WELCOME to the personal home page/blog of Matthew La France. Please enjoy your stay.

12/20/2009

Ran across this band the other day and I've really started to get into them. They have a really 80's sounding new wave style of music but also a little dark/goth/rock too. It's a fresh fusion of sounds and styles and is fun to listen to.



I grabbed a bunch of songs from Amazon the other day. My highest recommendations are as follows: Goodnight, Falling Down, Red Stars, Looking Glass, Over, Science, Blue, Walking With Strangers.
4 comments

12/17/2009

The quality of the video is not that great but here is Kotoko singing Princess Brave! live because she is awesome.

0 comments

12/02/2009

I've been watching some of Ojamajo Doremi recently. I caught for a while when 4Kids was airing it here in the states but I recently caught a fansub of the second season. It's a magical girl show along the lines of Sailor Moon with more childlike character designs and even stronger merchandising tie-ins. Even with all of that it deals with some surprisingly complicated issues at times. For instance Doremi's mother ends up explaining how she (Doremi) helped her get through a difficult place in her life after an accident forced her to quit playing piano and openly discusses having been suicidal at the time. That's a pretty adult thing to explain to a child.



Similarly to other series like Gakuen Alice, this fairly innocent girls show can end up addressing fairly complicated emotional issues. I'm going to go ahead and say that girls tend to be more focused on identifying, expressing, and dealing with emotions in general than guys. Couple that with the emphasis placed on getting along with others in Japanese society and perhaps it's not surprising that even a kids shows focuses on how to deal with difficult emotions more than you might expect. Don't go out and watch this expecting a self-help seminar, but in comparison to Spongebob Squarepants this show is deeper than Bikini Bottom.
6 comments

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