Icon Source: rainraven
It is Sai calling someone bro as he did in G Gundam’s dubs. Dreamwidth is a fork of LiveJournal by former LiveJournal staff. There are many forks, but Dreamwidth is the most popular with their users linking between the two sites. Pixiv source no longer exists.

Icon Source: reccessional
Fire Candy has amazing character art with a very wonderful rough style. Above is “manga coloring” and not official art or from a cover.

Icon Source: ukemilk
Original Source: Nico Nico Douga
The icon originated from a Nico Nico Douga video with the Vocaloid Kagamine twins Rin and Len.

Icon Source: kazimierzi
Aventura was a formally licensed and published manga by Del Rey before Kodansha took over their manga publishing. It sported some of the most dreamy and excessive character (especially hair) detail. Safe to say Del Rey had much more interesting manga choices with Q Ko-chan, Alive: The Final Evolution, and Yozakura Quartet. Kodansha’s US division is far too timid and does not bother much with manga outside big hits.

Icon Source: mensenhater
Original Source: momocan.egoism.jp (a little NSFW)
Most of my favorite avatars or what LiveJournal calls icons have action, posing, or a bit of emotion. Just a character’s face is bland and not very creative. It is Ken cross-dressing in what the blond Aigis android is known to wear in Persona 3.

LiveJournal is a giant from a long ago era where people created communities of posting user avatars. Users had the ability to upload more than one icon (avatar) and choose which they wish to use when commenting or publishing a blog entry. In a way the site is very much like WordPress.com in where it is a network of blogs, but community and networking is much more stressed. Users created communities for anyone to post entries to and used them for massive image heavy posts with often a hundred icons. The community may not be Facebook, but it remains active and worth the membership.

Forums Shaped My Reading and Writing
My earliest memories of being online have been with forums and perhaps much of that time has created preferences when online. It could be the other way around and just coincidence I did much foruming, but I would like to think it lead to some of my writing style. Subtle trolling, casualness, playful wittiness at the expense of others, keeping things to the point, and random off-topic derailing as examples of influence. I am known in some communities for my annoying, amusing, and confrontational one liners. At the very least changing things up with having to write more gave time to reflect.

Images Make a Page of Words Attractive
I love great detail and informative treasures, but at times I can find long blog entries of my interest not interesting enough to read. Images bring color to a wad of black text, tell the topic of a post often before any words, grab attention, and break up text. People like purdy thingies.

Episodic Blogging is Useless
Around starting a blog I took peeks at what other bloggers did in addition to the little knowledge I already had. Real soon I learned that blogging each episode of an anime or chapter of a manga makes for poor reading. Sure an epiphany or emotional response to an episode or story arc can be remarkable, but every episode just because is a waste. One could simply go out to watch the particular episode or manga. If one is already following a series they would either decide to keep going or see what they have as not worth it.

Writing, Grammar, and Speling
I am a product of a dysfunctional schooling system where much of my years in school dealt with golf carts chasing ditchers across campus, stabbings, shootings, and bomb threats. There were days where I’ve spent time playing Gameboy Pokemon in front of a teacher’s desk with the teacher there. Jumping into blogging for me meant having to learn as I go without help or guidance. Finding tools for spelling is easy, but the ability to write something interesting, coherent, and styled is a world of error. Proof reading is a friend.

Timing
A lot like a news outlet a blog can get extra traffic and kudos for being ahead of the rest. Knowing when your audience is active online and being first leads to more retweets on fast sites like Twitter and having the most attention from offering something undiscovered.

Casuals and Fanatics
Many people into anime and manga are just into it to watch and read. It is a segment of fans that include those that gain pleasure in critique, analysis, and writing. Some fans find gathering information and opinions useful in addition to the media, but most are satisfied with what their friends suggest or what they stumble across. Just being a fan is okay and I have learned to accept that.

Better Have Something Worth Saying
In real life I hate surprises yet I prefer to do things on a whim. With blogging I write when I have something interesting or an inspiration gained from an experience. With a schedule I would find myself writing just to write without much to share. I take notes in the form of a list of words until I gather enough for a topic or I inspire myself through watching or reading anime and manga when I’m most easily able to concentrate. If I were to kick up my watching of anime and manga, it would translate to better consistency.

Some thanks to Justin of OASG for inspiring this post.

Happy Cinco de Mayo, everyone!

New Zealand protestors are speaking out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership while the latest round of negotiations happen there. This pact between countries is labeled a fair trade agreement in where more trade of goods can be made. In such a pact there is normally agreements made to remove or lessen fees, limitations, taxes, and similar. Drama over the Trans-Pacific Partnership is not so much about lifting barriers, but how the negotiation development is secret and what has been leaked are actually limitations on citizens in addition to business. Imagine many of the ideas that corporations and politicians thought of for SOPA and PIPA Internet censorship, but on a global scale without much public information. Governments and Internet service providers will enforce blocking of websites, removal of Internet access for individuals, and filtering to increase copyright restrictions with what has been leaked. Japan is one of the countries for encouraging to join in this agreement.

Flourishing and frequesntly imported self published manga known as doujinshi are a massive part of the animanga scene and has one of the world’s largest comic conventions devoted to it known as Comiket. At this time those creations enjoy the freedom of remixing characters from copyrighted anime and manga. The doujinshi market offers a way to become known to companies that publish manga and a way to develop their skills, but with TPP it will be hindered by enforcement with fines even without the copyright holder’s request. This agreement will perhaps include steps to make Japan’s copyright laws the same or much closer to America’s laws.

Copyright infringement is the norm for much of the anime and manga fan community around the world with illegal downloads, manga readers, and torrents. Greater regulation may happen rather than breaking down of the language, cost, and availability barriers. Voters and citizens may not know to what extent the agreement may go, as it may eliminate sites, blogs, or perhaps user pages from social networks. A link, photo, download, or a fan work may inspire a crack down on the site or the user of a site with vague or poor language.

The next Japanese general election will be held December 16th, 2012 with 63% of election candidate opposition to Japan’s Trans-Pacific Partnership participation. Action and discussion needs to happen instead of a last moment or brief spark of excitement that happened with SOPA and PIPA. It will not be easy with the passing of time for an agreement that has been in development for years, the secret nature of the negotiations, and the challenge of taking actual action.

Earlier this year there was an American anime convention called Otakon that took place in Baltimore, Maryland. There a small recorded panel of two discussed views on sexism in anime fandom and convention gatherings. The primary points covered by the panel and Anime Diet is that new anime is dominated by male targeted anime, harassment of cosplay dressed convention attendees is prevalent, and about how genders are visually displayed in anime. Both panel speakers are openly into feminism and they themselves label their views as feminist.

Amount of Animation for Males
The panel dives into the difference in number of anime that targets male audiences than female with the shounen genre as example. It is difficult not to assume that they suggests somehow separate and privately owned studios and animation companies are obligated to make a more equal balance of what genders should be focused on. While acknowledging fans will watch and read whatever of their interests are in regardless of the boy girl genres, they state that the higher volume of male anime is apart of male dominate culture. The point in running a for-profit business is to create more profit than previously and that would clearly mean catering to a group if it yields more profit and viewership. That leaves others to capitalize on different viewers if they find an unfilled opening or growth in other viewer audiences.

Harassment of Cosplayers
People visit conventions to hear about the industry, shop, and to meet other people of similar interests. A social gathering for speakers, sellers, and the fanatics that may often dress as their favorite characters from anime. Those cosplay fans however are the main bit that is thought of when conventions are discussed. People spend a lot effort and time in their appearance and in better examples their mannerisms. Both of which are visual in nature and done to be seen or to win a cosplay tournament of some kind. To be seen is the key component in this where it is unnatural to think that you would not be looked at with a chance of having judgement of cosplay dedication. While asking politely to take a photo is always polite, it is not realistic to think that your colorful, unrealistic, abstract, cheesy, revealing, or spiked up outfit won’t attract attention and those that will want photos of what made their day special. In the panel they place percentages onscreen to show that this is an issue for both genders, so one would conclude that there is not a sexism issue.

Convention Staff
Just as soon as harmful behavior at conventions is mentioned, it starts with how there are so many female attendees and about an attendee survey on how more so than not convention staff are seen as unhelpful in harassment situations. Enforcement of behavior on one gender and not the other is not fair and is sexist itself. All too often males have nowhere to go or any legal means in handling such kinds of harassment. Take it like a man and quit crying.

Other Notes
I cannot comment on the specific anime or the characters mentioned in their panel outside of Melfina from Outlaw Star, but the anime did have three main females to show various personalities. Sound quality and background noise plagues the video and distracts attention, so perhaps better acoustics can be put into consideration in conventions when recording.

Speaking out on bad behavior is great. Be loud, be angry. Support and demand more of what you enjoy.

Anime Gerad is looking for new writers to provide more diversity and enjoyment. We’re searching for fresh bloggers or those with wish to get into blogging. What is looked for in applicants:

1. A love for anime, manga, and similar topics like Vocaloid.
2. Editorials, reviews, humor, news, and opinion is Anime Gerad’s forte and focus. Episodic writing is not discouraged, however episode post so far on Anime Gerad have been reserved for special moments in an anime than for each episode.
3. Writing style, grammar, experience, and ability to proofread are factors. No blogging experience required, but it does not hurt.
4. Although there is not any set number of posts to be made in a period of time, dedication and frequency in writing will be considered.
5. Most of us in this community are easy going peeps, so friendly and accepting character is great.

Apply with our contact form or send a private message to Jura on the forum. Please include as much of the following as possible:

1. Methods of contact like Twitter, email, or Windows Live Messenger.
2. Sample or samples of writing. It can be the first blog post you wish to make on Anime Gerad or something written in the past.
3. An introduction, history with anime, tastes, preferred types of writing, and how often you are available to write.

No deadline to apply. All written content is to be exclusive to this site. Accepted bloggers will be introduced to the community and given any assistance needed in getting started.

Source: animegerad.com via AnimeGerad.com on Pinterest

Image bookmarking site Pinterest is a growing site where people add images from the web or computer to share into categories called boards. Users pin videos from the web to embed into Pinterest, like button images to save, or repin other pins into their own boards. Perfect place to show off favorites for those who enjoy collecting images they like. Anime and manga fandom is filled with imagery such as fan art, avatars, screenshots, posters, and cover art.

In addition to pinning of images and making boards for categorization:

1. Allow other specific users to add pins to a board
2. Embed codes for adding to webpages
3. Language settings
4. Shows pin source, other pins from the same site, and how the pin was added
5. Activity window and emails to show interactions from others
6. Gift area for shopping categorized by price
7. Search for images, boards, or people
8. Web browser and website Pin It buttons for easy and speedy pinning
9. Browsing images loads more images to the page when scrolling down
10. Set board cover instead of latest image
11. Friend finding and invitations
12. Follow users or their specific boards

Pinterest is similar to Twitter in that there is a stereotypical view on its usage. Twitter for the longest was seen as a site for people to announce what they were doing at every moment of the day. Twitter users can say to follow people that are of interest, but that would be useless if the other person is not open to seeing Twitter as a place for news, micro-blogging, or connecting with people and brands. Pinterest has a reputation by some for being to much about clothing, products, or fashion. If clothing and fashion are boring then it should be just as easy to say not to search for such pins or users and boards that pin such images.

The design of Pinterest is flashy and displays a lot without being cluttered. Similar sites like We Heart It, Gentlemint, and FFFFOUND! either are playing catch up or limit their use. We Heart It and Gentlemint both pander to specific genders and FFFFOUND! remains invite only.

A Twitter or Facebook account is required for registration and there is a brief open beta waiting list, but it is showing to be one of the fastest growing social networks.

Try it and be sure to follow me.