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I hope you all have at least heard of her, but for those that haven’t, Yoko Kanno is one of the most famous music composers in the anime and video game industry. Her list of works is not the longest, but she far exceeds in quality. Some works include the soundtracks for Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, Card Captor Sakura, and the Honey and Clover live action movie.

Before we can fully appreciate a soundtrack, we must understand the setting the songs will be used in. Ragnarok Online 2 is a medieval fantasy world based on Norse mythology, and the main focus of the game is adventure and socializing. The game world is very pristine, with large fields, swamps, and forests alike. In the towns, there is a very rustic historical feel, and the attire the characters wear share similar qualities.

If you like symphonic compositions with a very serene cultural feel, you will most definitely love this soundtrack. The primary palette includes the viola, piano, harp, and hand drums. There are some select tracks with goodies like the mythical vocalist Gabriela Robin, and some great supporting instrumentals like the didgeridoo, marimba, and pan flute.

The first song you hear is the intro theme to the game. My first time opening the game to the login screen, I couldn’t help but listen to half the song before entering my login credentials. We hear a vocal feature in a fantasy language, which to me sounds like a mix between Latin, French and Elven. The harp and string chorus pull my consciousness into the vast outdoors; I feel as if I am flying in the air over a vast plain with forests and mountains looming in the horizon.

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Welcome, young adventurer, to the town of Hodemimes. This is a quiet coastal town with no more than a few dozen yurts and pavilions. It is here where adventurers start their journeys; a friendly, social, but quiet community. At the outskirts there is a vast coastal field for novices to train, develop their skills, and learn the adventurers’ ways of life. It isn’t an easy life, but here in county overseen by the village chief there are barely any substantial dangers.

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All adventurers will eventually become well-acquainted with Prontera, the capital of the Rune-Midgarts kingdom. The King’s castle seated on the top of a hill overlooks the town bustling with adventurers and merchants alike. It is a crowded town; there are many guilds, stores, bars, and even a church. The music no longer has the pastoral feel of Hodemimes, we now are immersed the crowdedness of a small medieval Celtic city. From the King Tristan’s Castle we hear the echoes of a bagpipe salutation, and all around we hear the busy crowds of the city move in, out and about.

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In the previous decade Rune-Midgarts was industrializing, but due to intervention by greater forces, the industrialization was halted. Cognito was once a large industrial town, full of factories and labourers, but now it is abandoned. Mechanized fiends wander around the outskirts of the town, showing hostility towards those of other races. The once busy city is now an industrial junkyard; factory scraps are littered everywhere and the stench of rust lingers in the alleys. We hear a lonely saxophone lament, but its echoes fall upon deaf ears: Few travellers visit Cognito, and those that do leave only shortly after they finish their business.

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Far north in the Alfheim Forest, far from Norman (Human) development, live the spiritual Ellr elves. The Ellr obtain their magical powers by links with nature, and have built their town around the Mother Tree. A large library full of religious works is built into a large cranny in the surrounding mountains, Many Ellr come here to worship or to enrich their magical abilities. The Ellr are much sanctified; the music emphasizes the importance of their spiritualism and religion. The Ellr village lacks the casualness of the Hodemimes village, they are a devout civilization and unlike Normans spend much of their time meditating.

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Scattered around the lands are the homes of various tribes. These are monsters that have evolved to sentience, but still lack the intelligence and craftsmanship of the Norman and Ellr races. Their music is very primitive in feel, with heavy ethnic beats and tribal chants. Due to oppression and uncompromising behaviour these tribes are becoming more and more hostile towards the Normans, and fewer and fewer adventurers are able to learn about the depth of these tribes’ cultures.

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Aside from composing music for the geographic locations, many of the NPCs have their own themes as well. Misha is a perky and cheerful shoplady, while Holgrar the blacksmith is much more straightforward and always hard at work in his shop.

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There are some songs that I have not heard in-game, but according to the title they are part of the game’s plot scenario. Various styles exist here, from symphonic suites to upbeat military briefings.

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And remaining are the “uncategorized” songs; songs I do not know the exact background behind. But they all have the same great traditional ambience presented by Ragnarok Online 2, and amongst them are my personal favourites of the soundtrack. Closing my eyes while listening to these songs instantly teleports me to another world where man lives in harmony with nature and the greater forces of the world.

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To sum up, Ragnarok Online 2’s soundtrack is a serene symphonic compilation using the music of various fictional civilizations. Due to continuously delayed production and release of the game, I believe this soundtrack to be underrated because it is unheard of by most people. Kanno did a great job at composing music that attaches us to the natural world, making players breathe the crisp morning mist through their ears in our expeditionary quest through the Rune-Midgarts Kingdom.

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I have made the entire soundtrack available to download. The files from the Korean Open Beta are in Ogg Vorbis format, aside from meta tags these are the original files extracted from the official client. Songs that didn’t make it from the third Closed Beta to the Open Beta are included, these are in MP3 format. I have archived the collection into two files to facilitate downloading.

• RO² OST Part 1 of 2 (148.97 MB OGG/MP3 in RAR archive)
• RO² OST Part 2 of 2 (199.03 MB OGG/MP3 in RAR archive)

I ordered this custom Nokia 7310 last week. It’s a Europe-only promotion so I’m having my UK friend bring it back to me during his summer break.

Kyou Fujibayashi + Ryou Fujibayashi + pantsu + bed + phone = win

It ships with some additional backplates, so I can swap a more “normal” one on for more professional situations. If you’d like to give it a try, this is the website where you can create and order your own custom designs: http://83.150.66.193/Campaigns/UK/build.html

While on the topic of Clannad, I have finished drafting a giant entry explaining my interpretation of the plot and sequence of the entire Clannad TV series. After I watch the special and get some feedback from my friends, I will post it in both web and PDF formats. As it stands now it’s a massive 3,500 word seven-page entry.

Any suggestions as to what strap, what background, what ringtones, etc. I should put on the phone?

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They’re both so adorably cute and out-of-character (which only adds to the cuteness!) Nagisa has turned into a very intimate tsundere and Tessa is off in her dream world where all there is is Sagara, Sagara, and maybe some more Sagara. You gotta love the facial panic of the men, too.

If you want to download the above videos for whatever reason, here are the links:

• Nagisa is mai waifu (4.23 MB MP4 AAC H.264 576×432)
• I ecchi for Tessa (4.48 MB MP4 AAC H.264 576×320)

I think in Episode 09 was the first time we see Okazaki cry. Despite his poor academic performance he’s quite stable emotionally, so I was really quite surprised to see him cry because he graduated. That’s really awkward if you think about it that way, ne?
But, Tomoya and Nagisa’s characters have been changing a lot since they started dating, and everywhere we see hints of Tomoya finally maturing and taking responsibility for his own life. He doesn’t want to end up like his father, after all, so this character development is only natural.

There are two types of academic delinquents. There are those that don’t have any valuable skills and thus can’t get a good foothold on the society, and there are those that do have valuable skills and start climbing up the ladder of social leadership and responsibility. I’ve always argued that Tomoya is the latter, he is not academically gifted and does not possess talent for any particular trade; rather what distinguishes him from the failures are his good social skills. I’ve had a lot of trouble pinpointing exact moments to help my argument, until now at least. Episode 11 has two instances of extreme wit that left me thinking “wow I would never be able to think of that kind of answer even if you gave me a minute, and he answered it in a snap!”

But of course the childish playful side of him is still there. (facepalm)

Episode 12 was quite a thought-lifter for me. I never imagined Tomoya’s father playing the role of an antagonist, at least not significantly. I always thought that Nagisa would drive a revolution between that his condition with Tomoya, since she’s been pressuring him since the first season to do so. One thing I don’t understand about Tomoya is how come he doesn’t try to make up with his father, they did fight but apologizing or to asking for an apology doesn’t seem like something out of Tomoya’s reach especially seeing how much he has matured by Nagisa’s side. So once again I point my finger of blame towards Tomoya for the drug abuse/career setback. From what I have seen it should have been possible for him to help his father find his place again. Check out these screenshots from episode 18 of the first series and I’m sure you’ll see what I mean.

I somehow felt that the moth was some sort of omen, but after some quick research I can’t seem to find anything connecting moths with drugs. It’s really bugging me, the unknown significance of the moths…

Episode 13 is almost done downloading. It feels good to be caught back up!

Yeah, working in retail is busy, especially before the Christmas season. I finally got back into the animanga business after the New Year. Good timing for the arrival of my Clannad book!

The first page of the book is a delicious Kyou Fujibayashi conveniently locked in the gym equipment storage room.

This softcover artbook has 144 full-colour pages. The first 38 pages is a gallery of images of Nagisa, Kyou, Ryou, Kotomi, Tomoyo and Fuuko, these are the scans you frequently see on high-resolution wallpaper and scan imageboards like konachan.com and moe.imouto.org. As beautiful as these illustrations are, they arn’t the reason I get these artbooks, since these images are readily available for download from the aforementioned sites.

The following 34 pages are character bios and gestures. There’s a lot of Japanese text here, a lot more than I had anticipated. I’ll have to get my friend to translate it for me or teach me Japanese. The only information I can get out of it are facts that have to do with numbers, like bust/hip/waist measurements, birthdays, etc, but the sketches and miscellaneous illustrations are the main reason I get artbooks, since it gives a bit of insight into the design and development process of the series.

There’s a surprising amount of detail put into the character design, it is to be expected for a character-based show to have highly detailed characters but I didn’t know they would go to the point of making separate illustrations for Tomoya’s wristwatch, Nagisa’s shoe, etc.

All the supporting characters are accounted for and there’s also a section that goes step-by-step through each of the main characters’ stories. Again there’s a ton of text here and I wish I could tell you what all this text is explaining. They numbered each episode by character episode and by airing episode. For example, episode 10 is the 3rd part of Nagisa’s and Kotomi’s arc, the 4th part of Kyou/Ryou’s arc, the 2nd part of Tomoyo’s arc. I’m not really sure how this would be of use, but I might find it interesting when I start playing the game (which will be when After Story finishes airing.)

The Story section of the book is 56 pages long and covers the season on a per-episode basis. There are storyboards for the major parts of each episode. I find it amazing how the producers can show so much emotion in the characters from such simple sketches.

A small part of this section details the architecture used in the animation. As architecture student, it was this section that made me decide to purchase the fanbook (I glanced at scans I found online) as there are very detailed hand-drawn perspective illustrations of the school, the houses, and the rooms in the world of Clannad.

The last 16 pages is a staff and cast interview, unfortunately this is almost all text so again I can’t give any details here. But there are nice portrait photos of the main cast.

中原麻衣 Mai Nakahara (left, Nagisa Furukawa) and 野中藍 Ai Nonaka (right, Fuuko Ibuki)

At the very end there’s a small gallery of official collectible goods, like postcards, cell phone dangly-things, calendars, and other small miscellaneous accessories. I think the little card that comes slipped in the middle of my book is an order card, but since I don’t live in Japan it doesn’t really do me much good.

Another artbook review should be coming soon!

So, I figured out who Shima really is and why things went down the road they did. Please take a look at the following quote:

I finally remembered. I’m not Shima Katsuki. That was the name of the person dearest to me. We spent much time together, and he left me with his last wish.
Shima Katsuki; Episode 06 12:17

So the Shima we see is only naming himself after the one dearest to him. So who is that real Shima?

Master. Master. My current master is not the same as you, but she’s a very kind person. But she makes me worry at times. Was I able to achieve the goal? Was I able to achieve the promise we made? Now, it’s been too long ago, and I can’t remember. But right now, I want to remain like this. Please allow me to be with her forever.
Shima Katsuki; Episode 06 21:17

So the master of the cat was the real Shima Katsuki. And about this promise the two made? We have to backtrack to the previous episode to answer that:

Listen well. This charm has a light in it .It’s a light that grants any one wish. You will take this and go to her. And you will grant her wish. Do you understand?
Master Shima; Episode 05 11:16

This is the quote that Master Shima told the cat. But how did this unknown person know Misae, and why did he want to grant her and only her wish?

It was back when I was in elementary school. I think you were going to the hospital to visit your mother. When you went, you cheered my up when you found me in the hospital’s courtyard. You don’t remember this? I was in a wheelchair with a cat on my lap.

I remember now. But I didn’t do anything. We only spoke for a bit.

That’s not true. You really cheered me up.

What exactly did I say?

Um… I forgot. But I really am grateful to you. That’s why I want to return the favour.
Shima and Misae; Episode 05 13:43

After acquiring a temporary human form, the cat got close enough to Misae to hear her wish, but the charm was empty. Since he couldn’t remain human forever, he continues now as a cat to fulfill his promise with the real Shima to grant Misae’s wish. And afterwards, Misae was forcing herself to disbelieve that the cat was the boy she loves, until Tomoya told her otherwise. Now that she knows and accepts this she can finally move forward to find happiness down another path.