Well, that’s surprising. Lia got married and is now pregnant.
Lia, known for such songs such as Tori no Uta, Toki wo Kizamu Uta, Light Colors, Disintegration and Horizon amongst others has announced through her official website that she has married and is now pregnant with her first child. As a result, the live she originally planned to have on August 2 may not proceed as planned.
While a formal announcement was made on the information section of Lia’s website, Lia herself wrote a very long diary entry in which she explains the situation. (On her diary, she recounts that she is now suffering morning sickness. Oh dear.)
I’m very happy for Lia and her husband and her soon to be born child, I wish her the best in these situations.
I can’t help but recall Clannad (the Visual Arts production that Lia’s songs Toki wo Kizamu Uta, Yakusoku and Ana are associated with) when I heard about the news. For those of you unfamiliar with the plot of the game or the anime, it’s basically about bonds between family. It’s a very touching story and one of Visual Art’s most popular works due to this. It is a very heartbreaking story.
Basically the main protagonist Tomoya is a socially isolated person and doesn’t have much interest in school and being a member of society until he meets Nagisa at school, a girl who was sick and had to repeat a year. They then become closer together and the first part of the game basically revolves around how Nagisa and Tomoya get closer while they’re at school.
Spoilers at hand.
Losing My Comiket Virginity
This coming August, I will be going to Comiket 76.
… I’m not sure why, but I’m kinda dreading and yet happily anticipating the experience.
For those of you who might not know about Comiket, it is basically a giant… market, really for doujinshi artists and even well established artists and more to sell stuff (enigmatic LIA 2 was a Comiket 71 release for example). It’s expanded now to encapsulate music, manga and various other things. Most of the items that are available at Comiket are very often limited edition and while they go for relatively reasonable prices at the actual event, when they’re resold on places like Yahoo!Japan Auctions or shops such as Toranoana, the price gets a hike a lot of the time and often become ridiculously rare collectors items.
Since so many people go to Comiket at Tokyo Big Sight, there will be lots of lines and lots of people there. It will be like sardines and hence the reason I’m almost dreading the experience.
The last time I went to Japan, I sort of did my own preparation by going to the Touhou only event Reitaisai (mainly because of REDALiCE’s CDs, coincidentally his booth was right beside the IOSYS one, which was clever). I’m not a big Touhou fan, but it was probably the closest experience that I had prior to actually going to Comiket.
But some people have reported going and actually enjoying the experience. Mind you, they probably mapped out their route before they went there. (it is possible to do this, the organisers of Comiket release a CD catalogue containing map information and you can plot out a route beforehand! This is nifty.)
But what am I going to Comiket for? Well, I’m not sure just yet because I have yet to find much information about who is producing anything for Comiket. Hopefully there will be more information closer to the event.
Unfortunately, I haven’t taken much interest in Comiket prior to relatively recently and thus, my knowledge of who and what releases at Comiket is relatively sparse. I hope that something from Hardcore Tano*C will get released at Comiket and that there will be something from Visual Arts and queens label.
Sadly, due to this unfortunate brouhaha of eroge websites blocking non-Japanese IPs I have a feeling that available information will be hard to come by… 
Album Review: LIA – enigmatic LIA3 -worldwide collection-
This review is an extension of my review that I originally posted on Discogs for this CD.
Artist: LIA
Title: enigmatic LIA3 -worldwide collection-
Catalogue No: PCCG-90031
Tracklisting:
Disc 1:
01 sky-high (Inverse & Orbit1 Remix)
02 The World (ORIGINAL MIX)
03 時を刻む唄 [Toki wo Kizamu Uta] (JAKAZiD Remix)
04 Crystal World (teranoid Remix)
05 new moon (Al Storm Remix)
06 Believe 〜from Vivaldi’s “Winter”〜 (JAKAZiD Remix)
07 TORCH (Spy47 Remix)
08 pure rain (ORIGINAL MIX)
09 SANDSTORM (Fracus Remix)
10 The Never Ending Love (DJ Shimamura’s XTC Mix)
11 月童 [Tsuki Warabe] (Reese Remix)
12 Saya’s Song (Nu Foundation Remix)
13 Fly high again… (ORIGINAL MIX)Disc 2:
01 君をのせて 〜from 天空の城ラピュタ〜 [Kimi wo Nosete ~from Tenkuu no Shiro Laputa~] (REDALiCE Remix)
02 I’m feeling (源屋 [Minamotoya] Remix)
03 FILIATION (DJ-Technetium Remix)
04 You Are… (Betwixt & Between Remix)
05 I’m wondering (源屋 [Minamotoya] Remix)
06 Light In the Air (Thanatos Remix)
07 SAYONARA (REDALiCE Remix)
08 Saya’s Song (REDALiCE Remix)
-Special Bonus Trax-
09 DJ Sharpnel – 鳥の詩・torino-uta (the speed freak’s noise rave remix)
10 LIA’s (a cappella) Track
Lia and her staff have really outdone themselves with enigmatic LIA 3. It features a lot of stellar remixes of songs from her previous albums (mostly from her latest one, new moon) done in a completely different electronic dance style.
The first disc boasts artists from around the world (”Remixers from 7 different countries!” as the promotional material boasted, a fair amount of them handpicked by JAKAZiD himself. JAKAZiD is one of my favourite artists and for a very good reason, I can’t even begin to imagine how he had to deal with all these artists.)
