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Since I’m heading off to Japan in just about a month, I had my old friend Santi over, and as per usual we watched some terrible anime. This time around we partook of BAOH and Dog Soldier, and on the way to lunch we decided to talk about our experiences with these two works of art into a digital recorder for an internet podcast. What follows is us talking unintelligibly about these two works of genius, as well as other things like Akikan.

Guests

• Santi The Mysterious
  

Songs

• Opening Song– “Afro Rock Theme (Rock Afro Mix)” by Comoesta Yaegashi
• Ending Song– “Cirno no Perfect Sansuu Kyoushitsu” by IOSYS

Original Post

I’d like to think that with this comic I’ve gone right to the heart of the issue, the issue being a general feeling of “well, this is fine” in response to the creation of Suzumiya Haruhi-chan No Yuuutsu along with Nyoron Churuya-san. They are both fun little works, and manage to do an okay job at putting my hunger for a proper second season of Suzumiya Haruhi to rest. And hey, it’s all we’ve fucking got.

I can’t say I’m terribly happy with how the lineart turned out here, but I did do something a bit different to the shading– I put a layer of blue over it to give it some colour, and there’s also a light stroke effect going around the outsides of the shades. I like the way this looks, and applied this approach to the next comic, which has already been made.

This is probably the last bit of whinging I’ll do about the doujinshi. Most of the requests have been sent over to the guy doing the printing, but some of you guys still haven’t contacted him, it seems. If you sent me a request and don’t remember getting an email back from me over the past couple of weeks, check your email boxes carefully. I think over the next week I’ll take the doujin page down, since we have enough orders at this point. Thanks for buying!

A friend of mine came over yesterday, and we partook of both BAOH and Dog Solider on the recommendation of The Anime World Order. I actually came out liking BAOH quite a bit for how fucking ridiculous and dumb it was, but I was probably just looking at the smoking hot ’80s-style loli the whole time. I guess all the melting faces were cool, too. Dog Soldier was really lame, and the only way we could get through it was by laughing at home lame it was. A podcast on both of these, along with chatter about various other titles (Akikan!) is forthcoming, so look out for it on iTunes or the blog.

That’ll be it for this week. I haven’t been in much of a writing mood lately, which is my excuse for lack of real activity on the blog, as well as the short rants as off late. I’ll get back into it eventually, don’t worry.

YOU BET IT’S HAPPENING.

Hear that, Daryl? That shitty shit you like is still being ignored, but awesome stuff like STRIKE WITCHES is getting another season! Oh wait, I like that shitty shit Daryl likes, too. Oh well. MORE STRIKE WITCHES.

First Nogizaka Haruka, and now this! It would be great if Kure-nai got a second season as well, but given the way that ended, it’s probably best left alone. Now all we have to wait for is… Haruhi season 2!!

Meanwhile, at Synergy SP…

“Man, we haven’t done a Death Note parody yet.”

“But I guess we need some cute shots to balance all this stuff out”

“Oh shit, we haven’t had an R. Lee Ermey cameo yet! Fix that shit, dude!”

Every Zettai Karen Children episode is amazing, but this one takes the cake.

The opening was sung by THE CHILDREN this time around, and the ending was 絶対love×love宣言!! sung by 可憐Girl’s. It was nice to see that ending animation again.

All of this is matched to a very slow and beautiful string driven piece of background music.

Original Post

A Maria†Holic comic was begging to be done, so I did the most natural thing that came to mind. Simple as that. I’m not terribly enthusiastic about the artwork in this comic, but I don’t hate it either.

All the emails went out to all the people who ordered a doujin. I’ve gotten mail back from some of you, but not all. You don’t really need to beam a message back my way, but be sure to shoot one over to the guy who I mentioned in the message. I’m not really sure when we’re going to get these things printed and shipped, but I’m hoping it’ll happen in the space of two weeks. If you for some reason did not get my email, check your spam box or shoot a message back my way. If you sent in a request, you should have a gotten an email back from me at this point.

I’m keeping this short and sweet because I spent most of today making comic 132, and I have a spicy Kojika OVA to dive into, so I’ll see you all next week!

five weeks…

I’ve already posed these questions to a few people, but I figure I’ll put them out in the open to get a wide variety of opinions.

With my apartment paid for and my visa secured, I am 100% ready to take on glorious 日本. However, I can’t just go in there without any preparation–I have to be ready. As such, I have a couple of questions for people who have been to The Other Country before, and hopefully they can help me out.

1: Money- What do you do about money in Japan? I’ve read that most places won’t take foreign ATM cards, with the exception of 7/11 and post offices. So, what do you guys do? Get an account at a bank with international branches? Stuff your suitcase full of traveler’s checks? Just hit up the 7/11s and post offices because they’re ever so plentiful? What do you do?

2: Cellphones- I know the deal with prepaid phones in Japan–if you’re not Japanese, you need an alien registration card (I’m going to need one of these anyways), or you can go to a place that accepts US passports, and uses the address of your hotel for validation. So, my question is, what places have the best deals?

That’s about it, actually. I guess it’s not all that serious, but it’d be nice to get some Hot Tipz.

One prominent theme in Casshern Sins is that of mortality. The story of Sins unfolds in a world in which once immortal machines now face the threat of imminent death, and one of the main driving forces in the show is how the machines deal with this harsh reality.

The one-shot stories in the first half of the series deal with this idea in a variety of different ways, but all boil down to one robot trying to make the most of their limited time on the planet. This theme particularly resonates with me, as I get rather uncomfortable when faced with my own mortality. As such, these stories of people trying to make the most of their life in a decayed world almost gives me hope. Almost.

The series has found itself in the “plot bit” now, with the one-shot stories having concluded and the focus shifting more towards plot developments, as well as entire episodes about stereotypical black guys coming onto robot chicks. This theme of imminent death still drives the narrative, but it’s less of a driving force in each episode’s individual story.

Casshern Sins is an okay series. It has some ideas I really like, but its presentation is a bit too slow for my tastes. Some episodes are really good, but others are terribly boring.

Lack of blog posts is due to a lack of motivation on my part. I have some ideas, just no drive to put them to digital paper. I’m also busy with some other things, like printing and mailing out doujin orders.

Original Post

The last comic didn’t get the kind of reaction I thought it would–that is, it didn’t get much of a reaction at all. I guess I shouldn’t assume that people know about Yoshinobu Nishizaki’s run-ins with the law, nor should I assume that people should know that Yu Aida and Keitaro Arima are both quite clearly pedophiles. But hey, I figured someone would at least laugh at a joke about Russian child porn! Oh well, you’ll like this one!

Well, you’ll like this one if you’re aware of how silly To Aru Majutsu no Index is. The last show I watched in which characters went off on essay-length exposition-laden monologues was Dragon Ball Z, and when I watched that I didn’t give a damn. This aspect of Index doesn’t hurt it too much now (other things, however do) but it is quite fun to have a laugh at. The art here is ok, and could be a lot better. I’ve been practicing a lot lately, so hopefully that shines through. Readers with an above average sense of observation will notice the locale in which the two players are sitting down and watching anime is not in fact Rets’ humble abode–it’s Tina’s, which has shown up in a smattering of comics. I got a little sick of drawing Rets’ place, so I dumped them in Tina’s room for a change of pace. I guess I should also note that the reason you can’t see Tina’s chair is because her hair is covering it. I mean, she has a lot of hair. Oh, since this comic is slightly dirty, here’s the uncensored version.

We’ve gotten enough orders for the doujinshi to print it, so all of the people who sent in requests should expect an email from me in the next couple of days. My buddy and I are going to try and get these things mailed out within the next two weeks, at the latest. Once all of the books are shipped out I’m not sure if we’re going to continue to try and hawk it, or just ship it out to the 30 some people who wanted it, and it’ll be some rare collector’s item in the future. Yeah, that’s extremely likely.

As I mentioned earlier in the rant, Index’s long, drawn out bits exposition don’t hurt it much anymore–what does is the amount of time certain characters get. For a show called To Aru Majutusu no INDEX, there isn’t much INDEX anymore. This is a shame, since she is my most favourite character, and it sucks that the only arc about her had her laying down for six episodes. It doesn’t really help that each arc’s story is quite lukewarm. The only thing really keeping me around for this show are the production values and the nice female character designs, but other than this show is only slightly better than Shana. What pushes it above Shana is the lack of romance angst. Good god.

Aaaaand that’s all for this week. I have the next comic mostly sketched out, and I’ll try to finish sketching it by today. It’s a cheap joke about Maria†Holic. If you can guess the joke exactly I’ll give you a swift kick the crotch. Even if you’re a girl. Or a boy pretending to be a girl.

Though, I think they just asked the artist to draw a “koku-jin” and leave it at that. I mean, I guess it does look like him if he let himself go.

Original Post

What you were going to see here was a comic about Haruhi getting a second season, but we all know how that turned out. After that, I was going to do some angry comic about how Newtype played us all for fools once again, then I realized a comic about some rumour that barely lasted 24 hours won’t age terribly well. So instead, you’re getting this comic I made about a week ago–the original comic 129.

I’m pretty happy with how this turned out on the whole. As far as writing goes, I’m not sure if Yu Aida and Keitaro Arima know each other or not, but in the end I just assumed that they’re not acquainted. I believe Yoshinobu “The Nish” Nishizaki is out of jail, however I’d like to think he just goes around wearing prison gear all the time. The girl in panel two is from some horribly creepy website that I learned about through Akiba Blog. I won’t link it for fear of getting arrested, but google “Candy Doll U-15″ if you feel like being dangerous, and have an affinity for Russian lolis.

The art turned out quite well, I think. The backgrounds aren’t much at all, but I like the character art and how it all came together. The observant readers out there will notice I switched back to a traditional comic font. I started using fonts like Verdana after I saw Gone With The Blastwave do something similar, but then I realized he was only using boring fonts because he didn’t have a comic font for a good while. Nevertheless, I decided to keep using Verdana because it afforded me more freedom than Edible Pet II. After a while I noticed my choice of font made the comics look all the more amateur, so with this strip I switched to Penny Arcade’s font, which offers upper-case and lower-case letters, which I really like. I’ll probably keep using it.

I’m flipflopping like a politician here, but I’m going to give the doujin one more week for preorders. This is mostly because I just got an order from a guy for five books, and now we’re six books away from reaching the target. Another thing I want to bring up is that we’re going to accept international orders now, mostly because we’ve been getting lots of requests from overseas readers. Now, shipping overseas is going to cost a lot– more than the book itself. If you’re still cool with that, go ahead. But, to that guy who’s ordering three books to bring back to his friends overseas–keep doing that. It’ll be cheaper for all of you. Even if we don’t reach 30 orders by the end of the week, I suspect we’ll get close enough that we’ll print up the book anyways. Hope you all like it.

Recently I’ve been going back and watching the 16:9 releases of Clannad ~After Story~. I had fallen behind, and now I’ve finally found a chance to catch up. Going back, I’ve stated to appreciate some of the arcs more. Specifically Misae’s arc–it’s typical Key, but I liked it well enough. I still think Miyazawa’s arc is really dumb, though it does have a nice fight at the end. The show looks really great, and it’s such a shame that I don’t like it more. I probably won’t buy it. Oh, something important happened in the last episode, I guess, but I won’t talk about it. I have episode 17 sitting on my desktop, so I’ll get to that soon.

I also recently watched what I believe is the 2008 Lupin III special, Sweet Lost Night. It’s pretty good once it gets past the ridiculous (even for Lupin standards) plot. Lupin specials are always fun, and this one delivers that quite well. However, it’s not terribly rewatchable like 1$ Money Wars, Burning Zantetsuken, Walther P-38 and Episode 0. The main thing that bothers me here, and what bothers me in most Lupin anime, is how Zenigata constantly plays the part of the fool. In this special it’s notably bad, since he’s wandering around with amnesia for most of the runtime. In the manga Zenigata is on level with Lupin, yet in all the cartoons he’s cheap comic relief. I appreciate how in the opening sequence they demonstrated how Zetigata’s finally caught on to all of Lupin’s tricks over the years, but like I said, they quickly push him aside.

As April draws ever closer, I’m getting more excited about my stay in Japan. To bring everyone up to speed, I’ll be staying in Warabi, and taking classes at Sophia University. The acceptance materials along with stuff for my visa should come in today, so I’m eagerly waiting for the mailman like the stupid motherfucker I am. I guess in the meantime I could do something like brush up on my Japanese.

That’ll be all for this week. I somehow put out a normal sized rant this week, and I’ll try to do the same in the future. Later!