Category: Anime, Manga, Etc

Out on my walk today I noticed an overabundance of cute women in skirts with skinny legs. Given all of the news about how Americans are overweight, all of these skinny women just stood out that much more. Regardless of the reason, it was a nice sight to behold.

Another lovely sight is the release of Neon Genesis Evangelion: Angelic Days Volume 2. Evangelion is one of my favorite series, so much so that I bought a Japanese copy of volume 9 of the first manga series at the Mitsuwa marketplace. Knowing the story as presented in the anime helps, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much Japanese I’ve been able to pick up in my very haphazard studies. I’m looking forward to diving into Angelic Days later today. From what I’ve seen, the retelling of stories using the same characters or similar ones is common in manga and anime. The first time I saw this myself was in the three Tenchi series I’ve seen. And I’ve seen it in the herd of Gundam series I’ve watched as well. Angelic Days does the same with the Evangelion characters. Like enjoying the work of one’s favorite actors, I’m looking forward to seeing how the story unfolds with these familiar characters in a slightly different setting.

I rarely do anything just halfway. Whatever it is, I usually jump in and get all of the info I can to try and fully understand it. And so now I find myself sliding into the depths of otaku culture. Now this really isn’t a stretch for me since I’m a Star Trek fan from way back. So researching minutia and keeping up with the latest thing is not new. But I would say that in this age of digital media and the global communication capabilities fostered by the internet, being an otaku has never been more fun.

Since Otakon ended, I’ve been on the net cruising cosplay picture sites and watching fansubs of The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi. I’ve registered for Reactor and booked a room at the Purple Hotel (shudder) while working on a Google Gadget related to all of this, that I hope to enter in the Google Gadget contest. The biggest/riskiest project I’m working on is a costume for crossplay (just bought shoes yesterday! *grin*). This will be my first cosplay, so making it a crossplay might be a bit much the first time out, but like I said earlier, I don’t like to do anything halfway. I’m also helping my son with his first real cosplay too. He’s been excited about this since ACEN ended in May. And since that time has become quite an adept plushie maker. He can pretty much make anything he sees! Here’s his Kagome progression from 2D model to 3D plushie. Pretty good for a 10 year old!

This all feels like an addiction, but of course I can stop anytime I want. But why would I want to do that, this is just too much fun! And if there are others who enjoy it too, then so much the better!

CNET News is carrying a story about how tech savvy Chinese are bringing U.S. television shows to China. Essentially this is the same kind of fansubbing culture responsible for growing number of Japanese anime programs coming to the United States. And if the strong impact of Japanese anime and pop culture on U.S. pop culture is any indication, then the Chinese government may have a new challenge on its hands. This is not to say that Chinese fansubbers are freedom fighters wishing to overthrow the government. They are not. They’re just people who want to enjoy TV shows from abroad that they cannot get otherwise. They just want to have fun. Will they be influenced by these foreign shows? Yes, of course they will! I certainly have been influenced by the Japanese shows I’ve watched and games I’ve played over the years. On the whole this has been a good thing for me and I’ve had a lot of fun, so much fun that I’ve even undertaken the task of learning what can be a very difficult language for westerners. By the same token, there must be thousands of Chinese people who are learning English and U.S. culture because of their enjoyment of U.S. TV. In the end, this can only be a good thing for both China and the United States. Hopefully, wrangling over copyright and intellectual property laws won’t close off this wonderful avenue for cultural exchange.

I finally got all of my Otakon 2006 pictures up. This is the most I’ve ever taken and I had a lot of fun getting them. I usually don’t have any theme in mind, I just try to get eye-catching costumes or cute girls. Though this year, for about an hour or so, I made a conscious effort to get as many seifuku (sailor suit schoolgirl uniform) pictures as I could. I’ve always liked the look of these uniforms, even before I knew what they were. Perhaps they fondly remind me of my Catholic elementary school days. Or perhaps I’m just a perv. In any case, I like them.
Otakon was a lot of fun for me this year, even more than last year. This was my second Otakon and I think the familiarity with the overall environment helped, and the cool people I met from the Megatokyo Forums. I talked to a lot more people this year and really enjoyed it. I even discovered some weird things about myself that I won’t elaborate on here. The only thing I didn’t really like was the crazy 700 mile (1129 km) drive home. I like driving fast, but not on dark roads in the rain! People are just plain crazy sometimes. Well enjoy the pictures! Perhaps next year I will don a seifuku myself!

Otakon 2006 Pictures

Oh my head! It’s still spinning after driving home from Otakon half the night. I left Baltimore relatively late because there was a really cool workshop on Remembering the Kanji that I could not resist. Ooooh! I had so much fun this year! But right now I’m just too tired to do very much. I think I went totally fanboi this year, screaming my lungs out at the MUCC and Nana Kitade concerts. Later I got Nana-chan’s autograph! I also got autographs from Monica Rial, and Fred Gallagher (plus Miho sketch <3). Finally, before I pass out, here's a picture of the young woman who placed second in Otaku Idol. I think her name is Alyssa, or Alicia. This woman can really sing, has great stage prescence, and is oh so kawaii! The winner was great too, but the audience was bit more into JRock that night than JPop so Alyssa didn't win this time. I hope I'll get a chance to hear her sing again!

The couple of days before a convention are always exciting for me. And as I get ready for my second Otakon, I’m actually more excited about it than last year. I don’t know if I’ll be able to go next year, so I’m playing this one for all it’s worth! So what happens at Otakon, stays at Otakon, so to speak! 😉

This year I’m focusing on seeing the musical guests and karaoke. So my first big task will be getting a ticket for the Friday night MUCC and Nana Kitade concerts. I don’t know yet when or if Yoshiki is performing. And I also want to see if Otakon can pull off Otaku Idol this year. Given the success that ACEN had with their Idol show, the gauntlet has been thrown down! One of these days I hope to compete, but I’ll have to memorize more songs first.

Kitade-san is also hosting a gothic lolita fashion show, which should be quite delicious!

Next week I’m heading to Baltimore for Otakon for the 2nd year in a row. There’ll be about 20K anime, manga, and all out East Asian pop culture fans in attendance. Most of these people will be much younger than I am. But that really doesn’t bother me at all. Why should I give up the things that I love and that are fun to me, just because I’m older?

Well it appears that I am not alone in these thoughts! We are many, and now we have a name, Rejuveniles! I’m not sure I like the way that sounds though because it implies a lack of taking adult responsibilty. And that is certainly not the case for me, or likely most of those other kindred spirits. We pay our bills and work hard too. But who, better than aging adults, knows that time is short? I still believe in Heaven, but I want to have fun here too, just wanna have fun…

While one would hardly say that cosplay in Japan is mainstream, one could say that seeing cosplayers in various public venues is not unusual. In Chicago, seeing cosplayers in public is definitely unusual, even more so when the temperatures approach 100 degrees F as they did this past Sunday. Nevertheless, a hardy group of fun-loving cosplayers from the Chicagoland Cosplay Club, and friends, gathered in Chicago’s Millenium Park last Sunday.

When I first heard of this on the Anime Central Forums, I was very curious not only about the cosplayers, but what the general public reaction was likely to be. So I charged my camera, filled my water bottle, and headed to the park to check it out. When I caught up with them, they were gathered at the large “bean” sculpture and from that point made their way over to the fountains where some wet and wild cosplay ensued. I certainly had not expected this, but the people on the streets and the police were friendly and basically just took it in stride. Does this mean Chicago is ready for more cosplay? I don’t know, but I certainly wouldn’t mind!

Here are some pictures I took. Enjoy!

Saturday night I went to see Puffy AmiYumi play at the Park West theatre and was not disappointed. While I enjoyed last year’s show at the Vic, the change of venue definitely helped this year. The smaller Park West was a lot more comfortable and intimate than the ancient Vic. And we were lucky enough to have a great view. And since the crowd wasn’t as big as last year, it was pretty easy for anyone who wanted to, to go down on the floor to get closer.

The openers, Tally, played for about 30 minutes and were pretty good. You don’t find too many young bands these days who can really sing and have good voices! After Tally, Puffy took the stage and jumped right into a high powered set of songs featuring some new ones from Splurge. Like last year, I was greatly impressed by the energy of the band and how much fun they were having. And Ami and Yumi’s between sets antics with the audience were high camp. I especially liked the Japanese tutorial that included the Osakan dialect that Yumi speaks. Of the new songs, I think the one I liked best was Radio Tokyo. But most were old favorites like Jet Keisatsu and Puffy no Rule.

While there were plenty of young kids with their parents about, including a cute pair of little girls, one with bluish purple dyed hair and the other pinkish hair like the Puffy’s animated alter-egos, there weren’t as many kids as last year. That’s probably just because the Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi show isn’t this year’s hot new property on Cartoon Network.

So on the whole, the show was as good as last year with bonus points for the venue change. I’m looking forward to the new album release on the 25th. You can get it on iTunes now, but the CD release will have two bonus tracks that I want, so I’m going to wait. I’m hoping that now that Puffy is with Tofu Records, they’ll include romaji lyrics to the songs. With so many catchy tunes, Puffy AmiYumi is one of those groups whose songs work their way into your brain and won’t let go! So I’d at least like to be able to sing them with greater accuracy! 😀

Initially I had not planned on going to the Puffy AmiYumi show in Chicago on Saturday. It had been scheduled to play the Vic Theatre like last year, but honestly, the Vic is a very old building which just gave me this creepy “in someone’s armpit” sort of feeling. The show last year was great, I just didn’t like the venue. I changed my mind a few days ago when I saw a change of venue for the show on the Tofu Records web site. The show has been moved to the Park West which seems to have a better reputation and is a more intimate space. I’ve never been to the Park West, but I figured that as long as it wasn’t the Vic, that had to be an improvement.

It looks like Inuyasha is still cool. The Virgin store near my office has a display full of Inuyasha related plushies and clothing. I still love Inuyasha, but I really am looking forward to the conclusion of the story. One of the things that I like about anime is the finiteness of it. Typically a series will have a planned run of 13 or 26 episodes, beginning, middle, and end. I liked that closure and completion, rather than running a series until the life has been completely bled from it **cough***Stargate***cough***. I know Inuyasha has already ended in Japan, so the end should be near here too. And once it is all over, I hope and pray that a decent set of DVDs with some extras and song subtitles will come out. DVDs with 3 episodes and no extras at all are barely above the level of shovelware. Shame on you Inuyasha! I’m sure Kagome would sit him down good for this one.

The Chinese government has launched a web site to teach Chinese and promote Chinese culture. Unfortunately, many of the 30 million people studying Chinese around the world must be trying to access the site, www.linese.com, all at once because I can’t get through! I can’t wait to try this out once the traffic dies down or they get more capacity online. My interest in anime and manga drives my interest in learning Japanese and Japanese culture, but these studies really cannot be complete without learning Chinese culture as well. You find out very quickly how much of East Asian language and culture has its origins in China. Indeed the manga fan learns this the first time a kanji smacks ’em in the face! At that point you can either run, or embrace a whole new world. Wow! With China, Japan, and Korea’s growing economic influence and all actively promoting their languages and cultures abroad, this may be shaping up to be an East Asian century.

Once more I’ve been called upon to make onigiri (お握り), rice balls, for the kids. We got some onigiri mixes at Mitsuwa last weekend and my wife bought Nishiki sushi rice which turned out to work very well for this. I feel like Azuma in Yakitate!! Japan except instead of solar hands, I’ve got onigiri hands which won’t stick to the rice. Whenever my wife tries to make rice balls, even with sopping wet hands, the rice just sticks to her like crazy! After much frustration on her part, I got the job of making rice balls as an almost hereditary duty now! That’s cool with me though. One should always be indispensible for a few things!