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

What follows is a list of items I intend to buy in Japan come hell or high water. I will most certainly buy a lot more things, but these are top priority.

• The Rest Of Chocotto Sister: Despite the misguided cries of naysayers, the Chocotto Sister anime is a fine adaptation of the heart-warming manga by the same name. I bought volumes 1 and 5–because they came with artboxes–and now I’m looking to get the rest. Used is the best way to go, I suspect. I’ll probably be hitting Liberty and various other Akiba shops, but if that fails I’ll have to make do with Amazon market place.
• Choco Dakimakura Cover: While still on the Chocosis vein, I figure I may as well pick up this nice little trinket, since it seems to finally be back in stock. I may pick up her cute little friend, too.
• Really? Really! visual fanbook: I love Kaede, I loved her game (that I could hardly understand) and I’d love to own more hard copies of Nishimata Aoi’s work, so this is more or less a given.
• IQ FINAL PERFECT MUSIC FILE: Even though I was a dirty little pirate and downloaded this album, I’d like very much to own it. IQ has one of the most amazing soundtracks I’ve ever heard, and it’s just a puzzle game!
• Max Factory’s Asahina Mikuru Gekisou Version: Mikuru-chan is amazingly cute, and my most favourite Haruhi girl. That being the case, I have quite a sizable collection of 3D PVC depictions of her, so another one can’t hurt, right?
• Max Factory’s Asahina Mikuru Adult Version: See above.
• KOTOBUKIYA’s Sanzenin Nagi Bikini Version: Sweet, another figure I can’t display in my parent’s home!
• Otaku no Musume-san: This is a great manga that has unfortunately been marred by not-so-stellar translation work as of late. I have the raws, but I’d rather squint at tiny furigana on a page, as opposed to tiny furigana on my monitor. It’s probably healthier.
  
• Some Zero no Tsukaima dakimakura: I kind of want the Tifa one.
• Tsukuyomi ~Moon Phase~ Best Collection: Tsukuyomi has a most beautiful and haunting soundtrack, and I’ve always been sad that I don’t actually own it. The CD has gone out of print, but with hope I can find it used somewhere.

There will be a lot of impulse purchases, as well–most probably of doujinshi and rare items that I can only find at Mandarake. I can’t wait!

Original Post

I really wanted this bad boy to go up on Saturday, but I just couldn’t swing it. See, I was busy working on the comic project that my friend commissioned me to do, and I was hell bent on getting it out before Christmas. I’ve since finished it, and it’ll probably be available for people to see in some form… soon^TM. For those who don’t know, it’s a SFW Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu doujinshi. Story is, my friend offered me cash to do a comic for his anime club. I agreed, and decided to make a Haruka doujinshi. While it was a lot of work, it was a very rewarding experience. Though, I kind of feel like a dick because it took money to push me into making a doujnshi, but I’ll probably make more on my own now, and they will be terribly dirty. Terribly.

Anyway, on to this current comic. First of all, the de-Tomino’d version is available here. It is very much not safe for work. Yes, in the great tradition set forth by Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, I used a bald man to cover up naughty bits. Since Maeda wasn’t available, I used someone just as–if not more–crazy. I guess Keep Out tape would have been more characteristic of Chocotto Sister, but the image of Tomino’s screaming face over a loli’s DFC is just too funny.

The script is based off of this comic’s VERY FIRST Christmas comic, which you can find if you look through the archives hard enough. It’s kind of lazy on my part, but in the end I think it’s also pretty funny. I did the art for this all on one giant sheet of paper to help me size the characters in their panels better, and I liked how it turned out. It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s a nice way to work. I usually draw characters on different sheets of paper, and combine them all into one comic on the computer. This way is fine, but sometimes it hurts to make detailed drawings really small when resizing for comic composition.

I guess now I’ll backtrack and talk briefly about the last few comics, since I haven’t done that yet. I really like how the art in the CHAOS;HEAD comic came out, even if it’s not perfect. The comic really could have ended at panel three, but I needed to fit a meme and a Newtype flash in. Because Mistakes of Youth is actually a Gundam prequel doujinshi, and Rets is Char Aznable’s ancestor. Really.

The two somewhat Shinbo centric comics were made to kind of loosen me up, since I was stuck in a boring scripting routine, so I wanted to mix things up. I also wanted to throw Anonymous for a loop, so they would stop posting my comic and saying, “NO IT’S ‘WHOSE EYES ARE THOSE EYES YOU FAG’ GOD.” If you start to notice comics being more off the beaten path than usual, that’s because I’m trying to broaden my horizons. Two kids walking around and talking about anime is fine, but I want to channel the kind of spirit present in the opening comics more.

I really liked the artwork in the Giant Robo parody comic, and have no qualms about that one at all. I like the script for THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SHINBO but the artwork came out bad. I tried for realism and failed. Oh well.

But enough blogging, and back to Christmas. Happy Holidays, motherfuckers!

Original Post

When I first drew this comic, I was not satisfied with it at all. The complete and total lack of satisfaction I had with this comic reached a point where I simply felt there was no choice but to re-draw it. So, re-draw I did, and the result is the comic you see before you. I’m a lot happier with this one, and am so glad I didn’t go through with colouring that old set of drawings. The script builds upon Tina’s yandere personality, but kind of has the same punchline as this one. However this comic portrays Tina’s yandere side as more of a calculated murderer as opposed to just a crazy person. It’s character development! Or something. Oh, and I made fun of Narutards again. It’s been a while since I’ve done that.

Not really site-related, but I feel it’s worth mentioning as it does kind of effect site stuff. For once, the rant title actually means something– I have no internet. Right now I’m sitting in an MIT student lounge, pretending to be a student while leaching their internet for the writing of this rant and these five Bittorrent downloads. The main line in my building is dead, and the AT&T Aircard my father sent me is about to reach its bandwidth limit. So, as you can see, my options are limited. I’d use my school’s connection, but it blocks Bittorrent and IRC so it’s not of much use to me. Hopefully things will be solved by Monday, but for the weekend my internet presence will be a bit scarce. This however won’t stop me from recording two podcasts tomorrow!

Ok, it’s adbot time. In addition to signing up for Project Wonderful, I also got a CDJapan affiliate account on a whim. I’ve already made around 10 dollars in commission, but I need another 40 before they send me Real Money. So, if you’re buying something from CDJapan, do me a favour and order it through one of my links. It’d make you a cool person. There’s a bunch of cool stuff on there that I want, but really can’t buy. I have both Zetsubou Sensei OSTs downloaded, but I’d really like to own them, since they’re absolutely beautiful collections of music. Same with the awesome Kure-nai OST. I did however get a calendar from them out of necessity. There’s a bunch of other awesome calendars on there, anime-related and not, so check them out! They’re also holding a sale on R2 DVDs. I’d so buy me some Chocotto Sister and Mobile Suit Gundam if I had the funds.

The new season starting right when my internet dies isn’t all that great, but I’m getting by (thx MIT lol.) So far, I’ve just seen ToraDora and Hyakko, with Casshern, Clannad 2 and some others coming down the pipes. ToraDora is pretty good, but I’m still not sure about Taiga yet. I’ve read some of the manga already, and after watching the anime I have the same impression of her: she’s murderous and crazy. And cold. Not really my type yet, but I don’t hate her. Kugimiya’s performance isn’t as squeaky as usual, which again doesn’t really make me excited, but doesn’t turn me off. The main character almost reminds me of myself, except in my case I have both a scary face and a horrible personality. Hyakko is just weird, and I have no idea if it’s good or not.

Anyways, that’s it for now. I’m not sure if there’ll be a comic next week, since these last couple of weeks have been a bit too stressful, so I may just take a week off to chill out. Later!