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

Original Post

Was kind of bored so I just decided to post this comic up. It’s my generic Gundam ranting, with fairly uninpsired artwork. I didn’t really have any ideas at the time, but wanted to make a comic, so I did this. It’s ok, I guess.

Oh, a podcast happened.

Been watching the Tenchi TV series lately, while neglecting new anime like Bokura No and Seirei, because quite frankly I’m not interested in either of them. I miss the look of these old 90s cel productions. They have a certain quality to them that I really dig. Kind of sad that cel animation was dumped right as they perfected it. My favourite part thus far has been the episodes devoted to Kiyone, given she is my most favourite character. The others are quite good and funny, but those Kiyone-centric ones give me warm fuzzies. She was the first 2D girl I feel in love with, after all.

Aside from watching old shows from the mid-90s, I watched Lucky Star episode 12 today. Highlights being the entire Comike part (especially with Tomokazu Sugita’s cameo) and the really surprising Godman reference right at the end. Funny stuff.

Ok, another short one this week. I have like 5000 blog posts planned out, but no time to write them.

Items I’d like to get to:

• Death Note Review
• Mid-season evaluation
• Directing in anime
• Why I love 2D girls

Anyway, that’s all for today.

Been watching the Tenchi TV series lately. I had started to watch the original OVA a while back, but it got lost in the crowd with all the other things I was watching. I recently got the TV series collection for my birthday, and just decided to watch that given I like it a bit more than the OVA. Watching it now, I find the animation isn’t especially good, but it’s not bad either. It’s rather charming though. I simply love the look of these 90s cel-done productions, even if they are a little uneven at times. This is also the first time I’m watching it in Japanese, and I like it a lot better than watching it dubbed on the Cartoon Network and on VHS.

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Spoilers for the Death Note anime after the jump

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Not related to this post at all, but if you want to see further works by this guy, visit his sexy site! WARNING: His site contains a lot of weird sick shit that I really get into. You’ve been warned. 

Since everyone and their dog is doing it, I’ll post my picks for the summer. At the moment editing a podcast where lastarial and I kinda talk about this, but for some reason we miss out Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei…

Best of Season

• Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei - Comedy about a suicidal teacher. Also directed by the best man in the world.
• Tetsuko no Tabi - High Quality character design and laffo concept have me sold. I also used to like trains as a child.
• Doujin Work - Man I wish those dudes would translate more of the comic, as it’s hilarious. It’s basically lolis drawing doujins with a bunch of very, very close to home jokes thrown in. That is awesome.

Normal stuff that won’t completely blow my mind

• Sky Girls TV - Well the OVA was good.
• Moetan - This is really a given for me. Hot character designs have me sold~
• Zero no Tsukaima 2 SEXIER EDITION - Because I watched the first season and liked it. They’ll really have a winner on their hands if they make a series just about Siesta though 
• Baccano! - How could you not watch a show called Baccano!
• Dokuro-Chan 2 - Should probably watch 1 again, as it is a subperb example of how to use the animation medium

Might as well

• Nanatsuiro★Drops - Itou Noiji. That’s it.

Never

• ZOMBIE-LOAN - Sounds retarded.

Not really a special occasion or anything, I just got some food and thought, “hey, I’ll do that thing lonely geeks do.”

I am a lonely geek.

Edit: Thanks, Cortana.

Went out to the CD/Game Exchange today to trade in some stuff. Four shitty Weezer CDs (from when I used to listen to shitty music), an Invader Zim DVD (Jhonen Vasquez is for silly teenagers) and Tsukuyomi -Moon Phase- volume 2 (I had two of them.) I felt a bit ripped since all I got was 9 dollars, but I guess that’s how it goes.

I didn’t just walk out with 9 dollars, though…

Judge Back Cover | Harmagedon Back Cover

Got both for about 1 dollar each. The first one I saw was Judge, which I’ve never ever heard of before. After that I saw Harmagedon, which I heard of “back in the day.” I’m kind of sad since it seems Harmagedon is actually a good movie (apparently it has a DVD release somewhere) but Judge should be pretty bad given I’ve never heard of it before, and the plot is pretty laughable.

Gotta watch these while I’m still living in a place that has a VCR.

In episode 11 of Xenoglossia they go to a volcano to get some dumb idol core out of said volcano. In episode of 10 of Evangelion, MAGMA DIVER (the best episode ever) they fight an angel in a volcano.

Episode 8 of Evangelion happens in this episode, too.

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This entry will have spoilers for FAREWELL SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO. But spoiling Yamato is like spoiling King Kong so no one should care.

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Mistakes of Youth will cease to be in OTAKU USA.

Old entry was DELTEETED for un-needed dorama. Also don’t bug anyone (namely Patrick, who is a very busy man and doesn’t such drama) about this k? Thx.

I didn’t mean to sound emo and dumb in my last entry. I just think is a funny emote so I used it.

Speaking of SA emotes I just did something I can never make right. Bets on how long it is until they ban me for being a ロリコン.

Here you go you disgusting lolicon perverts who fap to images of little children being sexually handled by adults you bunch of disgusting weirdos

Also, you may notice there’s no comic today. Sorry.

Children are precious. They are our future. We must love and respect them. We must guard their purity.

So clearly we must lust after them like the dirty perverts we are.

Art site has been updated with loli porn. This is a first for me, supringly enough.

…except it wasn’t that epic?

Like every anime fan should once in his lifetime, I sat down and watched the highly influential Space Battleship Yamato. However, I came out rather underwhelmed. For a show that’s been remembered throughout the years as a classic, I expected a bit more. On the whole, the entire production seemed fairly amateur. I’m not talking about animation or audio quality– just the basics like storytelling and character development. It’s all very simple, and that isn’t especially a good thing.

Yamato is old though. Like a friend of mine said yesterday, Yamato is just Yamato. In the same way Pacman is Pacman. You can’t rate Yamato by today’s standards, as things were simply different back then. Obviously animation wasn’t that great, but the medium of Japanese animation was still coming into itself as a means of storytelling. People probably just started with what’s a easy, and monster of the week is pretty damn easy! Yamato wasn’t meant to have the kind of constant “to be continued” found in most anime, it’s just a simple TV show.

What I do find funny is how taken I am with the original Gundam. From roughly the same era, and suffering from the problems, the Gundam TV series is one of my favourites. I think it’s probably because you can tie random events together better in a war setting (as they change the course of war) but Yamato is random events happening along a journey, and everything gets fixed in the next episode.

I am dowloading the movies now, and plan to watch series 2, but all for educational value. I learned a lot through Yamato, surprisingly enough. If I happen to find it really good then I guess that’s a plus.

Here.

Original Post

This comic isn’t very funny. It’s just me saying Gundam 00 will suck. Again. But the art is pretty so that makes up for it. Also, I think I’m making some kind of hamfisted point by having Ideon and original Gundam posters in the background but I’m not sure what exactly that point is yet. I don’t have a solid idea for next week yet which is troubling. Maybe I’ll talk about the Bokura No director, or mock Xenoglossia, or talk about Gurren Lagann. I dunno. Oh yeah, got a bit of fanart. It can be found here.

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and

are as good as mine. Because now I have a steady job. It’s a shitty as hell job, but a job.

Obligatory nude Hazuki image no.1

I think we all know by now that the director for the Bokura No anime fucking hates the manga. People I’ve talked to said this probably came about from Gonzo being a huge company and the people not really having much say in what they’re asked to do. This kind of cheapens anime for me. I understand for these fellows it’s a job to put bread on the table, but there is a distinct difference between a director who approaches his work as a job, and a director who approaches his work as art.

To be fair the Bokura No guy is making the best of it, by asking if he can change the story to suit his tastes. While this is bad news for fans of the manga who want an accurate adaptation, I’d rather watch this guy direct something he kind of likes over something he loathes. That’s part of what makes good direction, love for your work. I think this is why Evangelion works so well, because apparently the entire series really close to Anno’s heart.

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…that is if Kaede didn’t exist, but this was neat.

Also, they’ve since changed it, but lol.

It actually went up yesterday. Silly me. 8 in the works.

Gonna write about two shows that have nothing to do with each other. Because I’m awesome. Joking aside, the point of this entry is to address two shows that I’ve been watching but haven’t necessarily said anything about.

Bokura No

I like Bokura No. Maybe not as much as some of my compatriots, but it’s good TV. I mainly like it visually. It seems like it has a pretty average budget, but it looks good. I especially like the lighting effects, most notably in the opening. The character design is somewhat generic, but has a nice edge to it. They’re nice to look at. Episode 7 reminded me of episode 4 of NHK (among others) which was by Shingo Natsume. ANN doesn’t list Natsume as working on Bokura No, but it’s characteristic of them to be short information. This episode really looked like him in any case. I feel it works more in Bokura No than NHK simply because the Bokura No designs more easily lend themselves to that style, being somewhat angular and skinny.

Story wise it’s fine. I’m not completely taken, though. Each kid’s story interests me enough to watch more, but I’m not profoundly moved by any of them thus far. I also lack sympathy for them, probably because some of them died so early (thus not giving me a chance to learn about them), and their character development seems restricted their respective arcs. I suppose it’s easier that way. Makes it so I won’t end up in a crying mess. I was kind of hoping for the deaths more flashy and brutal. While some are, so far most of the kids have met their end do the rules of the game. The show’s only about 7 episodes in fansubbed, so I guess it could get better. But like I said, it’s already fairly good.

Though I don’t think Uninstall is a very good song. But it’s still stuck in my fucking head.

Seirei no Moribito

Wow, can they make this show any slower? It’s like watching one those three hours movies except for it’s not interesting. I was almost falling asleep at episode 9, but that was because I was tired. But still. It had a moment of action around episodes 2-5, and since then it’s started dragging. You can only go on for so long about some goddamn water spirit and signs of a drought before I just start yawning. God one entire episode took place is a fucking house. A bunch of talking! And it wasn’t even interesting! At least the animation is good, which is the only thing keeping me from dropping this show like a rock. It started fairly good, but now it just seems incredibly dull. Sorry Kenji Kamiyama, go back to cyberpunk stories plz.

Also Balsa is far too manly. Ugh.

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Source: Heisei Democracy

Decided to draw something nice to break in the new sketchpad. It’s loli, it’s naked, and it’s after the jump. Needless to say, it’s also NOT SAFE FOR WORK.

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I will try my best not to sound like an elitist piece of shit here. This is serious! Also, this entry will have spoilers for various Gundam series.

I’d like to think I’m different than most UC fans who simply hate stuff that’s not UC because it’s not UC. Contrary to popular belief, I am a bit of Seed fan (was real Seed obsessed just two years ago) but Seed lacks something the originals had, and that’s soul.

I’m partly borrowing Patrick Macias’ words here. The generation of creators that made works such as Mobile Suit Gundam are people who lived through their country being bombed and occupied as children. They more or less lived through war, and the resulting feelings and images clearly resonate in their works. In Gundam’s opening narration, we are treated to images such as a hole being blown through a colony, a fallen battle ship in flames, and the entire city of Sydney being brought to ruin by a giant colony. This may seem the stuff of fiction to us almost 30 years later, but these images were very much a reality to the creators. Gundam is a show about war, but it doesn’t glorify war. It’s an anti-war show, but it doesn’t out right tell you “war is bad.” Rather, it lets the viewer come to his own conclusion about the events unfolding on screen.

Over the years the anti-war message has stayed consistent, but it’s become diluted. The new generation of creators simply can’t grasp the kinds of things the creators of the past experienced. Hence, the result usually feels like a copy of a copy. Looking at things in a very objective manner, First Gundam and Seed are probably on the same level. However, Seed lacks that kind of hard real world experience present in the older Gundam works. The sacrifices made by Ryu Jose and Sleggar Law were most probably realities to Tomino. However, the writers behind Seed totally miss the point of Mwu’s epic sacrifice in the end of Seed, and bring him back in Destiny with just a few scratches and a case of amnesia.

So, in the end I suppose it comes down what kinds of messages and themes you associate with. I’m sure Seed has some underlying themes that I don’t especially get that appeal to newer fans, but I find the messages in the original to be a lot more striking to me. Maybe I’m just old fashioned. I dunno.

Also, as an aside: while Gundam is a good example of a work of fiction influenced by real world experience, Space Battleship Yamato is probably the best I’ve seen with regards to that. I mean fuck, it’s about resurrecting the sunken Yamato to save Earth from nuclear radiation, which is a result of horrible bombings from an alien world.

Original Post and Comic

This comic is pretty good. A lot better than the last one. The only problems are probably the last panel, which is a touch sloppy and Rets’ eyes in panel 3. Overall I’m very happy with it. Not sure if people will get the joke right away… or at all.

A podcast is in the works. I need to edit it down so it doesn’t seem like there was a lot of lag (because there was wireless arg.) Also I just registered for Otakon. Anyone want to do a Mistakes of Youth meetup? If so please leave a comment on this entry and we’ll see about organising something.

I think I almost have a job. Maybe. I’d like to secure something soon and start making money for Otakon 2007. I plan to clean Hendane of its CCS doujins, among a few other series.

Another short rant, but I don’t have much to talk about. Blogging has sucked most rant topics away for the time being.

The art site has been updated with fanart of Danny Choo’s mascot, Mirai Suenaga. Kind of NSFW.

Chapter 6 can be acquired like so.

I missed Girls Bravo on its initial fansub run in 2004 (having only got into digisubs late 2004/early 2005.) I’ve been buying it on and off since Otakon 2005, and I just now have the sixth and final volume.

There is just something about this show. I don’t know why I like it. I know it’s trash, but it’s just so honest about it. Do I admire its honesty? Could it be because I have a soft spot for the harem formula? Do I like its wacky brand of humour? Perhaps it’s actually one of humanity’s greatest achievements ever, just wrapped in the guise of a sexually charged harem show?

Oh, it’s because I have a penis. That’s right.

Some people think I’m one of those guys who hangs out with anime fans just to make fun of their favourite anime because I hate every anime ever. No. I’m not Daryl Surat. I love Japanese cartoons, and because I love them I’m extremely critical about them. As an artist, I am watching the work of my fellow artists, and good artists criticize other artists. I don’t write rants about why Gundam 00 is going to suck just because I want to shit on, I write rants like that I because I honestly love the franchise and hate the direction that it’s going in.

A true fan knows what’s crap, and knows what’s good. Someone who just consumes everything and likes it regardless of quality simply has no standards or taste. They are just casual consumers– hardly fans. Fans genuinely care about their hobby, and it’s only natural that they’d be annoyed at the industry when most of the titles out there are absolutely terrible. I’d like to think the majority of Japanese otaku fit my description of being “true fans.” However, my hope is wavering, considering the amount of tripe that clogs the airwaves.

I think as a fan I’m pretty bad. Gundam Seed and Gundam Seed Destiny are both horrible shows, but I’m still buying them. Probably just because I think they’re funny, but it’s not teaching the industry anything except for that “this dumb shit sells.”

Anyway, the point of this was to dispel any kind of misconceptions that I hate anime, because that’s not true. I like a lot of things passionately, but I have strict standards. Because I’m a fan.