Comic Site Rant: Nagato, Nagato! Nagato, Nagato!

Posted On May 10, 2008

Original Post

Looking back through the archives, I noticed that I hadn’t even so much as touched upon the issue that is Rosario + Vampire. To atone for this grievous sin, here is a comic which more or less sums up my feelings on the upcoming sequel. I have nothing against fanservice shows, but R+V is a pretty good example of how not to do one. It does get points for Shuuichi Ikeda, though. As far as this comic goes, I’m pretty happy with how the script turned out, and I will admit I was partially influenced by Kaiji when I wrote the punchline. The art is fine– I’m happy with panels 1 and 2, but panel 3 is all too rushed. It looked great in messy sketch form, but not so much when I cleaned it up.

The Ascii Weekly article from a few weeks ago gave the site some pretty decent exposure. I got about 600 more page views that usual and a blog entry! Who knows, maybe I’ll even get a translation deal! (no)

Lots of big news came in over the week, and it being big makes it worth mentioning here. I talked about the new Haruhi 2 details earlier in the week, but since then there have been further developments. I’m glad to see things are moving along, as I was beginning to think that small bit of activity almost an entire year ago would amount to nothing, but it seems things are progressing in some way. It’s my theory that Haruhi 2 progress was being held up by this, but perhaps that’s all sorted out now? I hope so, since I really want to see Haruhi 2 before Clannad 2. Three years between seasons is pretty lame.

The other piece of big news is the arrests of three major Share users. All of the guys they caught were pretty big raw cappers, one of them being my personal favourite, YS2. It’s not like this will affect fansubbing much, since as I learned upon my rediscovery of Perfect Dark there are raws a plenty. It’s just sad to see these major providers be taken down by The Law. I’m not RAW RAW FREE ANIME or anything, but I appreciated what these guys were doing in bringing not-yet-licensed anime to the world.

Library Wars subs kind of hit like a ton of bricks last week. Better late than never, I suppose. Now that it looks like the show is being decently subbed, I’ve taken up watching it. It really is a treat, since it’s the first Production IG show in a while that hasn’t totally sucked. Yeah, it’s not perfect, but it has all the qualities that remind me of why I list Production IG as one of my favourite studios. It kind of feels like GITS except way lighter, which is only a good thing since I can only handle GITS when I’m in a total srsbzn mood. The concept is ridiculous, and certain portions of the show are less than well done, but over all it’s a decent package and at 12 episodes long it won’t overstay its welcome.

Kyouran Kazoku Nikki is a most bizarre show, mostly in that it’s not nearly as bizarre as its concept and opening sequence let on. The drama in episodes 1-3 has been very surprising, and personally, it only worked for me in episode 2. Now that the cast is fully assembled, I hope it’ll focus more on comedy, with this drama portion just being an awkward opening to an otherwise hilarious show. It’s still a touch above a lot of other things airing, but the drama just feels off considering how the show presents itself.

That’s it for this week. I’m heading back to DC next week, so there may or may not be something of a delay with the next comic.