Welcome to the Wonderful World of Fansubbing; Creating KIDS

ICU's pace of work gradually grounded to a complete halt, leaving in it's wake a lot of projects claimed with no immediate hope of ever being subbed, a group of staff members with suddenly no active group, and no motivation to work on the projects that they had already been tasked with, and many fans patiently waiting for those same quality fansubs that ICU was known for, unknowing about the tragedy that had befallen the group. Some six months passed, with only minimal renewed activity from ICU every now and then. Hulk would return, tell us that ICU would return, maybe get out a single project (which had probably actually been finished weeks, if not months, prior) before going dark again. And then Hyakupa, too, who had been releasing regularly...

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Welcome to the Wonderful World of Fansubbing; Of He-Hulk and ICU-Subs

KIDS are the latest Hello!Project fansub group to storm the community. As a group which, as the name implies, focuses primarily on projects relating to the Hello!Project Kids, we've done our best to pick up where ICU left off. While I had been minimally involved in the fansubbing world for some time before*, it wasn't until I was approached by The Incredible He-Hulk and asked to join ICU that I really got plunged into that world. *I had initially started by doing very poor quality PV subs under the name Berryz Kyuuden Fansubs with the intent to eventually join Hello!Fansubs. I then went on to become, what SacredCultivator calls, a H!F Trainee Timer/Karaoke Typesetter. The name was actually incredibly misleading. I was given a list of PVs...

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Paris Japan Expo: Day Four

The night before we had decided to head out at around 6am in order to get to the expo queue in plenty of time. And so that morning, Kitsune woke me up and said it was nearly time for us to go. I must have passed out pretty quick the night before. Don't really remember much of it. In fact, I still don't remember ANY of the journey back to the hotel from the restaurant. I remember being at the restaurant, then I remember being back at the hotel, knocking on our room door to see if there was anyone in. The middle bit is gone. Anyway, either due to all that yelling at the concert two days prior, or the strength of the sake the day before, I woke up in good health, but with a horrible sore throat (which then turned into a bad cough that I had for...

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Graduations in Morning Musume make way for new members!

It's been widely reported everywhere today. The Hello!Online thread gained upwards of 30 pages in posts in less than 24 hours. The usual IRC channels haunted by Hello!Project fans have been talking about it all day, and of course, the blogosphere and microblogging networks like twitter alike have exploded with the news. This morning, the news broke that Morning Musume would see the graduation of not one, not two, but three members simultaneously. Kamei Eri, leaving due to long-term health problems, and our two Foreign Exchange Students, JunJun and LinLin, who will return to China, are to graduate at the end of the coming concert tour. The decision has proven to be controversial, with Tsunku's twitter account being bombarded by questions about...

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Paris Japan Expo: Day Three

So after showering and convincing Ole that we should go queue up (it was now around 25:00) we left and began walking to the Expo. It was a fairly pleasant walk, it was night-time but it was still relatively light out - especially in comparison to how dark I'm used to Scotland being - and the temperature had really cooled down so rather than sweating like pigs on the 20-30 minute walk to the Expo like normal, we were relatively free to enjoy it. We walked along chatting to ourselves about the concert we had just seen only a few short hours beforehand and noting how, interestingly, we were exhausted in the hotel room but felt completely alert out walking in the refreshingly cool air in the middle of the night.  Something I noticed alot...

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Paris Japan Expo: Day Two

I got as decent a sleep as I could hope for in a small hotel room in France with no air conditioning. In fact, so much so that I completely slept through two texts from -Kitsune- informing us that he was, first, waiting for us at breakfast, and then second, in line for the Expo. We got up around 8 and, after learning from -Kitsune-'s texts that the line was already pretty long for the Expo, left as soon as possible. On the way out we ran into Paul.Thomas in the elevator - though I had no idea it was him until he got out and Ole told me who it was. I do remember wondering, "Why is he here? Shouldn't he be at the Expo already too?" When we got there we found ourselves a little lost. We tried walking in the same entrance that we took the day...

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