Comic Site Rant: Watashi Rashiku
I really like how this comic came together. Everything from the lineart, to the colouring, to the backgrounds looks almost exactly as planned. I’m sure there are rough patches here and there, but I really like this one. I’ve actually kind of been practicing at drawing things I’m not too good at (like girls lol) and I think the fruits of that practice shows here. The lineart for the comic after this one looks pretty good, too. As far as scripting goes, I guess the humour here lies more in the comments than it does in the script. If you haven’t already guessed, this comic is a Nico Nico Douga parody, and like Nico offers, here’s a version of the comic with comments “turned off” for those who want it. But the comic’s only funny with self-depreciating comments like “kore wa hidoi” anyway!
Another week, another Anime Blog Award awarded, it seems. This time it’s the blogger’s choice Gold Award for best blog comic. So yeah, thanks to you guys who voted in that.
Lately I’ve started using pixiv, the Japanese and infinitely less-gay version of DeviantArt. I’ve been looking at cool art there and posting some of my own, and surprisingly I’m being well received. Two different users have already favourited both of the pictures that I’ve uploaded, and I’ve also managed to get one comment already. And before anyone asks– yes, I’m writing everything in Japanese. Instead of forcing English upon these people, I figured it’d be better to force broken Japanese on them!
Everyone’s heard about this by now, but I figured I’d talk more about the AKB Massacre here. Internet reaction has ranged from truly shocked and saddened to “do you know how hard it is to kill people with a knife?” Naturally, I’m saddened, since murder is a horrible thing and the fact that fellow otaku probably went down makes it worse. I just hope things settle down by the time I make it over there.
I finished Nadesico the other day, watched the movie, and came out relatively satisfied. The series was slightly lighter than I expected it to be, but that’s fine. The show was mostly composed of one-shots with some story episodes thrown in. The one-shots (I hate calling them “filler” when 75% of the show is composed of these episodes) ranged from moderately entertaining to very good, with some of my favourites coming at the end. The movie was great, and really recaptured the fun of the series while telling a decent, compact story. It could have used an extra 20 minutes to breathe, but as far as anime movies based on TV shows go, it was killer. I especially really liked the clean, sexy animation and updated designs. There’s this one great shot where Ruri gets out of the bath, and you can see all down her body. It’s amazing.
If you’ve been following the blog, you’d know that recently I’ve been getting a lot of manga (mostly due to Borders and B&N gift cards) to make up for all the manga I’ve not been reading. Thus far I’ve only barely scratched the surface, and am only part-way through the first Keroro Gunsou collection. I’ve also downloaded a bunch of things, of which I’ve also barely made a dent into. I read one chapter of Maken Ki, a new-ish fanservice piece which gets by entirely on detailed pantyshots and boob shots. I guess the script would be as readable as ToLoveRu if the translators didn’t have both English and Japanese as second languages. Aside from that, I’ve also read all of what’s been translated of Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge, and it’s pretty great. You’d think it’d exploit its silly concept more, but the story puts its focus primarily around the developing relationship between the main hero and the girl who fights the chainsaw man. It’s not crazy original, but I like it. The art is cool and angular, and at times looks a little awkward, but to good effect. I recommend it.
That’s all for this week. I start work in a couple of days, so updates may get effected by that.They probaby won’t, but there’s a headsup just in case. Later.
Dat dada da dat da, omae to!
Nice job nico-izing the comic, it’s a great effect.
(oh, and the date in the comic image is 8 years off – is that a joke I’m not getting, or a mistake?)
Oh, whoops.
Great job! I wwwwwwed so hard.
One question wildarmsheero: how do you draw the shadows in the hair? Plain old brush? I’m having a hard time with those, mostly because the sudden change in angles does not come off well even with smaller sizes of brushes.
With hair what I do is select the hair colour with the magic wand (or select all the hair with colour range) then use the pen tool to cut out all the areas I don’t want shaded. Once all those areas are cut out, I fill the remaining selections with black on the shade layer.
Hmmm, the crimson oath. Wonderful~
i love what you did with the nico comments lol.
I saw the title first before anything else and that was a dead giveaway. Can’t complain at the results at all.
GJ!
XD awesome, but being a noob at nico nico the only thing I know is the Futae no kiwami AHHHHHHH one, so I’m in the dark here, not to say I didn’t laugh hard at this one X)
Yes, Yoshiki Fukuyama can make ANYTHING awesome.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ga_aTC1MCY0
@wildarmsheero: Thanks! I’ll try that.
… great, now I’m gonna have to watch Nadesico completly for a 10 second moment.
You know it’s actually not that hard to kill with a knife. Just a quick stab to the kidneys and your victim will suffer so much pain that their throat closes off and they can’t scream or yell for help, etc. The only sound they make is when their bodies (now dead do to suffocation since when their throat closed off, air could go neither in nor out) when they hit the floor. Learned it off of some documentary about silent killings and assassins or something like that. Of course, you could also just slit the throat, but that can get messy if you don’t know what you’re doing, and I highly doubt that this otaku had been trained in using a knife.
www
How much of Negative Happy chainsaw edge is out? I got the first chapter but can’t find anymore of it.
First four chapters. I got them off of IRC.
I don’t know for sure what those kanji are in the first frame (I’ll admit I absolutely suck at kanji), but is that first comment line asking if that’s how women are in America? I thought the “moee!” line was a nice humorous touch though! And were you trying to criticize yourself with the “this is awful” line?
Anyway, this was definitely spot on, flaming red mass of lyrics and all! I definitely got a good laugh from this one!
And uh, nice job on Tina’s outfit btw… I like the slight essence of Zero no Tsukaima in the black and pink frilly parts…
kore wa america no manga desu ka?wwwwwwww
Ah, so that’s the kanji for manga….
iie, kore wa america no 4koma desu!
I really should get a kanji dictionary or something…the Genki textbooks don’t really have a whole lot of kanji.
Hey wildarmsheero!
Good to hear some statements from you regarding that massacre but all other bloggers I follow are already worrying their heads off whether or not this will revive the the public’s distrust and otaku’s paranoia that characterized the post-Miyazaki era. I’d love to see your opinion on that side of the issue, too. I know it’s always sad when people die and especially when slaughtered so randomly, but this time there might be even more bad consequences, with Akiba as the crime scene and an otaku as the culprit. So when you go to Akiba soon, it might be worth taking the chance and talking to some of the local otaku, asking how they feel about the whole issue…
This comic came as a shock for me because.
-I’ve decided to try out Busou Renkin recently (I’m on episode 3)
-and I have been yelling “MAKKA NA CHIKAI!”… quite alot.
-the show is hilarious because Jun Fukuyama is most surprising as hotblooded shonen (cause he does a awesome job).
Anyway. Thanks for offering the comic both ways so we could see the effect of the comments. :)
assualtmech yoneda: I very much agree with your feelings
>>yoneda
The otaku in Kato seems pretty weak. All he had were a few comic books and said like one crazy thing. All the smart publications seem to be focusing on how his life generally sucked.
Busou Renkin is the best Shounen Jump series of this decade, and I do love its presence in Nico Nico Douga. So this comic was muchly appreciated. Thank you.
>>wildarmsheero
The smart publications might do so, but if the popular ones rather blame his otakishness out of sensationalism, it might still have a bad overall impact. I think even in the Miyazaki case lots of other stuff went wrong in his life, but instead of focusing on them the mass media successfully besmirched the public image of the otaku…
Well, Miyazaki had tonnes of eromanga and slasher movies. This guy only had some Touhou games and doujin music.
I don’t get how collecting slasher movies brings you anything closer to being an otaku in the modern visual culture sense of the word. So wouldn’t the media have been wiser to attack slasher movie fans instead? And where was the bill to ban slasher movies (compared to the current initiative against 2d lolicon)?
Miyazaki had this crippled hand issue and his grandfather died after being the only person supporting him for years. I think even back then the media knew that these things were more probable to have drived him nuts than reading eromanga or watching slasher movies…
Well, what I’m saying is it’s probably easier to make the Otaku link with Miyazaki than it is with Kato. I mean, yeah Kato had some otaku stuff, but the connection is pretty weak.
Then again, I don’t know much about how the Japanese media works. All the information I’m getting is coming from the usual Japan Blogs.
δΉ™
Love how the series exploded thanks to this most awesome OP… the series itself was excellent, and I was so happy to see it become an anime. XD
Rets has frikking awesome shirts. :o
omg get a life you stupid bastardsthis anime sux you are ttly queer L2P WoW, btw my name is ben rymer