Mistakes of Youth: The Blog (Powered by ur mum)

Because we have a Genshiken OVA trailer on our hands.

Thanks, Randall.

Yeah.

Now let’s see if I can watch it all. That’s 92 episodes and a good number of movies right there.

Yamato is next…

EDIT
Gave up when I saw how FUCKING TERRIBLE the subs were. God. Shame, as Mazinger Z looked like pure gold. Oh well, I’ll wait till either a) I learn Japanese well enough or b) someone is crazy enough to sub it properly.

Original Post

Yeah, so this comic is about that kinda sorta major but not official announcement about Haruhi 2 that happened forever ago. The writing is bland as usual, so I won’t even talk about it. The Government of Darkness bit is a reference to Patrick Macias. I figure if I can reference anime, I can reference individuals who write about anime. On the art side, I tried to emulate Shinkai lighting. I kind of failed, but whatever. I made this on my laptop, so the colors I applied to the lighting weren’t as pronounced as they are on my normal monitor. The lighting looks kind of weird, looking at it now. Overall I’d say the art is fairly average. Also, Tina’s room is pretty bare. Maybe I should spend some time designing it…

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Original Post

Nayuki fanart added and ero Meer (NSFW) fanart added. Eventually this site will get a redesign and an ero-only section only will be made. When I have time.

I win. (nsfw)
I can hear the money running out of my bank account…

edit: i’m not sure if i’ve made this clear to you all, but i am in mad love with yuuko gotou. yeah

About to board the plane… figured I might as well post a “comic in progress” pic before I take off.

I’m taking off for a bit. Going home for the Thanksgiving holiday. I’m bringing my laptop, so with luck I’ll complete a comic while I’m there. I’m not excited about flying there, though… scared of flying.

Anyway, I’m leaving you clowns with some cool things I found while traversing the webernet this morning.

Epic trailer for the Gunbuster vs Diebuster movie. Seriously, totally epic.

Trailer for Makoto Shinkai’s new work, Byousoku 5 Centimeter. Absolutely beautiful work. There’s a HD trailer on the official site, so if your machine’s up for the task, download it quick! It’s only up for a week.

And lastly, this hot wallpaper I found on danbooru. Don’t worry, it’s work safe.

So yeah, sayonara~

EDIT: I just found this, even though it was posted like… 10 days ago. But, wow, Misato never looked so hot. I’m going crazy.

Chances are, if you are reading this review to decide if you are going to buy a Wii or not, it will be really hard for you to find one if I convince you to buy one. My local Best Buy had lines around the corner I arrived at 7:30 in the morning and was barely able to get a ticket. I was no.98 out of 102 (I consider myself lucky), this being said that didn’t help me from waiting 2 and a half hours just to get into Best Buy. Anyway, on to the Wii itself. It’s really fucking easy to install. Took me maybe a maximum of two minutes to sit it down next to my T.V. and install it. The menu screen from the second you turn it on is easy to use and navigate. From then on it was on to the games:
1. Red Steel: This was probably a bad game to start playing. This game takes A LOT of getting used to. The control system can get a bit awkward. Especially when you want to rest your hand, the screen goes crazy. It’s really not that original of a shooter, but the gameplay really takes you to a new level that I never thought possible with shooters. But, the next game a stuck in blew me away:

2. Zelda: Twilight Princess: I cannot tell you how hard it was for me to put this game down. Everything Wind Waker got wrong (and let me say that wind waker is NOT a bad game) this gets right. It’s a dark story, there is actually a threat, but what matters most of all is the story. The expressions on Link’s face and the development of even minor characters makes this game absolutely a must own. For example, there’s a moment where a fussy girl yells at Link for not taking good care of Epona and walks off itching. In this moment Link and the father of the girl (who has been scolded as well) give each other a look that just reads: “Women…. what are we going to do with them?” About a half-an-hour into the story we are taken into the twilight realm. Now I was really scared about this aspect of the game, I was so afraid that it was going to turn into a Metroid Prime 2: Cliche´ Light World Vs. Black World. Luckily the shadow world is well thought out and is relatively a mystery. Every aspect of this game is beautiful. This is something I am still drooling over.

3. Wii Sports: This does exactly what Nintendo wanted it to do: give easy game play to a system. I picked this up in a second and was immediately hooked. It’s easy to play and will probably be one of those games you play with a friend when you are really fucking bored.
The controller itself is a lot smaller than I expected it to be and might be a bit hard to grasp for people who are overweight, but I’m assuming that people overweight won’t want to play a system that demands you to move all the time. Nintendo was right when they nicknamed this system “The Revolution”; it truly is worth every cent that you pay (and that’s not a lot).

Anyway, that’s my short review of my weekend (wiikend), I know it’s disjointed and unstructured, but that’s why it’s called a rant.

Will be posted to my art site once I finish the Meer ero pic.

I like how he’s the only one with dramatic lighting.

Also, I think Ryuk looks like Christopher Lloyd. Probably just me, though.

I fucking love Death Note. Well, I mainly like it for Light. He is such a fucking smug piece of shit, and I simply can’t get enough of it. I love his expressions the best. Here’s a couple in volume 7 that made me laugh out loud.

Guess what? I finally got back into anime. This of course means I started Death Note. Interesting plot, which moved really quickly. What I liked was the fact that we know he’ll become corrupt so the series doesn’t build to that, it kinda rushes into when he is corrupt. That being said the directing is way too over the top. The whole montage of him writing tons of names to a christian chorus using stylised animation that makes it look like a handheld shot was laughable. Let me set something straight:

Christian symbolism does not make something cool.

I know this seems quite hypocritcal coming from an Evangelion fan, seeing how most of the imagery in Evangelion is there to make the series seem deeper than it actually is. If you want to look smart have symbolism compliment the show, not overwelm it. What makes Evangelion is the characters, not the cool symbolism.

Alright, on to more pressing matters: The Wii in 11 hours I will be holding in my hand Nintendo’s new next-gen system. Will it be good? I really don’t know. I am actually really nervous after seeing some of the stupid adds that they have been marketing, but it still looks amazing. Anyway…on to news:

Geekson has annouced that there will be a Bruce Lee biopic directed Rob Coen (that idiot that brought you Fast and the Furious and xXx). Apparently they are going to make a digital version of Bruce Lee’s face and plaster it on to the actors body (Matt King). THIS IS NOT GOING TO WORK!!! You see digital technology will always get better and I can guarantee that digital animation will NEVER replace actors. The movie hasn’t been greenlit as of yet, they are still trying the technology. (it will fail)

Anyway, I’m tired and need to watch Battlestar Galactica, see you tomorrow with my Wiiview.

Countdown: Wii: 1day. The Fountain: 4 Days

Original Post

Part II of last week’s comic. If I was a psychic and had known this was going to happen, I would have made a comic about that instead of taking up two weeks with a two parter. However, even though it’ll be late, the next comic will be about Haruhi II. Unless by that I point I feel it’s just too late. News sure gets old fast. Sigh.
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So, ADV has acquired Keroro Gunso. Well, they haven’t really said anything, but if you’ve visited their site any time within the last 24 hours, it’s fairly obvious. I’ve always had a passing interest in Keroro, but never really acted on it, given the show is longer than time (read: over 50 episodes.) There is nothing wrong with shows running over 50 episodes, but when I have to give up large amounts of personal resources (harddrive space, money) in order to see it, one wonders if it’s really worth it.

When it comes to shows that break the 50 episode mark, I have a couple of factors that I use to determine if it’s worth me purchasing. One of them is a simple question of quality. In my experience, most shows that run over 50 episodes (and usually into the 100s) usually run into filler, or just have a weak story. I understand that there are exceptions. For instance, I am told Monster runs at about 70 episodes, with each episode contributing something to the story. Some shows are all “filler”, such as the second Lupin series, making it more or less a normal TV show, which I am totally fine with. Especially given that each of the episodes are extremely entertaining.

The length of a show also contributes to its rewatchabilty. Honestly, how many times is one going to rewatch Naruto in their lifetime? Provided they actually finish it, that is. I find short series easy to rewatch. Shows in the 13-26 episode range are perfect for me. 50 is pushing it, but acceptable. This isn’t to say that I feel every 13-26 episode show is worth another look. I have a feeling I won’t be touching the likes of Kasimasi ever again, but on the other hand, I would watch Haruhi multiple times. However, short series length can also hurt the most entertaining of shows. One can only watch Neon Genesis Evangelion so many times before it gets to the point where you can predict what each character is about to say. With longer series, there’s more stuff to chew on, thus increasing its rewatchability. Conversely, longer shows take time. Sometimes a lot of time. Sure, that 100 episode epic might be wonderful, but how many times are you really going to watch it? Is it really worth buying 100 episodes that you may watch just once, or even twice in your entire lifetime?

Both rewatchability and series length determine the overall quality of the show. The length contributes to the rewatchiblity and the rewatchablitiy contributes to the overall quality. A high quality 13 episode show that I can enjoy time and time again is better than a high quality 100+ episode show that I can only enjoy once or twice. Then again, I suppose once could argue that you could that the entertainment value for a 100+ episode show you can watch once is the same for a 13 episode show you can watch 10 times. And if you’re a giant who lives thee times longer than humans, then that crap doesn’t matter to you as you have all the time the world!

So yeah, that’s it. I kind of forgot where I was going with this…

edit: someone just reminded me: so, basically a long ass series is worth purchasing if you can be damn sure you’ll watch it 1000000000000 times or something. There.

And just for the record, I’ve yet to own a 100+ episode show its entirety.

http://www.akibablog.net/archives/2006/11/really_really.html

:3

Just some random things I’m working on at the moment. The first bunch of sketches are for next week’s comic and the rest are two bits of fanart. Warning, one of them is ero, so don’t click on unless you’re 18, or very good good at pretending to be 18, to quote Danny Choo.

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On Saturday I finally finished my short film. What’s funny about learning to make a film is the last 10%. See, because making a film is a learning project, you see every single flaw in the film. So, I had a bitch of a time trying to get the sound at all the right levels and cutting out some lines in the final edit.

Anyway, enough about me, how about you? Are you watching Kanon? Because I am. Well I’ve started. I tried watching the original series and died by the painfully bad character designs, but aparently the story is good. Right now I don’t like the remake, I love the animation, really pretty, it may make up for the painfully bad two dimensional characters that are shown in the begining. I am, hwoever, going to stick with it because it has to be good if it deserves a remake.

So, for anyone living inside a hole for the past week. A new Spider-Man trailer priemered. Good stuff, but a severe lack of venom. Luckily enough for you he is present in the conceptual trailer, which appears to have been leaked to the internet. Spider-Man is amazing because they have constantly prduced high quality adaptations of the comics, but I have no idea how they are going to come out with seven films. SEVEN films. Hell, I am happy with four. Seeing how Venom has always been the biggest threat to Spider-Man, if he comes in the third film and then finishes in the fourth I will be happy. Just no more after that.

Nintendo, convinced that it hasn’t already got enough press from E3, Tokyo Game show, every technology blog, and the New York Times has decided to launch a 200 million dollar ad campaign. Now don’t get me wrong, I am dying to get the Wii, but honestly. Nintendo will win this generation from just being creative and not just improving graphics. Even though the ads are targeted towards adults (VIDEO GAMES….ADULTS?!) I still think that New York Times article did all it needed to do to convince my dad that it was pretty “hip”.

Alright, well, that’s all I have for you right now. I’ll try to see if I can get a version of my film on the site, it takes a shit ton of time to compress (4 hours for 15 minutes) so one day I’ll stick it on here. See you in 6 days with my Wii rant.

Apparently we have some hot details on the first new Eva movie. Is it just me, or does it sound like Anno’s pulling a Lucas on us…?

Also, looks like Haruhi II is a Go Go Go. I guess Kadokawa was lying to Danny Choo. Then again, there’s no official confirmation, but the source is stronger.

That’s all~

Original Post

Been a while, hasn’t it? Well stuff happened. And I got lazy. College isn’t easy, you know! A guy needs to rest, especially after spending an entire day redoing work for a class that he’s allegedly failing in, despite getting a passing grade for each assignment. Anyway, there’s a comic here now. Art-wise, I’m fairly happy. The first and second panels are good. I didn’t really know what to do with the last panel, so it’s rather uninspired. I’m not so happy with the script. I don’t like talking about US companies, as I feel not everyone will get what I’m talking about (apparently I have quite a bit of international readers.) But, I’m low on ideas and Funi’s an easy target. There will be a part two with this one, so look out for that next week.

There is a new podcast up. This time it’s an interview with Patrick Macias. For those who don’t know, Patrick is someone I admire quite a bit. So much so that I got pretty nervous during the interview. I don’t think it’s too apparent, but it prevented me from saying anything else other than the questions I had written down. Thinking back, there were some points and additional questions I would have loved to bring up, but I was simply too nervous. Sigh. Such is the nature of the otaku.

I’ve started a blog. It’s basically a place for me to do focused rantings instead of my weekly (?) general rantings. It’ll also function as a sketchbook of sorts. Which is to say, I’ll be using it to post sketches in progress. Because of this, the blog will be 18+, given I do do some ero work every now and again. Updates from here and my artsite will also be cross-posted there, allowing you to leave comments on them. I’m not sure for how long I’ll actually use this. It’s an experiment so far, but we’ll see how it goes.

Lastly in site news, I finally put up a new featured song (actually, songs) and site. The featured songs are both versions of the Pururin Theme, the happy normal version, and the haunting remix used for Satou’s acid trips. These will be included in the upcoming Sunny Side Ni Youkoso album, but these two songs were leaked a month or so ago, and I kept meaning on posting them but never really did until now. The featured site is related to the songs in quite a humourous way.

I understand that this is a bit on the delayed side, but I picked up the first volume of NHK about… a month ago. I’m very happy with TokyoPop’s work on this. I was so worried they’d fuck it up, but it turns out they did a damn good job. Almost as if they were putting love into it. The translation is pretty much perfect, save a few awkward bubbles (must have missed editing.) The translation faithfuly captures NHK’s feel. Words like “moe” and “ero-game” are left in, with a handy glossary at the back for virgins to otaku jargon. The original color pages are kept in color, which is great. In my experience, TokyoPop usually just uses grey scale copies. This may just be a first-printing kind of deal though. As far as story contents go, there’s not much to say given it’s the same NHK we know and love, just far better than shitty scanslations. However, reading through the first couple chapters again, I’ve noticed that the manga isn’t really nice to the reader. Unlike the anime, the manga doesn’t ease you into Satou’s world, it just throws you in there. As a result, you’re left spending the rest of the volume trying to get your bearings straight. Perhaps that’s intentional, though…

Continuing on the NHK vein, episode 19 of the anime aired some hours ago. It looks like they got the animator for episode 4 to do most of this one. Now, this really wouldn’t bother me if the entire anime was done in this style, as I like this animator’s style, but I don’t like how it clashes severely with the established style of the show (I say this very loosely, given the show is incredibly inconsistent.) The episode worked, I’ll admit, but it kept bugging me. Storywise, it seems to have clearly gone off the path of the manga (perhaps following the novel?) This is good, because they only have about five more episodes to play with and I don’t want the ending of the anime to leave me hanging (think Genshiken.) One thing I like about the anime over the manga is how structured it is. The manga goes every which way and doesn’t really know where it wants to settle. The anime, on the other hand knows where it’s going, and is determined to get there. This is not say that the anime doesn’t go every which way every now and again. I mean, it would given it follows the manga to a certain point. But the anime seems to have a sense of direction. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be able to stand independent of the manga if it goes on its own route and ends well. But stil, there’s that issue of animation. Well, not so much animation. The animation is great. The clashing art styles are a problem. Here’s hoping for some DVD fixes.

I just finished Azumanga Daiou a couple hours ago for the third or fourth time. The last episode is pretty sad. It tries to be funny, but there’s that constant feeling of “it’s over.” Or maybe that’s just all the shots of Chiyo crying. Ah well. It was nice to watch it again. I’ll shelve it for a year or two, just so it doesn’t get old on me. Man, I wish my high school experience was that happy.

KyoAni’s Kanon continues to impress. Episode 6 once again topped all the others. The movie theatre scene was arguably the best, what with Kyuuichi being Kyuuichi and Ayu being Ayu. Speaking of Ayu, I’m liking her a lot more in this one. Same goes for Makoto. KyoAni seems to be breathing a good amount of life into these characters to make these early slice of life episodes fun, instead of mind numbingly boring (hi, Toei.) This should also make the dramatic bits of the story sadder as well. Better get those tissues ready, Kanon virgins. You’re all in for one hell of emotional trip.

My Chocotto Sister DVD came in during the week. I’ve never bought a Japanese DVD before due the language barrier, but ChocoSis is the first show I can mostly understand raw, so I figured I might as well. These Japanese DVDs really are as hot as people say they are. The video quality is nothing short of outstanding. It manages to make a somewhat below average production like ChocoSis look fairly good. Also, because this is the DVD version, that nasty Keep Out tape is gone, and allowing the Loli Ass to be viewed quite clearly (not safe for work.) The extras included on the addtional disc are pretty silly. It’s mostly just Saito Momoko and a woman dressed as Neko Nyan Dance cat doing the Neko Nyan Dance. There is some nice event footage though, and the standard non-credit op/ed. The box is quite cute. It features Choco doing the Neko Nyan Dance. An insert came in the box that has the box art spread out across a couple pages so it can be viewed easy. I scanned it and posted it to danbooru (You might not want to click on my name there, though. I’ve posted some stuff you might not want to see. Well, at work anyway.) Given the quality of a release like this, I’m eager to get my hands on the Kanon DVDs now. I can understand that show fairly well raw, too, so it wouldn’t be waste. Sadly, I’m not in a position to spend too much money anymore. I spent a good 300 or so this past month on figures and such, and just ordered the limited edition of Really? Really! I think I should be on the look out for a job soon…

Anyway, that’s about it. It’s approaching 2:30 and I should really go to bed. Until next week!

Welcome to the MoY blog! I’m really not sure how much use this’ll get, but it’s here now if I need it. Basically this blog is for me to have focused rantings on particular topics. The semi-weekly rants on the main site aren’t really focused enough for me to zero in on certain things. So, when I have something I really want to talk about, I’ll do it here.

Also, this’ll serve as a kind of collecting area for all the updates on my various sites. This blog will document the updates made on my personal art site and on the comic. This means rants from the comic site will be cross-posted, here, allowing people to leave comments on them. This will probably be the closest we’ll get to a forum in the immediate future.

You will notice that this blog comes with a nifty RSS feed (most of them do), which kind of renders the main site’s RSS feed meaningless. Though, chances are this’ll be so filled up with junk that you won’t be able to find comic updates. So, if you’re interested in my rantings and ravings along with comic updates, subscribe to this one. If you’re just interested in the comic, keep the other one up. Simple, no?

One more thing; this blog is merely an experiment. I’m not sure how long I’ll use it for. I’m just messing around right now. If it doesn’t last for more than two weeks, don’t be surprised.

Anyway, that’s all. I hope you enjoy it. And I hope it’ll last.