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

Man, they’re seriously catering to the lolicon otaku in this one. Other highlighs include Lucky Star, Shugo Chara, Yotsunoha (the anime sucks but I’ll be damned if Nono isn’t a totally cute design), Kyouran Kazoku Nikki and Zero no Tsukaima. I’d love to have it, since my walls are stuck in mid-2007, but I really have no money right now. Also, not like I’d be able to put up this Murasaki one, since I’m living with my parents. My 3 or 4 Kodomo no Jikan posters are bad enough…

Once I start work I should just get that year-long Megami subscription with my first paycheck…

Subatomic Brainfreeze brought this video to my attention, and I feel it’s worth talking about– if only just to pick it apart in the same way that this guy picks apart fansubs. I guess I’ll also take this opportunity to do the “My Perfect Fansub” post I’ve been planning but have never done for some reason. It’s two blog posts for the price of one!

This OtaKing guy actually gets it pretty right for a decent portion of his video. I too think that most translation notes are extraneous, and notes on cultural references can be delegated to an attached/downloadable PDF/txt/html/whatever file. I also think leaving shit untranslated is lazy, but at the same time am indifferent to honorifics. I guess I just got used to that stuff. His bit about screen clutter is good, too.

He does however kind of shoot himself in the toes. His attitude is no better than the that of the fansubbers he’s bashing, and his animated avatar is really quite cheesy (I do respect his animation work, though, but that’s only because I can’t animate for shit.) Near the end he becomes too nitpicky, getting on the cases of Shinbo shows like Pani Poni Dash and Zetsubou Sensei. The fact that ADV’s release of Pani Poni looks exactly like Oyasumi’s and gg’s kind of destroys his argument, but I guess he’s just not used to anime with lots of on-screen text. Not really a surprise, I guess, since according to everything on his DevArt page, he’s stuck in 1987.

Oh yeah, and we all know that all VHS fansubs weren’t prime examples of translation genius. I know. I watched them when I was younger.

Anyways, my idea of a perfect fansub is quite simple– white/yellow text in Arial or some other sans-serif font with a decent, competent translation, and any notes would be shown at a screen at the end or in an downloadable file I’d never read. Softsubs would be nice, but a hardsubbed release like this wouldn’t bother me. Of course, I’d like for openings/endings to be free of karaoke, and I would also like no overlays (that’s become something of a fad now-a-days.)

The only group which really subs stuff in this manner is ADTRW, and they never finish anything. That said, the current style of fansubbing doesn’t really bother me. To be honest, even with all their shit all the stuff I watch is bearably done.

God, I really can’t write today.

After a very stressful yesterday/last night, I finally have a sexy working version of XP running on this machine. It took blood, sweat, tears and the help of many great men. Thanks go out to Rob, Randall and Chase for helping me get this sucker installed.

It works great! It feels just like my old computer except for Photoshop starts up in 5 seconds and nothing slows down ever. The real test of this machine’s power will come in the form of some epic Photoshopping (which should happen today or tomorrow), but as of right now things are more or less perfect! The only losses from all this were Dell’s little mini-view thing, but that didn’t do much but look kind of cool and space-age-ish anyway, and my Hizashi no Naka no REAL save game. Well, it’s not really a loss since the harddrive on my old PC is still intact and I probably backed it up but I have no idea where to find it. Any fellow lolicon out there have ideas? Alternatively, a full save file would be good… I could never get past 75% complete…

Normal comicing/blog posting will resume shortly~

Not sure how I feel about Vista. People have told me I should keep it installed, since it’ll use all of 4 of the gigs of RAM I paid for, but it’s causing more problems than making anything easier. I can live with its aesthetic, but other very basic things are wrong here. For instance, when copying over all of my fonts, there were a number of duplicates. It asked if I wanted to replace the dupes, but of the options it gave me, none of them were “yes to all” or “no to all”. As a result, I had a stay there clicking away until all my fonts installed. Also, the OS basically prompts you about everything and is too secure for its good (ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO INSTALL THE THING YOU JUST CLICKED ON etc etc etc.) I’ll give it a spin for a few days, but I’m really leaning towards just loading up XP, especially considering the fact that my scanner doesn’t work with Vista (I can still scan through the laptop, though)

Anyway, other than OS issues the new machine works great. I will however miss the old guy, though. I used my old Vaio desktop for something like 6 years, and I guess I became attached.

I have no idea when I’m going to colour this. Probably soon, though. I’m experimenting with defining various background elements in pencil, rather than drawing the whole background on the computer later. I feel it might make the picture seem more unified, or something. Going to go for a “painted” look here. Colouring would probably be easier with a tablet, but I’ll make due with my mouse… I really need a tablet. I should set up a PayPal donation thing, or something.

Yeah, I know this is an anime blog, but this is like the only movie I’ve watched in a cinema since like 2004.

So, Indy 4. It was pretty good. Captured a lot of the magic of the originals while mixing it up a bit with some wacky shit. As far as plot goes, it’s probably the most ridiculous one out of the four, but that doesn’t really hurt it at all. Though, as a Jones movie, it kind of falls flat. While all the chases and fights are good, it feels like it’s going through the motions now.

This one kind of falls between Temple of Doom and Last Crusade for me. It’s a lot better than Temple (not a difficult thing to do) but not quite as epic Last Crusade. It doesn’t even touch Raiders, which will forever be my favourite.

Also, it really suffered from lack of Sallah!

Code Geass won’t win any awards for outstanding writing, but I’ll be damned if this stuff isn’t extremely entertaining. It’s like a 24 minute party each week, and everyone’s invited. The problem with having a guest list like this is; while you’ll get some dudes who really know how to party it up, you’ll also get some dead serious types who take all the fun out of the whole affair. You know, those guys who write the Code Geass entries on Wikipedia and sometimes forget to write in the historical present.

Code Geass is fun. It is not something meant to be taken entirely seriously. It’s a show that concerns itself with giant, toyetic, multi-coloured robots and plans that are about as plausible as the plot of a Golgo 13 episode. Yet, despite this, you have an entire legion of fans who treat this thing like the End of Evangelion. They’re the kind of people who take you extremely seriously when you crack a sarcastic joke. They somehow miss the irony here, which I find quite difficult since it hits me in the face like a sack of bricks episode after episode.

Geass is not deep. Geass is not complicated. Geass is not clever. Geass is crazy. It’s motherfucking insane. It has the kind of plot that only a night of heavy drinking and drug use could produce, and that’s why I love it. It beats me in the face each week with a giant WHAT bat,  and more often than not it beats me way more than once. It’s a good time.

What ruins that good time is the fans, though. I mean seriously, how many times are you going to take the same joke seriously? It took me four episodes before I learned that Code Geass wasn’t going to be serious business, so I don’t see why these guys haven’t even so much as considered that their holy grail of alleged exceptional writing may not be as serious as they think two seasons in.

I’ve never had a good relationship with Type-Moon. My first run-in with them was in the form of the Fate/Stay Night anime over two years ago, and I went into that with the bar set quite high due to the original’s high level of praise. I came out of it severely disappointed. The fans did, too, but that doesn’t change the fact that this was my first impression of Type-Moon, and first impressions are everything. Since then, I’ve had something of a bias against them. So naturally, when Kara no Kyoukai was announced, I hardly even cared.

My fanboy ears did perk up a bit when I heard UFOTable was on the job, though. While I’m not a fan of everything UFOTable puts out, they’re a good studio and I was confident they’d do justice to Type-Moon’s allegedly legendary brand of writing and produce something that wasn’t an insult to my intelligence. They almost did it, too! If only they had more than 50 minutes…

I’ll get the ugly stuff out of the way first: this writing is pretty bad. I understand that this one movie is the first in a series of seven, but a complete lack of introduction and/or exposition about these characters is pretty unacceptable. The movie should spend less time talking about flying and floating and more time establishing who these characters are and just what the fuck it is they do. The plot progression is pretty choppy, too, but I think that actually works. They way they present the story makes it seem more complicated than it actually is, but it works decently. Aside from that, though, this writing sucks. Too much wishy washy BS and pretentious musings about nothing for my tastes. Give me Eva over this any day.

Thankfully, the movie is just about perfect in every other way. UFOTable can put out some pretty good TV animation, so them plus a sexy movie budget is quite the site to see. It’s almost GITS:Innocence level, except for with less bad 3D graphics. Lighting effects, backgrounds and character animation are all top notch. The cinematography is great, too– the movie has a lot of great, well composed shots that almost distract me from the silly dialogue. Sure, they’re not Shinbo or Anno level, but what is? As far as music goes, the soundtrack doesn’t especially grab me but it works well in the context of the film. I’m not really a Yuki Kajiura fan anyway.

I know I sound like I’m taking a crap on this movie, but in retrospect it wasn’t an all together unpleasant experience, I just wasn’t all that impressed. The visuals and the rest are captivating, but the story is just so stupid that it leaves something of a giant stain on the whole affair. Type-Moon fans will eat it up, but I guess guys like me will still wonder just what all the fuss is about.

also: badass female leads suck. women should fate/stay in the kitchen

I’m not sure if I’ve made it very public on this site, but for those who don’t know, I’m currently in the process of applying to study in Japan in the spring of 2009. The biggest hurdle to get over was grades, since Sophia University requires a 3.0+ GPA to get in. Thankfully, my grades for this semester were nearly flawless (I got mostly As, and scrapped by with a C+ in math) so that’s taken care of. Now I’m focusing on the paperwork, which is mostly straightforward except for this goddamn Certificate of Eligibility form. Looking at it is almost like looking into the eyes of death itself. Just try and see if you can imagine this: 4 pages, both in Japanese and badly translated English with no sense of design at all. It is the most fearsome bit of paper I’ve ever seen– an assault of kanji and compact, cramped English text with very little breathing room. Reading the thing is a challenge, especially considering a lot of the English translation reads something like English Akiba Blog.

Thankfully I’m nearly done with that form. There are a lot of areas I’ve left blank, but that’s only because I really think I should go over them with my study abroad advisor so I don’t screw up. Beyond that, I just have some areas that I need to go over with my parents and professors, and after that’s mostly smooth sailing. It’s pretty much guaranteed that I’ll make it over there, but given my experience it’s best not to get excited until things are 100%.

Also: Thanks for everyone’s help with my new computer. It’s currently on its way here and should arrive on Wednesday…

Story is my main desktop is just getting old and stupid and the laptop is a pretty beat up little thing that wasn’t all that good to begin with and now has a stubborn bit of spyware on it. I can live with the laptop for now, but my desktop is in dire need of a replacement. I’ve had it for something 5 or 6 years, so its time has come.

Obviously I do a lot of Photoshop work, so I need a machine that’ll be able to keep up with that. I was thinking of getting something like this with a 500GB HDD and 3GB RAM. Does anyone have any experience with these built-to-order deals? Do they end up working well? Oh, and can someone give me advice on what processor and stuff to choose? What power protector to choose?? I am not a computer person at all.

Too scared to switch over to the Macs. I’ve been using Windows all my life, so you know.

edit: So uh apparently my laptop is infected with this horrible smitfraud c.coreservice thing and when I google that all I get are horror stories. Apparently I shouldn’t even be connected to the internet with this thing on my laptop, but I can’t even get on the internet with my desktop (the wireless adapter decided to stop working) so this is The Only Way. I’ll probably reformat this thing tomorrow since I don’t want to go through all the drama it takes to get smitfraud off so hopefully reformatting will do the trick. It’s not like I have anything special on this machine anyway. Ugh, what a headache.

I finished Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei a good while ago in its most raw of forms, but upon the release of the last episode with subtitles I decided to watch it again, this time with the convenience of a translation. However, this rewatch wasn’t a full marathon. I stopped watching the subs after a.f.k. dropped off the map and decided to continue on when either a) a.f.k. came back or b) anon/volans completed their subs. b) came first, so I downloaded episodes 5-13 and watched them over the course of a few days.

Subtitles certainly did help the experience somewhat. Watching the show raw, I could get the gist of a number of routines, but a lot also left me in the dark. What didn’t help the experience was the speed at which I watched the episodes. This show just does not work marathoned.

After Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei gets done with introducing the characters, it switches to a pretty basic formula. By the time we get to Zoku, all the girls are already introduced and the episode format is changed so that instead of one sketch across 24 minutes, we get three. As one can imagine, watching these episodes back to back does get a tad repetitive. This doesn’t especially hurt the enjoyment I derive from the show, since the episodes are still enjoyable as pieces of Art, but as far as comedy goes it’s hard to laugh at the same thing over and over again. Shinbo & Co. try to mix it up a bit with some bits of animation and voice acting madness, but that only goes so far.

Taking the show in small doses is probably the best way to go about watching it. When I was watching the show weekly, I laughed at it more, even if I didn’t understand a few things. I think Zetsubou really benefited from its weekly airing, but given the rate at which subs surfaced, it was hard for non-Japanese speakers to truly have that experience. As such, people who try to marathon the thing now may grow sick of it due to its shamelessly repetitive nature.

Another thing kind of hurts the experience for us English speakers are the subtitles. I said before that they help, but they also detract from the experience somewhat. Zetsubou is a wordy show. Not just in dialogue, but when it comes to on-screen text as well. Because of this overload of text, slow readers like myself can only half concentrate on the voice actors’ delivery of their lines, which is a shame since this show has some killer acting which really helps push the humour across.

I guess like all Shinbo shows, Zetsubou is best appreciated if you’re pretty well-versed in the Japperknees language as well as culture. This is of course only more of an incentive for me to continue on with my Japanophile efforts and secure a trip or ten over Japan.

Original Post

As expected, this comic came out late due to my moving back to DC for the summer. It also suffers from post-trip fatigue since the art is worse than usual, but that’s also affected by the fact that I tried to copy the Macross F style and failed. It seems the guys actually making the show are failing with that too, so I’m not all that bothered. That one colouring error in panel 3 is really off-putting, though. As far as scripting goes, I figure I’m allowed one stupid comic a year, and I really wanted so make something about Alto’s obsession with paper airplanes. Did you see the focus he was putting into making that one in episode 6? Seriously. Guy has a problem.

Instead of making two comics this week to make up for the missed comic last week, I’m just going to skip a comic since if I made another comic now it’d just turn out looking bad. I just need to relax for a bit now.

Not much going on this week, so I’ll get on to Kurenai and Kyouran after I post this stuff up. Later.

rant title taken from here

Currently bugging Link to turn me into a Touhou fag by any means necessary. This is basically an attempt to up my nerd cred– after that, I just gotta step up my Japanese and read 2ch regularly. Also, I don’t want to get lost whenever some thread gets Touhou hijacked on the Megatokyo Forums.

C’mon guys, seriously. What is this, an episode of Gundam 00?

But seriously why the fuck does this show have more fanservice than Hayate no Gotoku? Nagi barely got this kind of treatment!!

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Best part is they use this image for June; my birthday month. It’s like they knew all my favourite characters???

Apparently Mistakes of Youth (the comic, not the blog) has been around for 2 years as of today. 93 comics in 2 years isn’t so bad, I guess. Gotta step it up a bit!

Seven minutes, twenty-two seconds.

Download

Cathy has all the stickers on her bag. She spent so much on them that she lost weight because she doesn’t have any money to spend on sweets.

I cannot believe it!

When you think about it, Code Geass really isn’t all that different from your run-of-the-mill harem show in what it sets out to do. It tries to cover it up, but at its core, it’s shameless otaku wish fulfillment.

For starters, let’s examine Lelouch’s qualities. He’s a lot like you!!

• Not very athletic, weak
• Does “nerdy” things such as read books (light novels) and play chess (computer games)
• Has a grudge against society
• His father disapproves of his actions
• Can only speak his mind when he’s completely and totally anonymous
• Has a sister complex

Now let’s take a look at what he has and the things that happen to him.

• Has a face that is not totally hideous
• Gets the power to force his will on people unconditionally
• Has a harem of beautiful women (complete with moe moe lolis and sexy onee-sans)
• Has an army of followers that will trust him no matter what
• Gets to pilot giant robots
• Is able to inspire fear in the hearts of the people he hates

Clearly the reason why Geass is so popular among the otaku is because they can relate to Lelouch and and enjoy living out their fantasies through him.

Well would you look at that

May need to ctrl+f5 for things to work

I’ve mostly gotten over this, but to some degree, my point of reference for things is still the 1990s. For instance, when someone says “10 years ago” my mind might think of the 1980s for a flash, but then it’ll jump back to reality and realize that 10 years ago was actually 1998… am I getting old?

Zettai Karen Children, with its so-90s-it-could-kill-a-man art style really rubs it in my face that I will be all of 20 years old in a month. Yes, 20 years old isn’t that old, but considering shows that look like this were made something like 20 years ago, I just can’t help but feel like an old fart already. I got into anime in 1999, near the turn of the century, but given what I had available to me, lots of what I watched came from the early to mid 90s. Zettai Karen Children does a good job in reminding me of those days when I was 11 years old and browsing sites like this (I can’t believe that’s still online.)

I can understand shows like Pokemon retaining their 90s aesthetic since it’d be weird to just change the art style, but something totally new like Zettai Karen Children having 90s art is just MEAN.

Original Post

Looking back through the archives, I noticed that I hadn’t even so much as touched upon the issue that is Rosario + Vampire. To atone for this grievous sin, here is a comic which more or less sums up my feelings on the upcoming sequel. I have nothing against fanservice shows, but R+V is a pretty good example of how not to do one. It does get points for Shuuichi Ikeda, though. As far as this comic goes, I’m pretty happy with how the script turned out, and I will admit I was partially influenced by Kaiji when I wrote the punchline. The art is fine– I’m happy with panels 1 and 2, but panel 3 is all too rushed. It looked great in messy sketch form, but not so much when I cleaned it up.

The Ascii Weekly article from a few weeks ago gave the site some pretty decent exposure. I got about 600 more page views that usual and a blog entry! Who knows, maybe I’ll even get a translation deal! (no)

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My Brave Face

this is the meaning of your life, and this is the meaning of your smile~

I installed Perfect Dark a while ago, and was instantly turned off when I found I couldn’t read a thing given the font size was entirely too small. Absolutely disgusted, I immediately parted ways with the program and went back to using Share. Recent news prompted me to brush the dust off of PD, and thanks to the help of a certain troll, all is fixed. Man, this program rocks. You get a whole bunch more results than Share, and you can even search within results. But the thing that really sold me was the fact that I found the Cymbals’ out of print EP MISSILE&CHOCOLATE with little issue. Thanks, PD. Thanks.

Since I actually know how to find The Important Things on Nico Nico now, I’ll probably be posting shit from there a lot when I have nothing else to do. That said, I did not find the video I’m about to post– it was brought to my attention by Link down at Super Youkai Warhead. If you have an account, click away. If not then… I’m too lazy to find it on YouTube. Besides, this shit’s better with wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww all over the screen.

This dream wasn’t as crazy as the last one, but it was All Go Nagai, All The Time so it’s probably worth mentioning, especially considering Everything I Learned About Go Nagai I Leared Off Wikipedia And I Guess The Devilman Manga. So basically, this dream was my own wacky take on Uncle Go’s franchises that I barely know anything about!!

Stuff happened that I don’t remember before this, but at one point in the dream things change into an episode of Devilman. Keep in mind that I’ve never watched Devilman past the opening and ending, but I have read the manga. Suffice it to say, this episode of Devilman playing in my mind very much not like the manga, and probably the anime, given it was quite a subdued a affair. I’m not sure who the main character was. I’m almost sure it wasn’t Akira Fudo, but it could have been me in the shoes of Akira Fudo. The dream had a strange point of view. At points it was in the first person, but other scenes didn’t have Main Character Guy at all, so it’s hard to say. It’s a dream, after all. What I do know for sure is that Amon was around and sayin’ stuff in my head.

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