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

(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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I kind of like how this turned out, but looking at it now I may just go ahead and re-draw it.

In the midsts of my Shuffle! merch buying frenzy some months ago, I came across this “Clear Sheet Collection” over at CDJapan. I noticed that of the fifteen “clear sheets” available, two of them were rare images that I really wanted highres copies of (Kaede in naked apron and Kaede in maid outfit) and a quite a few others were images I liked but didn’t have highres versions of. Though, there was a catch: of the fifteen images available, the most you could get from each set was twelve, so you’d be missing out on three of the images no matter what. But despite that little hang up, I snatched this up without a thought and hoped for the best. After a few weeks, it finally arrived at my doorstep (gogo SAL shipping.)

Turns out my luck wasn’t totally horrible like it always is, and I at least got one of the two rare images I wanted. Alas, Kaede in a maid outfit seems forever out of reach, save for bad Yahoo auction pics. If anyone has that one, I’d love a scan of it. Anyways, on to the review…

This “Clear Sheet Collection” is really just a set of transparent pencil boards with various pieces of Really? Really! promotional art on them. Of the fifteen offered, only five of them are the same old recycled art you’ve seen everywhere, with the other ten being rarer images. So, no matter what kind of batch you get, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get some good stuff.

And what good stuff this is! Aoi Nishimata is in top form here with a bunch of cute Kaede renderings along some hot Primula, Mayumi and Sakura action for good measure. Hiro Suzuhira makes some brief appearances with a few Asa and Ama pics, but is mostly absent from this collection considering she apparently left Navel a while ago due to health issues. If I had to say anything negative about this set (aside from the fact that you miss three of the images >:((( ) is that the transparency thing seems pretty pointless. All it really does is make the art look faded, which isn’t a good thing. However, if you’re like me and tape up pencil boards, these look decent against a white surface. They’re also good to collect in an album of some sort!

I’d recommend these to any serious Shuffle! fan such as myself, but good luck finding them now. CDJapan is out, and I have no idea where else they’d sell these. Your best bet is Yahoo auctions, probably. In fact, I should go there right now and see if anyone is selling the Kaede maid “clear sheet”!

Bonus

As a distinguished member of the interwebs, I’ve decided to scan some of the rare images for my fellow otaku. I’ve uploaded all of these to danbooru (18+), but this blog post has a better scan of Naked Apron Kaede. Get ‘em while they’re hot!

So apparently after a lot of fan yelling FUNi’s going to put out a box for The Best Series Ever. I was kind of bothered that DVD 1 lacked a box, but I had other things to be angry about so it didn’t phase me too much. A box is splendid news, though, and I hope they do a good job. By that I mean I hope they don’t pull an ADV and just put random pretty pictures all over the place.

Ideally the box will have pictures of either a) Kaede doing house work, b) Kaede naked or c) both

Lately I’ve been trying my best to just take it easy. Ever since I left that dreaded hell of high school, I’ve had a giant Space Battleship lodged up my arse. It’s slowly working its way out of there, but as all you readers probably know, I still get my panties in a twist over many things. The main reason why I’m generally just trying my best to “keep it cool, yo” (as the kids say) is because this type of attitude does nothing good for me, and only causes headaches. But enough Live Journaling, I already have one for that. What I want to talk about is favourites.

A lot of bloggers at one point or another make it clear as to why things make it on their favourites list. Jeff Lawson is the first one that comes to mind, but there’s probably more. For a long time being on my list of favourites has been a very exclusive position for the 5 or 6 shows on there out of the 298 completed shows/movies/whatevers I’ve seen so far– kind of like a snobby party for only the elite of the elite of the elite. Basically my favourites list was the landmarks of anime that I’d seen and really enjoyed. Stuff that was approved “good” by various respected anime-watching personalities that just happened to strike me in a profound manner as well. Stuff I wouldn’t be “ashamed” of having on my list of favourites. Well, now I want to open it up. Consider this another step in removing the <Insert Giant Object Here> from my arse.

It just hit me a few minutes ago while I was in the shower– such an attitude is the attitude of a fucking critic. The attitude of Jay Sherman, if you will. I’m not a motherfucking anime critic, I’m a fan. Fans don’t need to operate on logic, they just need to love. That isn’t to say you should abandon the critic mentality as a fan, but you shouldn’t let it take you over. I think my main problem for a while was that the critic mentality and fan mentality were often at odds, which resulted in many confused emotions over shows, along with numerous headaches and other terrible things. But now that’s gone. I figure if I already post shameless pictures of dakimakura covers, I should be allowed to be shameless with my tastes, too. So, as of right now, Shuffle! is a favourite anime. Tsukuyomi is a favourite anime. Futakoi Alternative is… almost a favourite anime!

Of course, with my standards being a lot more loose now, things will come and go from the list a lot easier. One thing that determines a favourite for me is rewatchability, and a lot of the shows going up there I haven’t watched much more than once. However, when I come to the end of a series, I know if it’ll be worth a second look or not. What determines that is what emotions the series brought up in me, and how strongly they affected me. For instance, after Shuffle! I knew I’d eventually come around to it again, but I’ll never pick up Kaiji for another viewing after I’m done with it. Sure, Kaiji’s a great series, but it doesn’t effect me emotionally at all.

Anyway, I’m getting off track here. I guess I should just stop writing this and chill, or something.

JESUS CHRIST CAT EARS OH GOD

Less cat ears but Kaede is still cute as hell <3 

Man, these things are being re-released. Which means they were released once before. I feel like such a fuckup for not knowing these things even existed. I guess I’m too used to looking for Shuffle! merch on Yahoo Auctions and forget that normal stores carry stuff, too. But I sure as hell ordered them this time around! Now if only I could find the Visual Fan Book anywhere, given it has epic works of art like this.

I think this post needs a Kaede CG :3

Guys, remember this?

Well, I’ve finally coloured it. Woop woop.

So, today I was bored during my New Media New Markets class. While teach was spouting off nothing in particular, I was googling for things. One of the things I googled for was Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. Under “images”, I came across this curious screencap.  I’ve recapped it since the original had a watermark.

This is from episode 4 of the first series. Just fresh off skimming episodes of Shuffle! Memories, I noticed an interesting parallel…

I wouldn’t put it past Shaft. It’s just such a good seiyuu_joke. And subtle, too. I didn’t even notice it when watching the episode.

Or maybe I’m thinking too hard.

To be honest, I was quite worried about watching Shuffle! again for the first time in almost three years. If you’re not already aware, I have something of an adamant fanaticism towards the franchise, but since the show’s conclusion back in early 2006, my passion for it has been kept alive through buying merch of questionable taste, playing the games with little knowledge of Japanese, and generally fanboying over it. Shuffle! Memories, a short recap of the show which aired in 2007 brought it all back to me in digest form, but I actually stopped watching that because I wasn’t a fan of how it was cut together. That, and I also called into question whether or not I still liked the series. Thankfully, upon completing this first disc, I can gladly say this show is just as wonderful as a I remember it being.

Story is, Rin Tsuchimi is the object of many a girl’s affection. His adoring childhood friend Kaede pampers him daily; his senior Asa teases him lovingly at every turn; the princesses of the World of Gods and World of Demons, Sia and Nerine, want to be his bride and a certain deadpan loli called Primula is inexplicably attached to him. In other words, he has quite the harem on his hands. These early episodes focus on introducing the cast, the world in which they inhabit and then they get started on fleshing out each girl one-by-one come episode three. It’s pretty standard harem/bishoujo game adaptation fare, but its beauty lies in the execution.

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