Also, I guess you could comment on this if you have nothing better to do, because comments are nice and cool and awesome.

Now you can experience the joy of English with more characters!

Download: DDL(Singapore Server) / Mediafire / puush

The goal of the map is simple – try not to die, kill stuff on the map using characters from various anime, and try to finish everything before timers run out.

This is not a full translation.
Items, Unit names and commands have been fully translated. Abilities are partially translated (for common, recurring things), and only the following heroes have been fully translated:

• Fate Testarossa Harlown
• Aselia
• Shakugan no Shana
• Hatsune Miku
• Patchouli Knowledge

Translation errors/changes fixed in this version:

• Maul of Strength renamed to Power Hammer; an outdated translation file made it have the wrong name.
• -combination has been renamed to -c for ease of typing

Differences from the original Korean:

• Camera commands have been rewritten *FIXED*
• Quests have been added for information purposes

A hero defense map where you have to go on the offense! Is it fun and exciting? Sure it is!

Download: DDL(Singapore Server) / Mediafire / puush

The goal of the map is simple – try not to die, kill stuff on the map using characters from various anime, and try to finish everything before timers run out.

This is not a full translation.
Items, Unit names and commands have been fully translated. Abilities are partially translated (for common, recurring things), and only the following heroes have been fully translated:

• Fate Testarossa Harlown
• Aselia

That’s it, pretty much! I’m going to keep updating this translation until every hero is translated, but I haven’t started translation on any other heroes at the moment! If you want to see X hero translated first, post a comment with X’s name and I’ll work on that first.

A fairly new Vocaloid! If you haven’t heard of it yet, here’s a quick summary of what she is.

Developed by 1st Place, her character design is provided by Akasaka_aka and her voice banks are provided by the singer Lia. Her voice is suited for Dance/Rock style music, and are a little high-pitched but still quite attractive.

This is the first vocaloid released by 1st Place, and although originally released on January 13th, a newer version titled IA / 01 will be released on April 25th.

With such a cute character design, she might soon become everyone’s favourite vocaloid! Personally, her voice sounds like a cross between Hatsune Miku’s and Megurine Luka’s to me, and I like it quite a bit! What do you think?

A new version! Yay!

Download: DDL(Singapore Server) / Mediafire / puush

Patchlog, translated by Cybeast:
Hero Balance Changes

• Mokou’s Fujiyama Volcano mastery effect now reduces the time between eruptions, no change in total damage.
• Mokou’s Fujiyama Volcano no longer hits allies.
• Hieda no Akyu’s Divination of Resurrection stat increase chance has been reduced from 40/60/80%->20/30/40%
• Hieda no Akyu’s Divination of Resurrection now increases stats by 1 by default.
• Hieda no Akyu’s Tongue Sharper Than Sword now increase movespeed by 4/8/12/16/25%
• Hatate’s Double Spoiler cooldown increased by 10 seconds

Item Balance Changes

• Cursed Doll armor reduction increased from -4->-6
• Future Diary armor reduction increased from 7->10
• Kodo Geass armor reduction increased from -6->-7
• Mania of Type Moon base damage reduced from 18->12
• Mania of Type Moon armor reduction increased from 7->11
• Etsushi’s armor reduction increased from 12->17
• Etsushi’s damage reduced from 24->18
• Spear of Longinus base spell damage changed from 26->15
• Spear of Longinus spell damage no longer reduced by damage reduction.
• Consumable items no longer share cooldown.

Other changes

• Main Base tower attack now ignores damage reduction.
• Surrender time requirement reduced from 50->40 minutes

I also changed the command for “Cheat” mode to @MagicalGirl, so you can now activate that even if you don’t type Korean. I think Ran’s C skill is supposed to have the taunt effect, but was bugged and abnormally high in the previous version. It happens about twice in the duration now, instead? Much more reasonable.

As you have probably noticed, there’s a new theme for Midnight Insomnia right now!

It’s pretty!

If you have any problems with the theme, please either leave a comment below or contact me about it, and I’ll try my best to fix it!

Unless you’re using Internet Explorer 6, it should look more-or-less like below:

Featuring kanabun as the sole arranger, this album features a wonderful quartet of Electronica tracks with a very relaxed overall feel. It’s quite similar to Loop of Summer, and it’s definitely worth listening to if you’re a fan of electronic music.

This album is actually free to download like all BunKai-Kei records releases. BK-K Records’ releases are all free and can be downloaded from their website, which is pretty cool. Free music! Who would have thought of that, huh!

I’ve always been a huge fan of kanabun’s style, and this album is probably the best example of his style. It’s a fusion of experimental elements with electronic music, and the result is something that’s strikingly unique while still being familiar enough that it’s not too scary or repulsive. It’s an excellent gateway into the world of ambient music, and definitely something I highly recommend anyone to check out.

Undoubtedly, kanabun’s best work has always been with vocals. The also-free Loop of Summer runs along the same lines as this album, and similarly the outstanding tracks are those that feature vocals. Nevertheless, kanabun’s instrumentals are strong enough to stand on their own and are definitely not lacking in any respect.

Circle Name: BunKai-Kei records
Album Name: open the world.ep
Website: http://bunkai-kei.com/release/bk-k_023/

1. kanabun – open the world

   Showing off some of that experimental style right off the bat, this track feels like a very, very long introduction to the album proper. An combination of disruptive, experimental elements and soothing electronic synthesizers results in a very interesting sound, which develops further and further as the track progresses. While this isn’t bad at all, it definitely doesn’t feel like a proper track and as such isn’t as good as it could have been.

2. kanabun – link

   A rather melancholic sounding track, featuring Suzuha Yumi on vocals. I’ve never really heard of her before, and I’m not very impressed by her – although that’s mostly due to her voice not matching up well with the instruments. Nevertheless, the overall sound is excellent as expected of kanabun, featuring many different elements all building up slowly to the end, where everything comes together and makes for a superb track. Pretty good, yeah.

   

3. kanabun – decillion

   This track is probably going to be quite divisive – it’s much more energetic than the previous track, but most controversially of all it features not male rap vocals! Although I don’t usually like rap, it’s much better when the vocals aren’t hogging the spotlight, and instead adding to the overall sound of the track – as such, I find that HARD GU.W-C.I does an excellent job in this. The cheerful, energetic and child-like sound of this track also serves as a nice break from the slow, pondering melancholy of the previous track, and is an excellent choice. Would be my favourite track of the album, but!

4. kanabun – humoresque

   Undoubtedly saving the best for last, this track features vocals by the always wonderful Chie Fukami, whose vocals make this a simply superb song. The entire song is built around using her vocals as an instrument, and the composition is simply stunning. With a simple use of build-ups, breakdowns and pauses, the result is an extremely emotional track that shows what kanabun does best. I unequivocally recommend this track to you if you have any interest whatsoever in electronic music, it’s simply one of the best things I’ve had the pleasure to listen to. Best kanabun track ever!

A pity that it’s only four tracks – I would love to see what kanabun would do if arranging a full-length album with both vocals and non-vocal tracks, that would most definitely be interesting. If for some reason you skipped the track descriptions and are reading this, go and listen to humoresque – it’s just fantastic in every way, and I can almost guarantee that you won’t regret it.

Apart from producing these lovely original compositions, kanabun also collaborates with Ruxia pretty often, which is coincidentally one of my favourite Touhou arrangement circles. If you liked kanabun’s style in this album, I would recommend checking out apple and honey and Field just to get a sense of how different his arrangement style is from most other people’s.

If you wish to buy this album please take 750 JPY and burn it in a fire, because this is a free album that you don’t have to pay money for. If you missed it, the link to the download page is here.

Continuing in the fine tradition of celebrating April Fools’ day by not actually doing so, here’s another album review! This is Sally’s Sadomasochism, a very rock-esque vocal oriented album featuring lots of interesting vocalists – if you don’t like listening to female vocals a lot, this album will be quite terrifying to you.

This is Sally’s second release, but despite their relative newness they’ve already been attracting quite a bit of attention – mostly because of the vocalists they’ve been using. Vocals are by far the most popular type of arrange music, and the fact that Chata regularly features on Sally’s albums helps too.

There are only two permanent members of Sally,　NSY and ワニ(Wani). I doubt that many people would know them, since this circle produces only vocals and that means track credit always goes to the vocalists instead.

The music style that Sally uses is quite rock-oriented, with the traditional guitar, bass and drums that you would expect from most rock-producing circles. The difference is that Sally tends to use pop-style arrangements with a heavy focus on loops, catches and vocals.

It should be pretty good, right?

Circle Name: サリー
Album Name: サドマゾヒズム
Website: http://sally.dojin.com/SA-002.html

1. 茶太 – enn～淵～

   Starting right off with Chata, who is undoubtedly the star vocalist of this album – Quite an interesting track, with a monologue at the start and a monologue at the end. Chata’s vocals do an excellent job of providing much-needed emotion, but the quality of the arrangement pales in comparison to her vocals. There are some flashes of brilliance throughout the track, but they’re drowned out by a weak arrangement. A shame.

2. 茶太 – サド

   Segues quite nicely from the last track, which was surprising. This is quite a faithful arrangement of the original, but suffers quite badly for it. It would have been much better if they’d taken the first 20 seconds and ran with that style for the rest of the track, rather than sticking fully to ZUN’s melody. This is the track where you start seeing the problem with Sally’s music – some of the songs contain some brilliant portions, but they’re otherwise hopelessly average and not outstanding at all.

   

3. IZNA – 新規テキストドキュメント

   Probably the only song where the arrangement is half-decent, and does a good enough job to match the vocals. IZNA’s vocals are excellent, but the highlight of this track is definitely the way the vocals and arrangement play off each other, resulting in a truly excellent track. Lots of energy, lots of emotion and a very catchy rhythm to back it all up. Hopefully, the rest of the album is as good as this, eh? Best track of the album.

4. めらみぽっぷ – 霊魂ミソロジー

   This is also another good arrangement, but I have a sneaking suspicion that that’s because it’s arranged by a guest arranger, シュリンプ. It has a pretty good flow to the track, following the slow pace of the original and tailoring his arrangement to fit within the original nicely. A good usage of build-ups and breakdowns means that there’s still some energy in the track, and the vocalist, めらみぽっぷ, does an excellent job as well. I actually rather like her voice, it’s cute-sounding while not being too annoying. Pretty decent track apart from the repetitiveness.

   

5. IZNA – コウモリ

   Quite an… interesting… start, but quickly decays into something that’s unbearably cheesy and definitely not very good at all. It really sounds like something that belongs in the soundtrack of a B-movie, and there’s simply no saving this track. Horrible, makes me cringe every time I listen to it..

6. ランコ – L∞P

   This is quite a high energy track, and should by all means be pretty decent. The arrangement is varied enough that it sound faintly original and somewhat interesting, and the vocals are pretty decent as you would expect. On the other hand, there’s little to no development in this track, and it would sound pretty much identical if you just looped the first 30 seconds for the duration of the track. Too pop-like in nature for my liking.

   

7. ランコ – plaza Blue age

   A soft emotional arrangement should be the perfect note to end this album on, right? Not quite. This is simply one of Sally’s usual, pop-esque tracks in disguise, this time using an orchestral sequence as a gimmick to try to make it sound original and interesting, while still having some of the most boring and mundane compositions. It’s simply not good at all, and the only saving grace of this track and this album are the vocals; vocals alone are what makes this track, this album worth listening to. It’s a shame, because such great vocals could have been put to much better use.

Definitely a somewhat disappointing album; it’s nothing special and most likely will be forgotten very quickly. It’s only interesting for a short while until you get used to the gimmicks and hooks present in this album, and once you do there’s nothing of substance left to bring you back to this album.

It’s a shame, too, because that’s an impressive array of vocalists. Also, that cover art sure is pretty, huh.

If for some reason you wish to buy this album, it’s available from a variety of Japanese doujin shops but none of them ship internationally.

In which I finally update this translation!

Download: DDL(Singapore Server) / Mediafire / puush

This version of the map uses Sound Pack 5.7 and Model Pack 2.0.

Patchlog:
General Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug where Yuyuko’s Entry Pass to the Ageless Country did not cancel on death
• Fixed a bug where Satori would retain Okuu’s Fixed Star effect after using Amnesia Potion
• Fixed an error with Momiji’s Blood Scent’s text
• Fixed a bug with EX Keine’s charge
• Fixed a bug where Miyako’s Ability to eat anything was recovering health from Luna Child’s Moonlight Wall
• Fixed a bug where Orin’s Zombie Fairy’s magic resistance was not applying

Hero Balance Changes:

• Kaguya’s Dragon’s Necklace range increased from 400 -> 450
• Star Sapphire’s Extensive Meteor stun increased from 0.5 -> 0.6 seconds
• Star Sapphire’s Extensive Meteor final stun duration increased from 1/1.5/2 -> 1/2/3 seconds
• Star Sapphire’s Extensive Meteor now summons 7 meteors instead of 4 when mastered
• Medicine Melancholy’s Disease Cloud can now be toggled on/off
• Shou’s Complete Clarification mana cost reduced from 60/80/100/120/140 -> 50/65/80/95/110
• Shou’s Complete Clarification damage increased from 65/130/195/260/325 -> 65/150/235/320/405
• Mamizou’s Primatism intelligence increase reduced from 10/20/30/40/60 -> 7/14/21/28/40
• Mamizou’s Carnivorous damage increase increased from 12/24/36/48/75 -> 15/30/45/60/85
• Mamizou’s Avian evasion increased from 10/15/20/25/40(%) -> 10/16/22/28/45(%)
• Hatate’s Double Spoiler duration reduced from 4 -> 2.5 seconds
• Hatate’s Double Spoiler cooldown reduced from 80/55 -> 50/35
• Reisen’s Menacing Threshold (Obsession) changed to Life Elixir “Grand Patriot’s Elixir”
  • Increases damage by 20/35 and armor by 6/10 for 15 seconds when used. As a side effect, every fourth potion causes an explosion dealing 200/170 damage to self and 250/300 damage to enemies in 400 range.
  • 20 second cooldown.
• Ran’s Princess Tenko -Illusion- changed to Shikigami “Dakini’s Heavenly Possession”
  • Every fourth attack deals 35/70/105/140/200 extra physical damage.

Item Balance Changes:

• Horn of Cenarius’s aura now reflects 20 ranged damage.
• Death Mask lifedrain reduced from 25 -> 20%
• Death Mask damage reduced from 40 -> 30
• Death Mask movement speed bonus reduced from 10 -> 7%
• Death Mask SP cost reduced from 2 -> 1

Other Changes:

• If you kill an enemy hero while dead, you receive 80+35*Killed Hero’s Level EXP. This EXP is reduced on level 15.
• If you assist in killing an enemy hero that is out of EXP range, you will receive 25+10*Killed Hero’s Level EXP. This EXP is reduced on level 15.
• If you assist in killing an enemy hero, you will receive 10~15 + 1/3 of extra gold.
• A new mode, Cheat Mode has been added (@마법소녀 김켈프). Gives 1 million gold to every plyaer, and changes Jakos.
• Ranged and Melee damage upgrade have been merged into one. Ranged damage increases by 3, Melee by 4.
• Health upgrade has been increased from 20 -> 25 health, 2 -> 3 health regeneration.
• Destroying all unit producing structures no longer increases Jako damage by 2x.
• Destroying all unit producing structures now increases Jako health regeneration by 10.
• A new upgrade, Siege Upgrade has been added. Increases Jako’s damage against buildings by 5%.
• Shanghai Dolls cost increased from 115 -> 200
• Shanghai Dolls no longer have mana regeneration
• Doll Liberation movement speed bonus increased from 70 -> 85
• Doll Liberation mana bonus increased from 200 -> 250
• Doll Liberation blink cooldown reduced from 12 -> 9
• Nue’s UFOs are now treated as wards

Better late than never, right? The past month I’ve been searching for more gems from C81 to review, while also taking the time to review a few older releases that I’ve been putting off for quite a bit.

Once again, most of the albums reviewed this month were electronic albums. I get the feeling that this is going to be a recurring trend at this point unless someone recommends absolutely fantastic acoustic albums to me, since I’m not going out of my way to search for that.

1. (C80) [Camphor] Malignant”X”
   

   I’m definitely very strongly in favour of this album. There’s just something special about it that stands out remarkably to me, something that I can’t really find in any other circle’s work. Sadly, this style of music won’t be popular with most people, since there aren’t any vocals. And everyone knows, you can’t be popular without vocals!

   For me, the highlight of this album is definitely Diver, which is a fantastically loopable song. It’s so relaxing that I don’t mind looping it over and over for days at a time, simply fantastic stuff.

2. (C81) [ShibayanRecords] À procura de felicidade
   

   Hmm, this was a very strange album. While it’s fine once in a while, I don’t really like this style of music on a constant basis, so I can’t really say I like this very much. It’s interesting solely for the fact that Shibayan released it though, very different from his usual stuff.

   As for the highlight of this album, it would definitely be the first track, レテとふたりのわるいこと. Chie Fukami’s vocals are always pretty amazing to listen to, and this song is no exception. I always enjoy her work with Shibayan, although sadly this isn’t a genre I prefer.

3. (C77) [KPDrecords] GO!LIMIT
   

   Another fairly niche album, although definitely one of the more interesting ones to have been reviewed for some time. This style of music simply isn’t popular with most people, and it’s hard to imagine how that could change. I’ve always loved kanabun’s work ever since hearing this arrangement of Bad Apple, which was very different from the usual arrangement styles. It’s a pity that this isn’t more popular, it definitely deserves to be heard and is definitely very interesting.

   Highlight would definitely be the first track, Mud. I think it captures a certain melancholic atmosphere that the other tracks strive for, but never actually reach. Quite a fantastic emotional track, and exactly what I like to hear from kanabun.

4. (C81) [Chromesphere Records] Colorium
   

   This was one of my unexpected finds of C81 – I’ve never heard of Chromepshere Records before, and I don’t really follow syatten. But simply listening to the crossfade made me believe that this would be interesting, and so I picked it up. It was glorious, and is definitely worth listening to if you like progressive trance/house. My only complaint is that it feels a little canned and generic, and doesn’t offer up anything radically new unlike Malignant”X”.

   The highlight would definitely be Aliceblue, which I mentioned in the review proper as well. It’s my personal favourite of the album, although Primula comes close as well. Good stuff, those two tracks.

Quite a good batch of albums, although most of this depends on personal preference rather than strictly being an amazing, genre-shattering earth-moving piece of work.

For this month, I’ll be doing less reviews since I’m short on time at the moment. I do have Echo Project and Sally’s new albums ordered, which should be arriving at the end of the month or so, hopefully I’ll have time to review those.

Any comments or thoughts are appreciated once again, as well as any recommendations for me to review.