter on the gore... but the manga doesn't move, so some of you might tend to stare at the bloody masses. Just don't.

Sure, it has the violence... But it doesn't lack of human emotion: the grief, some light jokes here and there.... It doesn't cease to please. And if you're like me who are those people who watch violent anime whenever you're mad... Go ahead.

BONUS: Check out these cool Kiseijuu tracks by Amanda Lee and NateWantsToBattle!

I'll have more rants, so till then... Nao out.

.:MIMI TACHIKAWA:.
~Ajisai HaNa~

Movie Rants: Spider Man 2

My number one favourite Marvel hero! :D

Konbanwa, minna!

Recently, I went out for dinner with my family and at that particular restaurant, Spider Man 2 was on. It was reminiscent to be able to watch my number 1 favourite Marvel hero... but when you get older, you finally see things. Like, really see things.

Compared to the 2012 and 2014 remakes, I prefer the old Spider Man trilogy, the ones with Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and James Franco :). And I absolutely adore the bromance Harry and Peter have together! Ok, sure, many will say Andrew Garfield is hotter (actually I prefer Dane DeHaan over him :/) but the teen angst, the complete nerdiness.... Tobey wins!

Sorry Andrew. Tobey Maguire will always be my Spider Man!

If you ask me who's the better Spidey's girl, Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) or Mary-Jane Watson (Dunst); I would definitely go for MJ. But then again... both girls annoy me. How do they annoy me? They're going with that on-again-off-again thing with both Peters (Dunst x Maguire; Stone x Garfield).

I don't get girls like that.

Girls who flip at their guys without waiting for an explanation. Don't believe me? In Spider Man 2, MJ gets so mad with Peter for him not being able to show up for her play. Then she goes for the 'everybody's seen it then why can't you show up' thing. Sure, whatever. But why wouldn't she listen to Pete's explanation first? I mean, that guy was held back by that git of a hopper!

The only thing that bothers me whenever I rewatch the Spider Man trilogy is MJ's attitude towards Peter. But nonetheless, the inner kid in me squeals whenever I see your friendly neighbourhood Spider Man swing through the streets. Don't get me wrong, I love other Marvel heroes, like Iron Man, Hawk Eye, Deadpool (he's not technically a hero, but... come on- who doesn't like Deadpool?)... But Spider Man appeals to me the most, with his sarcasm and complete nerdiness!

Hehe, just to rant. Expect more from me soon! Nao out!

.:MIMI TACHIKAWA:.