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

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What have I been doing over the past two days? Well, aside from moving back into my apartment, looking at porno animes, watching “To Catch a Predator” clips and catching up on my backlog, I’ve also been reading up on the FALL 2007 ANIME TV SEASON. At first I was reading terrible blog entires written in what kind of looked like English, but probably wasn’t, and that eventually made me bleed out of my ears. So, instead of killing myself slowly, I hit up the ol’ ADTRW and found this thread, which lists every new show with a nice, succinct description, and sometimes youtube previews. NICE! What follows is a list of shows organized by IMPORTANCE along with witty comments.

Wow, I thought I didn’t have a lot, but apparently I do. :(

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Original Post

You know maybe I should get a constant job instead of always worrying about running out of money to spend on useless crap. But enough about that, on to the comic. This is kind of extension of what I was trying to do here, but pulled off better. I was going for the Shinkai look with the sunset, and tried to pull off some neat angles. Panels 2 and 3 didn’t come out as striking as I wanted them too, but the last two turned out a little better than I had originally envisioned, so it all works out in the end. I’m trying to pump as much moe as I can out of Tina lately. I like the design of her shirt, but the skirt is a little on the eh side. Overall she kind of looks like cake, but that’s fine. The writing sounds a bit too much like an advertisement, but I find it hard to make these exchanges sound natural. Maybe because they aren’t Oh well. I promise the next comic is better. I just need to draw it.

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Original Post

Here is a comic. Will update with more in the near future. This weekend has been kinda busy.

WHY IS JAPAN ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS?!

Reasons as to why Japan may be a completely ridiculous nation:

• Some how one of the retards from Kasimasi Girl Meets Girl made it into Saimoe… and won her first round!
• Characters like Yukari from Shana and real Makoto from Kanon, some how made it in at all, despite being in their respective shows for insignificant amounts of time.
• Primula lost to some StrikerS bitch
• For some reason a completely boring character like Hinagiku is more popular the Nagi :???:

On the plus side:

• Nagi and Siesta both it made it past the initial slaughter fest, so that’s all well and good.
• Hidamari Sketch characters are winning! Shock! I guess the otaku of Japan do have some shred of taste. Not saying that American fans have better taste, though. I mean look at all the Naruto retards at cons.

So, basically all of those reasons have to do with Saimoe. Except the one about Hinagiku. That just bothers me. Especially because EVERY FUCKING HAYATE DOUJIN IS OF HER. DAMMIT SHARE GIMME MY NAGI DOUJINS. C72 is thusfar unimpressive. This however may change that assessment, provided there’s not too much Hinagiku (though I fear the worst.)

I hate you, Japan! I hate the characters you like!

My Nagi t-shirt came in today. Nippon Export said four weeks, but I reckon it took just under two to get here. I bought it online because I figured it’d be cheaper than buying it from Sasuga at Otakon ($45), however I ended up paying $50…

It still looks very nice, though. I’ll wear it around the campus and see what kind of looks I get.

Also, Nippon Export rules at shipping.

I honestly hope this isn’t how they go about shipping their figures.

Anyway, off to have lunch and watch a bunch of anime that I didn’t watch yesterday due to me updating the site, or me being stuck in scenic Arlington Virginia for about three hours…

Updated artsite with some character drawings

Going to update the character section with drawings that don’t suck.

Trailer

A very promising trailer which gives me high hopes for the animated series. All the animation looks very fluid and energetic, and it should be given the manga it’s based off. Actually, provided the production values stay high, and they don’t botch up the story, this may be better than the manga! The manga fails on some counts simply because it doesn’t move. KnJ is a work which demands movement. I’m still a little unsure on what the overall quality will be, given it’s coming from newbie Studio Barcelona. The did a passable job on Dai Mahou Touge, and seem to be doing a fairly exceptional job on Nanatsuiro Drops four episodes in. Let’s hope they keep getting better.

School Days is an extremely frustrating show. This is mostly due the leading man, Makoto, who is one of the most irritating romance leads I’ve come across in a while. Not that I have much experience with the genre mind you, most of the romances I watch are also comedies. I still find he’s pretty annoying by any standard, because he just doesn’t know what he wants. So far the show has played out like HURRR I WANT KOTONOHA then HURR I TOUCHED YOU GOOD NOW I WANT YOU SEKAI. And I’m left going, “wow, does this dolt just think with his penis?” So far he’s really offered no other reason besides “durr I wanna touch your private parts” for having any interest in these girls. I find the only reason he’s gravitated towards Sekai is because she doesn’t put up much resistance, and of course he goes in for the kill RIGHT when Kotonoha opens up. If he starts two-timing consistently, then I’m scared of the resulting drama. At least the show is 12 episodes, so it’ll be quick and little painless. God, I just feel sorry for Kotonoha at this point.

…hang on! Isn’t Kotonoha School Days’ legendary YANDERE?! I kind of wish she’d kill Makoto, though. God

Also, Kotonoha’s large, bouncy, breasts have renewed by interest in well-endowed girls. However, her sister provides enough loli balance to keep me appropriately deviant.

My father rented 300 against his better judgment today, on BLURAY. BLURAY because my brother has a PS3 and we figured it’d be neat to test it out. From all the internet talk about it, I assumed it would be at least mindless manliness, but it wasn’t even that. It was just dumb :(

Maybe my idea of manliness is just more in line with this. I dunno.

Original Post

This comic is pretty terrible. Well, the art is anyway. The joke is fine, I suppose. I don’t see anything wrong with it. Pretty true to life, except for the fact that I’ll be quiting my own job in a day. The drawings are all wrong here, and the backgrounds are pretty bad. I’m not good with things like stores, since they demand a lot of things that look different. Me, being lazy just decided to make everything the same. Yeah, that entire aisle is cans. Cans of what? Who knows… I do kind of like the opening shot. Can you all tell that’s meant to be a fish-eye from the shelf?  I’ll really try to make the next one better, I promise.

I don’t have much to say past this. I haven’t watched any anime today, as I’ve spent all day on this, or putting up 10 Megami posters (just got 88, lots of nice posters.) In my final weeks before school, I’ll try to update the site a bit– update the character section with better drawings, add an introduction, update the reference guide, and some other things. I’ll also try to completely overhaul my artsite and edit up the Otakon podcast.

So yeah, that’s it, later.

Here you are

Is this a lost cause yet?

For those who don’t go out of their way to watch old shows and study about anime, Ashita no Joe was a fairly influential 80-some episode series by Mushi Pro from the early ’70s. I guess about a month ago, some group put out the first three episodes. I doubt they’re going to do anymore, but I picked them up just because I wanted to at least check it out. They didn’t yet reach the point where he becomes a pro boxer, but the first three episodes gave me a good enough taste of the show.

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Updated~

Not recommended if you don’t like seeing 13 year olds in bikinis.

After this: KnJ 13, comic 58.

I am a newbie to the whole Saimoe thing. Back in the far off year of 2006, right when the Saimoe of that year ended, I had only just heard of the event and had a minor grasp as to what it was all about. One year and many online discussions later, I am more or less fully prepared and informed about this thing. I kind of put off learning how to vote for a bit, since it sounded complicated, and because of that I missed my chance to vote for Nagi. She passed anyway, so it’s nothing to worry about. I’ll get another chance. My first votes went towards three characters I don’t particularly care about, but today I went for some favourites of mine: Konata, Isumi and Sae. Ok, not really favourites, but I actually like them more than the ones I casted votes for yesterday, so it’s something (and I do like Konata quite a bit.) I’m just waiting for when I can put in votes for Kaede, Primula, Siesta, Henrietta and Choco :3 Ah, I hope Kaede at least makes it through at least one round~

In other stupid wota news, I recently got my hands on my first issue of Megami. I ordered just the latest issue, but then decided to get the August issue just because. This issue doesn’t have too many posters that interest me. I ripped out a pic with Louise and stuck it up, along with a Nanatsuiro Drops, School Days and Doujin Work poster– all shows which I’m not totally in love with, but they make nice cheesecake for my walls (mostly cheesecake of girls who have no chests god I’m a pervert). Oh, there is that huge Lucky Star poster of Konata hugging Kagami in a bikini. God this room is like a fucking den of sin. The latest issue has a bunch of stuff I’m interested in, so I’m eagerly awaiting that. All of sudden wall real estate in this room has become quite a rarity. Once this new issue comes in I’ll have to kill some babies. I think I have one too many Shuffle! posters up…

I have a dilemma: I’m about the finish the Tenchi TV series, which by the way is mostly good due to nostalgia value, but seems a slightly above average series for its time. I prefer the first half to the second slightly, since it’s funnier. But yeah, I’m about to finish that up, and I need something else to re-watch.

I have a couple series out that I’ve been considering, mostly because I liked them enough when they aired/when I saw them, and I’ve been meaning to get around to watching them again. The series in question are: Giant Robo, Zeta Gundam, He is My Master, Shuffle!, Ah! My Goddess TV (both seasons), NHK ni Youkoso!, Lupin III series 1 and Shinigami No Ballad. This is a very strange list, I know. I have strange tastes. Who watches both Giant Robo and HiMM? And even then, since when does it become a dilemma to choose between the two? It is a mystery.

Chances are I’ll just watch Giant Robo before all of these because it’s short enough, and clearly one of the most important pieces of animation ever produced by human hands. After that, I may move on to Zeta Gundam (after reviewing the original movies again) as Zeta Gundam is awesome and must be viewed 700 times in any anime fan’s life time. After those two, I’ll go on re-watching the newer series from over the past three years. I would have put Karin and Air on that list, but they’re coming out on DVD now so I can just buy those. There are also a good amount of series I need to see for the first time. Things like Ideon, Cobra, Hokuto no Ken and Yamato 2. Maybe I should stop watching 10 new shows each season.

I was going to mix another post into this one about Saimoe, but this post became crazy long for some reason. I’ll make a Saimoe post later.

I feel bad deleting episodes of Sky Girls after I watch them, as I find that I am truly liking the show enough to archive it for at least some time. All the elements just work so well for me. The character design, the voice acting, the animation, the setting, the premise, all of it. It just works damn well. Well, at least in the first four episodes. It has about 22 episodes left to go, and things can easily go sour. However, with JC Staff at the helm, I have confidence.

Honestly, I have no idea why I’m even thinking about this show after watching it. Generally with these types of shows I just watch them, have a good time, then move on to the next thing. Maybe it’s because my expectations were fairly low, and I was just so throughly surprised by the show’s quality. However, I don’t know why my expectations were low in the first place– I loved the OVA and thought “wow this should be a series.” I guess I just like to play it safe.

I guess the main things that really make it for me are the extremely sexy character design, the likable but somewhat familiar characters and awesome animation. The other stuff is good enough to make the show a bit more intelligible than Girls Bravo, but not truly remarkable as of yet. But hey, it’s pretty neat. I hope it develops into a very corny yet entertaining drama. I love those.

I take pictures of these things now since the paper is too big, and I don’t feel like piecing together many scans of a rough sketch. Anyway, this is some Nagi fanart I’m doing. Sort of influenced by all the cheesecake posters in Megami. Thus far, all the Hayate posters in Megami have not been very fanservicey, so I felt I needed to fix that in some way. In general Hayate doesn’t have much fanservice associated it with it at all, even in the dakimakura (I like it, but just a bit more skin, please)! I guess that’s the curse of airing at around 10am on a Sunday.

I’m liking where this is going. I’ll leave it over night and look at it in the morning, just to see if anything wants to be changed, then I’ll go on to colouring. I think I’ll go back to cel-shading for this one.

You know, whenever I do pics like this I keep telling myself I should do something more artistic. I will. Eventually. I’d like to pump out more like this.

Original Post

Was completed on the 7th, but due to a power outage (nice going DC) and me being stuck on my brother’s PS3 until after midnight, it is being posted on the 8th. I am mostly happy with the CG work, even if it didn’t turn out exactly as planned. Tried to go Shinkai with a few panels just to try that out, and it works to some degree. Drawings are pretty bleh. Seems my job has thoroughly ruined my hands. I’ll try better next time. Hope you all can tell that’s Yuuko Gotou and Aya Hirano.

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Sorry for the delay, but here is chapter 12!

Preview footage

Yes, I understand everyone has seen this by now, but when I wanted to post about it my server was down. Anyway, If you’ve read my feelings about the first trailer elsewhere, you should know that I found issue with comments such as “it’s just the same but with prettier animation.” I argued that all the scenes that were similar were just so iconic that it’d be a sin to change them. And of course, when doing a project like this, you’ll throw all the “memorable moments” out in front of the audience first. However, after seeing this new footage, and this 15 second teaser, I’m beginning to lose hope. Sure, it could just be they’re trying to put more AND MORE “memorable moments” in all the preview footage, but I can’t shake the feeling that they just won’t be changing much at all, at least for the first installment. Gainax, please, don’t fail me now.

…and approved!

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Spoilers for Death Note after the jump

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The first of the four pillow covers that I ordered has come in, and it’s the lovely maid Siesta from Zero no Tsukaima.

Yet another lucky lady to keep me company at night. I wonder which side I’ll use the most （´・ω・`）

We were down for about a day or so due to a drive failure. As you can see, we’re back up and running now. Big thanks goes out to Zonaxx and his team of people at the datacenter for working hard to bring the system back up. Thanks a lot, guys. Because of this recent outage, much like Danny Choo, I’ve set up an alternate blog on wordpress.com for you guys to check if the server goes down, just to see what’s up. Chances are I won’t know myself, but hey, it’s something.

Now that that’s out of the way, here are some things I’m working on at the moment:

• Kodomo No Jikan chapter 12: Between Otakon and the translator disappearing for a while, there’s been a little delay in our progress. But I’m trying to get back up to speed now. Currently 6 pages into chapter 12.
• Comic 57: Line work is done, it’s just a matter of colouring it. And, as you may well know, that’s the toughest part. And for some reason I felt like drawing more than I needed for this comic.

The future:

• Otakon photos: I’ll probably do this after I quit my job in two weeks. I need a lot of time to sort through them.
• Otakon podcasts: Again, doing it after I quit my job. Editing takes time.

Soon I’ll be back in school, and I may even have a job so comic making and all that will be difficult, but I’ll shoot for one a week like always.

Look! at this product placement

I’ve been watching episodes of Darker Than Black lately. Despite my bias against the show when it first began, I’m starting to think it’s fairly decent TV. It doesn’t set my soul on fire like Gurren Lagann, and it’s not boner inducing laugh inducing like Hayate or Lucky Star. The enjoyment I derive from Darker Than Black is more the kind of enjoyment I get from watching older American films. Sure, the feeling is a bit watered down (perhaps DtB is just too Japanese in some ways) but I like it just fine.

The two episode story format is neat. It gives each story ample time to breathe, but even then the show bites off more than it can chew at points. There are  a number of stories where mysteries are put out there but never really touched upon afterwards. I’m hoping this is just a technique to make sure we keep watching for the answers, but Japanese animation has a spotty track record regarding that. While it sometimes works to leave things unresolved, DtB at the moment has a lot of loose ends that I’d like to see tied up in the end.

Also, what’s the deal with all the werid otaku references? CC look-a-like? A shota with Suiseiseki eyes? Is this a Chocosis reference? What? Srsly. Also I’m worried this series will attract a lot of yaoi fangirls when it hits stateside. BONES WHY DO YOU DO THIS?!

I generally don’t do this, but I felt like sharing my current desktop since it’s just so cute.

Nagi’s legs are so sexy~ I just want to jam it in right now~

I can’t wait for my dakimakura cover to come in :3

From here.

Fansubs/Raw
Bokura No: I watch it when it happens. Good stories, but the show doesn’t leave an impression on me.
Darker Than Black: Oh no I think I like it now. Eps 11-12 were pretty good, and 13-14 weren’t so bad either!
Dennou Coil: Fallen through the cracks.
Doujin Work: Sadly underwhelming. Those 2 chapters of the comic I read were better than all of this. I expect better from the Magipokaa studio. The 15 minute runtime makes it easy to watch though, so I’m not dropping.
First Gundam: Moar plz
Hayate no Gotoku: I honestly wish they would keep making this until I die. If the production keeps up (which it has for a good 18 eps) then this should be one smashing 51 episode run! Oh, and I’m in love with Nagi
iDOLM@STER XENOGLOSSIA: Um… yeah.
Lucky Star: Meta meta meta fest here. A show for the otaku of now. Will feel so outdated in a year, but it’s good stuff. I like it a lot. The slice of life stuff will probably help when it comes to the potential second viewing.
Otokojuku: ADTRW!!
Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei: Shinbo’s best work yet? Almost. I really like the new opening. So well done. Love the imagery.
School Days: Watching it at my leisure. Fairly well done romance series it seems.
Sky Girls: Pretty good take on a ridiculous concept. Really like the character design and production value.
Tenchi Muyo! TV: Almost done with this. Progress has slowed after Otakon (still making it through backlog.) Nostalgia is the main thing here. I think I like the first half better than the second, but it’s all good fun.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: If these spoilers are as sexy as people say they are, I can’t wait for more. It just gets better and better! Though latest arc is a touch slow.
Zero no Tsukaima 2: Oh my god this is like porn. I mean that in the best possible way.

Chopping Board
Moetan: Fun but could get old real quick.
Nanatsuiro Drops: Could get boring.

Stalling
Hidamari Sketch: Here and there.
Manabi Straight: Huh?
Negima!?: It happens when it happens.
Nodame Cantabile: What?

Dropped
Romeo x Juliet: Maybe I’ll marathon the last half at some point, but I just don’t care about it right now.
Seirei no Moribito: So boring.

Just watched the Code Geass special. CLIFFHANGER DAMMIT SUNRISE.

Finished
Hurricane Polymar:

Reading
Genshiken: Started it back up during Otakon. Still great stuff!
Kodomo no Jikan: Getting back on this.
Got Death Note 12 and NHK 3. Reading those soon.

Finally, it’s done.

Other things to do:

• Start on KnJ again (Our translator finally returned to the world of the living)
• Make a comic for this week (badly sketched, need to fix it up)