2chan.us

Further proof of the NHK conspiracy: while flipping through channels last night, I caught the tail end of this show run on public tv about hero songs. HERO SONGS! Since I only saw the end, I missed the earlier parts with lame songs like the Eva op, and instead got to see Masaaki Endoh and Tanaka Kouhei be totally awesome. Endoh sung some parts of Yuusha-oh Tanjo, Kouhei sung some other parts while playing an electric piano, and this dude wearing a lot of black and a funny hat was mouthing along to all the lyrics. In between songs, there’d be comments on the pure-heartedness of hero songs and some discussion on how they have awesome lyrics that would sound really lame if it weren’t for the fact that they’re yelling move names in between verses. Kouhei laid down some high-level music theory and explained how rather than take after the earlier styles of hero songs in “minor keys” he opted to use a “major key” to keep with the totally awesome feel of GGG, and how he wanted to go balls-out so he made the “dodekkai shugoshin/bokura no yuusha-oh” line keep ascending because a true hero/composer can do whatever the hell he wants. Seriously, how does PBS expect to stay afloat when they don’t have JAM PROJECT members on tv singing the Abaranger theme song? Or when they don’t have Tanaka Kouhei confessing that he composed the King Gainer op as a joke, then had to admit defeat to Tomino once he saw the op animation, causing Tomino to just nod and say something along the lines of “Good. Now you know my power.” Now that’s the kind of tv that Viewers Like Me want to see.

This is an incredibly late report, but better late then never! All but one of the photos is stolen from Moondabor, who pretty much single-handedly made my two weeks in Tokyo three times as interesting and infinitely more maidy.

About a month ago, I went with a big ol’ group of gaijin to one of the few shrines most otaku will ever willingly visit: Washinomiya, aka “you know, the Lucky Star shrine.” And Lucky Star shrine it was. The place looks like any other small-medium-sized town in the Kanto area, except a large number of stores have realized that they can make a ton of money from fairly quiet people who smell a little funny if they put up some signs and offer minor changes to their goods and services.

Naturally, the first thing we did upon leaving the station was go to a very small restaurant and order some “Tsukasa no Katsudon Dakee~!”s. The store was run by a very elderly couple, and the only other customer there was an equally elderly man watching the Olympics on an ancient tv set while an equally ancient electric fan was blowing on him. There was a full set of Lucky Star figures placed next to the tv which one of the guys with me identified in about 10 seconds, noting that he too owned the set. As our food came, the lady working our table also had Lucky Star chopstick holders and Lucky Star Washinomiya-area food store stamp rally sheets, and confirmed that we were there for “this,” in the simplest Japanese she could muster. The katsudon wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t really that “Dakee~”, but it did have an egg on top!

The actual temple was a pretty short walk from the station, and before we knew it, we were at those famous gates. Of course, we were immediately distracted by the nearby itasha, oddly placed billboards with ads for affordibly-priced Minoru Shiraishi haircuts, and of course this bizarre doll that appears to be half Konata, half KFC ad.

The temple itself was very quiet, it being a weekday afternoon and all. I mean, despite all this anime stuff, the place is still a regular temple, with regular temple stuff like this huge sign about the temple’s history that none of us even made an attempt to feign interest in. We did some regular temple stuff, like washing your hands and drinking some temple water like “the sign with the loli that they had in lucky star” tells you to on a handy poster, and ringing the bell and clapping and bowing and messing up the order in which you’re supposed to do all that business.

I guess there were some really faint signs that an otaku or two had been to the temple, like a board here and there on this thing (…(2), (3), (4), (5).) I’m fairly sure we spent a good half hour just looking at these things, because there were some real gems in here. Some highlights:

• Germany
• Taking it Easy
• Konata can full combo Hare Hare Yukai Oni mode like it was nothing
• MULTI-TEMPLE DRIFTING?
• Can’t spell Misao without M..ao! (tte VUA!)
• Who in the world would put something like this up there
• MOE AND PEACE. DESU.
• Lots of Japanese seem to really like praying for traffic safety in temples, which I guess isn’t that bad of an idea, to be honest.
• what in the world is going on here
• This is the Lucky Star shrine, not the Vocaloid shrine!!!
• Sorry to break it to you guys, but Ronald is now taken as someones yome.
• This is the Lucky Star shrine, not the FUTAE NO KIWAMI shrAAAAAAAAAAAAAAa
• And what better way to end the photo collection than a picture of Golgo wishing death upon all the disgusting otaku talking about Lucky Star?

I have to say that I had more fun than I was expecting, but I doubt I’ll ever be going back to the place, unless someone wants to accompany me as I finish the rest of this damn stamp rally. Anyone who has the opportunity that remotely cares about this stuff should go out there, it’s a good excuse to say that you took in some Japanese culture while also nerding out at the same time, not to mention that the place will probably go back to being yet another decrepit small town in another few years :(

After 5 hours in the brain-melting heat, I was forced to retreat from Ariake, a defeated man. A combination of long hair and my body’s extraordinary ability to retain heat caused, as happens so often in this country, my mind to say “yes” while my body screamed “no”, and before I knew it (somewhat literally, I think I had multiple OBEs in line for one thing or another) I was on the monorail back to air conditioning and a futon to pass out on. Since I’ll I’d probably manage to get today is ABe’s stuff and a handful of maniac doujins that would get me arrested in at least eight states, I think I’ll hold off until fuyukomi where I will likely be far more successful.

;____;

Quick notes before I go lie down and try to tie my hamstrings back together:

*Wonder Festival ruins everything – 75% of the escalators were out of comission, including the ones connecting the upper and lower levels of the east halls, and quite obviously the 1f-4f escalator in the west hall (the one that broke), which all had these 8 foot tall barriers blocking them off, lest someone breaks their leg on an immobile escalator. Thankfully some of the west hall escalators actually worked (main hall to 1f, 4f to main hall) but there were lots of guards yelling at you to leave space between you and the person in front of you. All in all, even worse crowds, and it’s only day one.

*Industry area smells like week-old gym socks, and it’s only day one.

*Japanese women are, in fact, capable of sweating.

*Don’t take friends that are violently allergic to pork to Chinese restaurants, no matter how hungry you may be.

*For some reason, the only way in and out of the East halls were the East-2 door and the East-5 door. I forget, is this normal?

*Maritan’s tagline this time around is very apt: 「この温気、ニオイ。。。ベトナムを思い出すぞ！」 or roughly “This heat, this smell… brings me back to ‘Nam!”

Taking it relatively easy tomorrow – doing the first monorail over from Shimbashi tomorrow, lining up for east hall all because of Ueda Hajime and then running over to west to try to grab things before everything half-decent sells out, hopefully everyone will be in Zun’s line instead of buying things that you can’t buy at every store ever

Today I exchanged a few hundred calories, a couple thousand yen, and my childish naivete regarding what the words “hot” and “uncomfortable” mean for a small number of Rozen Maiden coterie magazines of fairly high quality.

I have returned from my travails a changed man, one who now understands the cruelty and oppression that late capitalism inflicts upon the bourgeoise.

Returning to the fray tomorrow, don’t know if I will return unscathed. Tell my family (and Souseiseki) I love them.

But first, erratum: I have been kindly informed that Me & The Devil Blues is being put out by Del Rey, not Viz. I’m not quite sure how I made this mistake, but it could have to do with the fact that the only other Del Rey book I have considered buying is Genshiken. Good on them!

Anyway, I’m probably the last person to notice this that would even care, but I’ve just now gotten around to looking through the C74 catalog, and I was totally thrown off when I noticed that doujin games were moved to day 2 (actually, I first noticed this when looking at astrange’s fantasy c74 pdf but whatever). After a few seconds of googling, I found this handy website which explains all the changes made to what genres go to what day. In short, instead of the old
Day 1: General
Day 2: Girls’ day
Day 3: Boys’ day + Doujin Soft/Music layout, it’s now going to be

Day 1: Girls’ day
Day 2: General (anime/games, mostly non-porn) + Doujin Soft/Music
Day 3: Boys’ day, original works

Just a warning to any of you brave souls that are thinking about doing Comiket without checking a catalog first! Now to decide if I want to tackle east or west hall on day 2 first :/

Maybe now I won’t have to hear quite as many Kooky Japan stories at school?

And here I was, thinking that I was being a fool for hoping that 2ch would manage to have some pull on a big corporation after seeing signs of the stink on itai.

(real posts about more important things (MY ANIMES) to resume next week maybe)

Watched the movie this morning after waiting in a line for an hour with a bunch of nerds who were doing things like reading the Spice and Wolf novels and playing PSPs.

Part 2 concentrates almost exclusively on the initial meeting between Mikiya and Shiki. Mikiya pretty much instantly falls in love for Shiki because she is gigamoe he’s crazy/a teenager and Shiki doesn’t really appreciate this, because she’s kind of crazy/yandere, too. (I’m trying to avoid spoilers, but if you want spoilers then read the novel!!)

For a movie that’s essentially 50 minutes of introduction to the characters and setup to the rest of the films, this works out okay. It’s much slower and moodier than the first film, and the director even admits that action scenes are not his forte. (fun fact: he also directed coyote ragtime show. oops.) Mikiya and Shiki’s relationship here is the focal point of the plot, and it’s an interesting enough relationship to keep your attention for the span of the movie. I mean, on one hand you have kind of standard anime relationship plot points, female transfer student is shy and pushes guy away, guy is persistent and eventually gets girl’s attention. On the other hand, they’re both crazy, which may or may not account for Mikiya’s near-stalking of Shiki in the latter half of the film, and makes for a lot of boogiepop-style fun with Shiki. The ending is a semi-cliffhanger, which bothers me slightly, because I know I’m not going to get to watch the rest of the films for a while.

Again, the ticket was definitely worth my 1000 JPY, and again, I spent double that on merch. I’m not quite as enthusiastic about this one as I was about the first, but in the grand scheme of the 7-part cycle, it’s probably much more important than the first.

When planning my trip over here to Glorious Nippon, I had initially scheduled something very foolish. That is, I thought that I’d be able to go catch Kara no Kyoukai on the night of the 28th at the 10pm showing, despite having to be up the next day at 6 for comiket. I’m not entirely sure why I thought that this would be remotely possible, but I didn’t give up on this plan until about 2 hours before the movie that night as I was laying down onto my futon, about to sleep for a good 10 hours. Thankfully, the film gods had blessed me, as one of Tokyo’s thriving second-run theaters picked the movie up for another 3 weeks or so. (I don’t exactly know why they’re only showing this in one theater at a time, maybe they only made one film print to distribute?? This is probably projected anyway, so whatever.)

Long story short, I got to go see Kara no Kyoukai first thing in the morning (9:40) yesterday in Ikebukuro. I was very impressed by it.

I’m sure going into the movie with fairly low expectations helped this, since I’m a male on the internet, and therefore a contrarian prick. I mean, the director of Girls Bravo and not much else with animation by ufotable, creators of… Coyote Ragtime Show and Manabi Straight? (note that I haven’t seen either of these shows, please don’t kill me omo) Also, Type-Moon properties haven’t really had the best track record when it comes to anime adaptations. Of course, I now notice that the animation director for Death Note and the art director for a whole bunch of good anime were on-board, but that’s enough looking at ANN for one review. (wait, before we leave — you did notice Mad Bull on that last link, right? Good, just making sure.)

I went into the film not having read the novel/the translation of the novel, so I was really going into this blind. Since it’s customary, a short plot summary (spoilers may follow): A string of teenagers committing suicide by jumping off of the same building is taking place in late-90s Japan. Our heroine, Shiki, tries to find out exactly what’s going on, mostly because the object of her tsundere affections, Mikiya, has fallen into some sort of coma and for some reason they just know that this is linked. Maybe if I was more familiar with the Nasuverse then I’d know why this is obvious, but I’m assuming it’s just because all of the main characters in Type-Moon works are super-powerful badasses. Anyway, I’ll spare you from any more plot summary and potential spoilers here, the novel link is 4 lines up.

Speaking of super-powerful badasses, Shiki. This isn’t whiny eroge lead who can cut anything male Shiki, but tomboy amnesic tsundere who can cut anything female Shiki. I will make this clear right now: my favorite female leads are the ones who can unapologetically kick ass (note that this does not say “punch to the moon”), which T-M tends to do well. In other words, I am so fucking moe for Shiki.

Shiki actually gets a good portion of the 50 minutes that this thing runs, including a nice 90 second stint where she eats ice cream with one arm. (MOEEE.) Of course, this thing has a very limited cast, so that’s not much of a surprise. We get a few stretches of pseudo-philosophical talk, some interesting on a base, romantic level, some rehashed GitS-style “WHAT IS A MAN” stuff. Thankfully, there are some really beautiful backgrounds and generally well-framed shots that can keep your attention through that business. The high visual quality is a constant throughout the film, especially in the huge action payoff a little more than halfway through the thing, which I might pay the thousand yen just to see again. It might not be Paprika-level “jesus christ everything is so colorful and moving and oh god my eyes” stuff, but it was exceedingly fun.

In fact, you know what? Had I not decided to spend a month’s tuition in order to buy and watch Honneamise (worth every penny), this would be the best anime movie I’ve seen in 2007, in terms of overall satisfaction. Seriously, erect dorsal hairs everywhere like you would not believe. Don’t get me wrong, this movie definitely has its flaws. The story is essentially a standard Japanese ghost story in the Type-Moon world, and as I said earlier, some of the dialogue may make the more cynical of us roll our eyes a fair amount. Of course, this is just one movie of seven, and it does work fairly well as a general introduction to the characters/prologue. I think it might be worthwhile to note that I did go back and read the novel translation to make sure that I didn’t miss anything, and I thought that this adaptation was way better. It could have just been the translation. Who knows. Maybe I’ll go and read the novel in Japanese when I turn 30 and get my JLPT1, if they still offer JLPTs in the nuclear wasteland of 201x.

If you couldn’t gather it from the rest of the review, or if you just skipped down to the bottom to see my overall reaction (hypothetically–I know no one actually reads this): I’d say that anyone who is not terribly averse to the whole post-Eva Guy Animes About Girls stuff should check this one out. I know you’re going to download it anyway, so you’ll be out a measly fifty minutes of your life in the worst case. I’ll just be hoping for a HD release to buy to make up for your pirating ass.

I set my alarm to go off at 6 in the morning so that I could leave right at about dawn to line up for day 2 (no homo), but despite my mind saying yes, my legs said “no fuck you sit right back down and don’t you dare use me, write a blog post or something.”

So! Yesterday was the first day of c73, the second event of any importance that has occured since I touched down in Narita on the 28th. (the first was eating some great tonkatsu, and the nearly-second was going to see Kara no Kyoukai 1 but falling asleep at 8 instead. Good thing it’s still showing, thanks second-run theaters!) I woke up bright and early at 6 and started the trek over to the Big Sight right at about daybreak on a monstrously leisurely 10 hours of sleep, as observant readers will have noted.

I live fairly close to the big sight, so the trip over took a little over an hour after a conbini stop where I bought some expired negitoro maki. I went over on the Yurikamome/monorail from Shimbashi because I was going late enough for the thing to be running, and it was pleasantly empty. No pushing or shoving, and I even managed to get a seat (!!) without excessive harm to myself or others. A+ would ride again. I hope to in a few hours. After arriving at the con site, I stood in very large line for a very long time. They seemed to line everyone up at the front of the Big Sight today as opposed to next to the bay doors for the east/west halls. Maybe I got there a little too late? Did anyone in the English-speaking world get there at 5 or earlier so that they could clarify? Anyway, I stood fairly miserably in a light drizzle with no entertainment for about 2 and a half, maybe a bit more, hours. Applauding at 10 am when the thing opens and not moving for the next 45 minutes is a morale-killer, let me tell ya.

A timely (for me) aside: why didnt anyone tell me that Japan has mosquitos that are TEN TIMES BIGGER than the ones we have down south? God damn this place is scary.

Anyway, if you’re wondering why I don’t have pictures for you: sooo touriste, next to staring up at skyscrapers and walking on the wrong side of the sidewalk. Actually, I just don’t have a camera yet.

Some highlights of my modest purchases:

• Getting the second-to-last copy of one of two of Hinketsu Elevator (Ueda Hajime)’s new offerings. The other was sold out by the time I got through the line, despite me beelining straight there once I got inside the Big Sight. That’ll teach me not to run through the halls!
• A Rozen Maiden/F1 racing crossover. Spoilers: Raikkonen gets Shinku-chan.
• New offerings by the MercuriusLAB/Iconographica collective, definitely in my top five as far as doujin artists go. For all you American con-goers out there, I will here note that I saw “the white guy from Hen Da Ne,” whose real name is apparently “Andrew.” I will try to remember this in the future, as I hate calling people “HEY.” We talked for a minute or two, then parted ways.
• Things I didn’t buy out of embarrasment that I now regret: Rip Slyme yaoi. Pretty Cure kigurumi convention reports. Mononoke yaoi. Gatchaman yaoi. R-type fanfiction.

I finished up with most of my shopping at around noon, and instead of aimlessly wandering around the bemani section like I had originally planned, I met up with Chiku, who has no weblog so I cannot link you to his weblog. We ate soggy ten-don and wandered around the west halls and bought nothing. In fact, all he bought was a paper copy of the catalogue, and if he hadn’t done that I could call him a bad consumer of fan products.

We met up with Shingo and a host of others at around 2:30 and talked for a while. We eventually made it over to Akiba and a izakaya in the area and had a jolly old time while knocking back some drinks, the first alcoholic beverages I have ever legally bought and consumed. Actually, I might have been the only one who consumed plural-s-drinks, an astonishing two. I almost ordered a moscow mule for a third, but the thing was winding down and I didn’t want to look like an alcoholic.

While I was in Akiba I picked up ABe’s Gaisokyu for a measly 4800 yen, which considering the quality of the thing I would (although begrudgingly) pay double that price for, along with a second copy of Nazo no Kanojo X because I don’t remember what manga I buy. I also got a Maritan card that says “HAPPY FUCK’IN NEW YEAR.” I will take these words to heart.

On that note, it’s already bright outside and I should start punishing my legs again. So in case I don’t do another update until 2008: HAPPY FUCK’IN NEW YEAR.