Mistakes of Youth: The Blog (Powered by EXCELLENCE!)

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If you follow my Pixiv account you would have seen me uploading these as they were completed. Of course, I censored them for Pixiv.

Oh man, last night at MIT they were giving away free shit. Considering I’m dangerously poor, I jump at any opportunity for free stuff, and boy did I jump!

Well, I guess I only jumped a little. I had to carry this all home by hand, you know! Anyways, we got some VHS tapes here, and the quality of the programming ranges from good, to bad, to ugly.

• The Good- Tenchi Muyo In Love, Urusei Yatsura Beautiful Dreamer: I actually own all of the Tenchi films on DVD, I just picked up this old release because my buddies and I watched this movie on VHS a long while back. This is the Japanese subbed version, though. We watched the dub. Since that’s all Potomac Video had. I haven’t seen anything Urusei Yatsura at all, but I hear this movie is pretty good. It’s directed by Oshii, so I guess it has no choice but to be good.
• The Bad- Dangaioh: A friend of mine loves Dangaioh as corny 80s fluff, which is reason enough for me to pick this up. It’s only Part I, so I have to find the rest some place. Also, I feel it should be noted that Dangaioh’s opening is so amazing that it produced a video even more epic than the one of the black guy singing Ai wo Torimodose.
• The Ugly- Dog Soldier: This is AWO approved horrible anime. While I was talking about this, other great titles like MD Geist and Crystal Triangle where brought up. Apparently one guy there owned Crystal Triangle on LD. Crazy.

I also got a page out of a Gundam calendar. It’s all bent up and stuff but I can still probably find a place for it on my wall. There’s always room for Master Asia.

Original Post

Really, one has to wonder if these two are even friends, considering that they never seem to have a nice conversation with each other. One also has to wonder why Hikki has an Ideon poster. And why him and Rets share the exact same expression. I kind of like this comic. I don’t like it as much as the last one, but I still think it’s ok.

A podcast happened earlier on in the week. I talk with omo and lastarial about 5cm Per Second. It’s a pretty good episode, so you should listen to it.

I’ve signed up for Project Wonderful. It’s working pretty decently right now. Please bid on this ad space if you want it. That’s all I got to say.

Real life’s been making pretty harsh assaults on me as of late. I’m trying my best to find some work for the next two and a half months. I need some money for various personal endeavours. One’s quite big, and other is quite… small, and cute, and probably smells good. Hopefully these three applications I’m filling out at the moment will get me somewhere. I just need money, man!

Lots of summer shows are coming to a close, and the fall season is just about a week away. Zero no Tsukaima season 3 ended in usual 0nT fashion, in that in crammed way too much into one episode and nothing was resolved. But hey, you don’t care, since Louise is hot, Siesta is hot, and Tiffania is hot. That’s what really matters. Nogizaka Haruka ended pretty well, albeit predictably. One thing that kind of bothers me about the series is how, even in the last episode, the animation never got back onto the level that it was in the first episode (and arguably episode 7.) Hopefully they’ll cleanup the show for DVD. It certainly doesn’t look bad, but it could stand to look better. Both Koihime Musou and Macross just ended, but I haven’t gotten around to them. Macross hasn’t been subbed yet, and I haven’t had time to get to Koihime yet. But I will.

Windy Tales is pretty interesting. I thought the first two episodes laid on seriousness a bit too much, but episodes three and four had a good slice-of-life vibe about them. I can appreciate the art style, but I’m not really sure if I like it. I’m going to stick with it, even though I’m not totally sold on it.

That’s all for this week. I don’t know what I’m going to do for next week, but with luck we’ll see an update.

Yup, you guessed it! Another long and boring personal post is coming up, so turn back now if you’d rather not suffer through this crap. I’m sure you have a backlog of Zettai Karen Children subs to get through.

Every space pirate, Tao master and outlaw in the galaxy knows this already, but Cartoon Network’s Toonami block finally came to a close just about a week ago. I can’t say I honestly care all that much, but for a while Toonami was one of the most important parts of my life.

But let’s back up a bit. Toonami is not what got me into anime. Pokemon is what got me into anime. Before Pokemon, I didn’t think much about anime. I saw some Sailor Moon commercials and stayed away since it looked girly, and of course girls were icky back then, so I didn’t really bother with it. My cousin told me to watch Pokemon, so I did. I really liked it, and after a couple weeks of watching it I fired up my 56k modem and browsed the internet for anything and everything related to Pokemon. It was through these searches that I came upon the word “anime” (mostly thanks to AniPike) but I still didn’t really think much of it. Pokemon back then was just another cool thing to do. Another cool cartoon. It didn’t consume me. That changed with Toonami.

It was in the summer of 1999, I believe, that I was talking with an acquaintance of mine. He expressed his fondness for Dragonball Z, a cartoon I had heard of but never thought to watch since it seemed ever so violent. I wasn’t much for violence. However, he insisted, so I opened my mind a bit a gave it a shot. On Toonami, of course. I loved it. And from that point on, I would be watching Toonami religiously for next 7 years.

Toonami solidified my interest in anime. It was on Toonami that I learned that there was more to anime than just Pokemon. I became interested in mecha anime through Toonami (thx Gundam Wing wwwww), I developed a liking for sci-fi adventure through Toonami (Outlaw Star) and I finally saw the various Tenchi TV shows that went with that movie my buddies and I rented a long while back through Toonami. Toonami, for a good number years, was the most important part of my weekday afternoon.

As I was going into high school, Toonami changed into a weekend-only block. I still watched it, but was more interested in Adult Swim (which at this point was a really cool block of TV itself. More on that in a potential later blog post.) I still thought the block was super cool, but it just became a routine. I was getting into digisubs at around that time too, so dubbed anime on TV became less attractive.

I stopped watching Toonami when I went into college. I didn’t have a TV, and by that point I was 100% into watching anime in Japanese. However, as you can see in this blog post, I can still reminisce fondly about Toonami. It truly was a very important part of my life, and I have nothing but fond memories associated with it.

One thing I really liked about Toonami was how the creators had a genuine love for anime. They really did their best to promote this stuff as really cool, as demonstrated in their various impeccably made commercials. They put out shows that otherwise would not have been shown on US TV. I mean, who would have expected Tenchi to be shown on Cartoon Network? No one. But they did it. And that’s why they were awesome.

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Ok, we’re back. In this show we’re talking about this 5cm Per Second movie made by some guy called Makoto Shinkai. Some pretty deep discussion goes on, along with me not being able to form sentences at all. Omo sounds kind of robot in this episode, and I don’t know how to fix that. Sorry!

Guests

• Omo
• Lastarial

Songs

• Opening Song– “One more time, One more chance” by Masayoshi Yamazaki
• Ending Song– “Who Put The Bomp” by Me First & The Gimme Gimmes

Original Post

I won’t lie, I actually really like this comic. Yeah, Mursaki and Rets Kurenai didn’t turn out just as planned in those second and third panels, but aside from that I like how this one came out. This comic, like the last one, was slightly censored for the front page, and the untainted version can be found here. If it gets the point where a majority of the comics for some reason have NSFW content, I’ll just smack an 18+ warning on this site and be done with it, but for right now things are mostly safe.

Going to be dusting off my old headset tomorrow and recording another exciting episode of the Mistakes of Youth Podcast, so look out for that over the next week or so. Also, I’m looking for some other people to record further shows with. This is mainly a message for the people I know personally, but if anyone else is interested, give me a buzz. If you’re someone I don’t know personally, and would like to record, I’d like for you to have a blog (or proof that you have worthwhile shit to say) and I have to be able to stand you as a human being. I’m a total asshole, and people easily bother me, so you know. I think I wanna do a show on Strike Witches and perhaps Nogizaka Haruka. I have people in mind for the latter though, it’s just a matter of if they’re up for it or not. I kind of have someone in mind for a Strike Witches show, but I’m not sure if he even has the right facilities (mic and shit) for such a thing. We’ll see.

Gankutsuoh’s style seems to be losing its cohesion eight episodes in. It worked perfectly for the opening episodes, but it seems less planned now. Aside from that, the show is still pretty good. The Count carries each episode, since all the other characters are idiots. I also think the Count has what I’ve dubbed as an “AD Field”, or Absolute Drama Field. Whenever he’s around anyone, people just start dueling each other, get poisoned, or other random shit like that. You can’t just have a quiet afternoon chillin’ with this guy. He’s fucking hardcore.

Strike Witches ended better than I expected. I won’t say much, since I’m playing around with the idea of writing a full review, but second season wo kudasai! Or something like that.

So yeah, that’s it for tonight. I’m not tired since for some reason I drank Mountain Fucking Dew at M IT, but I’m out of stuff to rant about, so that’ll be it for this week.

For some reason, a lot of current OVAs don’t have good openings. All attention is put on making the show proper, so openings just tend to be an afterthought. What you usually see is just reused footage from the show matched to a song, or sometimes there simply won’t be an opening animation at all. There are rare cases where this doesn’t happen, but in my experience such things are few and far between. Negima Ala Alba’s opening animation is much like a Polish movie poster– it takes one random aspect of the show– the number 31– and just runs with it. Shaft is known for making amazing somethings out of nothing, and this opening does just that.

Like I said, it simply takes the numbers up through 31, sticks them in little circles, and has spectacularly sexy English credits bounce them around. It’s a 2D designer’s wet dream. Each and every cut of this is just so professionally composed– not mention well-timed with the hot opening theme– that I find myself watching this opening over and over… yet there’s only one real frame of character art across the whole thing!

Good on you, Shaft.

(Note: I kind of have this mental post backlog that I’m burning through at the moment. I have time to kill so I might as well)

There are nice people in this world. mt-i is one of those nice people. Out of the kindness of his heart, he offered to mail me some manga (complete with furigana) for me to try my hand at reading. I didn’t ask for anything, he just did it. That’s pretty cool of him. I emailed him a big thanks, but I should probably send another one out since the guy deserves it. NSFW after the jump.

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Ok, so last weekend I was chillin’ with my buddy Seiya over at his place. Aside from just sitting and talking about random shit for hours, drinking Pocari Sweat, and generally just making a lot of noise, we mined through his collection of old anime stuff. I think I have his permission to post pictures, so here we go.

Right when I walked in I was greeted by two domestic LD releases of Akira and Project A-Ko.

It wasn’t long before he broke out the old issues of Animage.

Wow Japanese 3D animation went nowhere over the past 10 years.

I like this picture.

Look at this top 100 list. All of these characters are cel animated! And the first three are all Hayashibara!

God, so gay. And that little heart in the corner is just the icing on the fabulous cake. But seriously, where did Trowa get those muscles?

GA GA GA GA GA GA CUTIE HONEY FLASH. I need to see Gao Gai Gar, man.

This came out blurry, but you can still tell it’s absolutely hilarious.

Domestic Tench TV LD. Yeah, fuckin’ domestic. Seiya, man, where do you get this stuff?

Who needs Bandai Visual when you got this bad boy?

Yeah, that’s what you think it is. This is probably the most epic part of this post, only because we didn’t feel like taking out the GIANT First Gundam TV series LD boxset.

I had no clue this poster was so huge.

Oh, what could have been! I need to read the rest of this! Damn you, Viz!

Voltron on Betamax. That’s all I got to say.

DON’T YOU WISH YOU WERE HIM. I KNOW I DO.

Here’s the deal: For a couple of days during the summer I was holding down the family lair on my own. As such, I felt it was a perfect opportunity to fully otaku-ize my room, if just for a few days. Of course, this simply entailed whipping out the hug pillow and making Kodomo No Jikan posters visable, considering my room in its normal state doesn’t look all the different from this. However, due to these slight changes, the room became complete, so naturally I just had to photograph it again and then post it up on the interwebz.

What follows is something like 30 photos. They will be accompanied by witty commentary when I deem necessary.

The door lets you know just what the fuck you’re in for.

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Alright, I’m just going to come out and say it: The Golgo 13 movie (or, Golgo 13: The Professional, as it’s known in the States) is an absolutely horrible movie. Having just seen about 14 episodes of the TV series, I knew kind of what I was in for, but never did I guess that this movie would reach such heights of complete unadulterated terribleness. This is pure garbage, ladies and gentlemen, and it’s absolutely the worst thing one could ever think to watch. And that’s what makes it worth searching out.

When I say searching out, I mean Google searching. This movie is not by any means worth your money. It’s junk, but it is worth pirating, and you do get your effort’s worth in the end, since this movie is terribly entertaining for the 90 minutes that it runs. It’s a party that plays out like a pulpy comic book, with stunts that defy the laws of everything, larger than life characters that could never exist in this world and 3D CG skeletons that fire revolvers into 3D CG skulls. It’s almost a perfect mix of pure and utter shit that just nearly pushes this movie into “so bad it’s good” territory.

Just nearly, though. What keeps this movie from working at its full potential is Dezaki’s direction. For some reason, the man treats this as an art film, taking every possible moment to be as goddamn experimental as possible. This however isn’t altogether a bad thing. In fact, I quite liked what he was doing until the last 20 or so minutes, when shots just stopped making sense. It’s the climax of the film– there’s no room for awkward directorial choices that entail repeating the same frame of a crazed old man’s face over and over again on the screen; nor is there room to break out the 1983 computers to render some helicopters that look straight out of Comanche 3D. Except worse. Yeah, I know you guys thought that 3D opening was cool– I thought it was ok myself– but seriously, 1983.

Speaking of that opening, it’s quite a piece of work. It would be almost good if they could’ve worked out how to make the animation not jump all the fucking time. Perhaps also mix in some cel-animated naked ladies to go along with that snazzy jazz piece for the full James Bond effect.

Anyways, time to cool down. I’ve shat on this thing long enough, so let’s switch gears and talk about the stuff I didn’t find totally awkward or ironically good. The animation is really great 80s stuff– very fluid and organic looking, with great lighting and shading effects. There are a few unfinished cuts floating around the film, but they’re few and far between. The music is also wonderfully 80s, and suits the film well. It’s a lot better than that horrible synth shit they use in the new TV series.

Really, the only thing that keeps this film from being totally BALLS TO THE WALL awesome is Dezaki’s approach to directing this thing. Which is weird, since he can do stuff like this well. The Space Adventure Cobra TV series is a great straight up action piece, and has no pretensions at all. But then again, the Cobra movie, also by Dezaki, is another wannabe art movie. Maybe he feels he has to prove himself as a director when he’s making big things– I don’t know. But what I do know is that the only person who can make that kind of shit work is Shinbo, as demonstrated in his confused masterpiece SoulTaker.

But with all that said, I do recommend this film for a one off, or for something to watch with your buds. It’s very entertaining, not too long, and delivers pure 1000% trash, even with all that distracting arthouse direction.

Over the past several years, there have been three iterations of Mistakes of Youth. There was one big one, which was actually online for a number of years. Some of you readers may even remember it, even though I wish you wouldn’t. However, before that, there was something else—a set of comics that never made it past my friends and me in junior high. This set of comics, made in late 2002, was Mistakes of Youth in its absolute most primitive form. Most of these are terribly embarrassing, but there is one that I’d like to share, simply because I still find it amusing to this very day.

Yes, that’s Brad and Rets playing on a PSX (which should go to show you just how old this shit is, though I think I had my PS2 at around that point) and Brad dumping shit into the machine. This was, and still is, the absolute height of humour. One interesting thing about these early comics is Brad. Right when I introduced him, he was a total asshole. And he has remained a total asshole to this very day, though I guess at this point he’s more of a disgruntled asshole.

A few months back I was cruising the dark and shady alleys of Perfect Dark searching for music by Ohtsuki Kenji. I was really into his Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei work back then, so I wanted to see what else the man had put out. In the end, I made it out with three albums, all held tight in my dirty digital clutches. One was a disc called COME OVER TO THE DEEPEND, which was in fact not by Mr. Ohtsuki but by a band called Coaltar Of The Deepers, fronted by his buddy NARASAKI. Their stuff was pretty good (I still haven’t listened to the whole album) but I was disheartened that it was not in fact a Ohtsuki Kenji Production. The other two .ZIPs were by a band called Tokusatsu, titled NUIGURUMAA and Wata Ippai no Ai Wo.

Tokusatsu is one of the two bands that Ohtsuki Kenji was a vocalist for, so you hear him belting out lyrics in his same awesome voice over these two albums. But to be totally truthful, I was a little disappointed by these. I, as a pirate, felt like I didn’t get my $0 worth since both albums weren’t filled with potential Zetsubou Sensei openings. But I was younger then, naive. A whole three months younger.

A little while ago one of my buddies asked for my Ohtsuki Kenji stuff. I obliged, and as I was uploading the albums for him (no, they’re not on the server anymore) I was listening to their stuff again. I actually liked it a lot more. Once I pushed away my expectations, I noticed that Tokusatsu was a band with a lot range, with pieces ranging from slow jazz to hard crazy rock, to just…wacky shit.

Perhaps Ohtsuki’s other outfit, Kinniku Shoujo Tai, is more pure rock, but these two Tokusatsu albums are a good mix of stuff to just kick back and listen to. I do, of course, intend to actually buy these. Wata Ippai no Ai Wo is out of print, but you can still buy NUIGURUMAA and some of their other discs.

As a service to the good people of the internet, I’ve uploaded one of my favourite songs by them, Dancing Babies. I like to think it’s a precursor to Ohtsuki’s NHK end theme, Odoru Aka-chan Ningen.