I’m back! Here to bring you the news topics that are relevant!

Sort of…

Within the past month I have endangered the lives of several people including mine, with my precarious driving on several occasions. I nearly drove two vehicles off the highway by cutting them off abruptly. Not to mention snuck between two semi’s going more than thirty-five miles over the speed limit. On the local roads which run outside my house, I came within inches of ending the day early for a few kids playing with their tricycles. In the parking lots of supermarkets I have launched my car nearly five feet into the air by leaping off speed bumps like a ramp.

What could have caused my absolute disregard for self-preservation? What momentous event has triggered the reaper to follow in the wake of my excursions through concrete and asphalt?  The only thing that’s changed is that I started listening to Vocaloid again. One song in particular from my past invokes such need for speed, on such an unfathomable level, I can not physically quell it with my silly five-speed Volkswagen. The song in question is of course Little Wings by Caz.

To elaborate, this song was the official theme for the GOODSMILE Racing group and their souped out Miku-Decal Embossed Porsche back in 2010. To win this honor, it had to compete against nearly fifty other entries (Or was that five? I don’t remember.) and was used in one promotional video that I can’t seem to find — and possibly may not actually exist — anywhere on the Interweb.

The important matter is that whenever I hear this song, I am driven to kill myself behind the wheel of my car. The next time I disappear from this blog, that may very well be the reason.

Speaking of recovery, or lack thereof, I proudly admit that I took a year and a half weaning myself off of Hatsune Miku. I have not spent a single dime on that turquoise-haired goblin. I hope to keep it this way. more…

Wait, so someone told me there was indeed a North American BD release of Kara no Kyoukai. It was back in 2011, and I don’t remember being deployed during that time, so I guess I just plain missed it. That sucks, especially since I had the money for it.

My only question… If it sold out so quickly, why does no one I know own a copy?

This must have been a very limited release.

I was aware of this growing problem for the past two years, but it really hit home for me the moment I went on Amazon to see if any companies managed to license Nanoha THE MOVIE, and release it on BluRay for a reasonable price. I typed “nanoha” in the search query and was blasted in the face with the most atrocious of filth:

Not only are the old Funimation prints of the first two series being sold for nearly 240$, but the only version of the Nanoha movie available for order is the Japanese edition. I understand it comes with “English” subtitles, but now I have to pay extra for importing fees. I could not believe my eyes, so I went to Rightstuf to see just how dilapidated the anime market had become. With the exception of a few titles from Sentai Filmworks, there was hardly any anime that I had considered worth buying available for a reasonable price.

The only anime that caught my eyes from among the shallow cesspool of bullshit, was Fate/Zero published by ANIPLEX. So without thinking, I added it to my shopping cart, in hopes that there might still be redemption for the American market… and gasped at the price. The box set for Fate/Zero turned out to be $370.00 for the first thirteen episodes! I can not remember anyone ever having to pay so much for anime outside of Japan. I asked around online, and it seemed this was the official “English” release… so I punched in my credit card number while rather piqued. All these neat little extras that come with the bundle are great ideas; but releasing only in Japan and charging dirty foreigners extra on importing fees to circumvent money lost through third party distributors is just dirty.

I have dealt with ANIPLEX before, when I made my decision to purchase the Puella Magi Madoka Magica series a while back. The Madoka Magica series was broken into three limited edition sets each going for around 70-80 dollars. The reasoning for the steep price, was due to the BD/DVD combo, Original Soundtrack, illustrated post cards, the cheap non-corrugated box it came in and the fact that I am stupid enough to fall for it. Why release BluRay at all? I understand that I am getting my money’s worth in paying this ridiculously large sum, because these BluRay/DVD combos are not the run-of-the-mill cheap American mastering that I begrudgingly dished out 18-30 dollars per disc to purchase back in the old days. However, most anime watchers are not bright enough to notice a significant drop in quality to cartoons, and I find it ridiculous that there are bluray releases of televised anime series in the first place. I am more understanding of animated full-length movies warranting a bluray release. Once again, only a good handful of people would be able to notice the difference in the first place. But at some point, someone has to point out: it’s just anime.

So while this may sound blasphemous, and wholly counterproductive to the progression of anime in the United States of America:

Mr. Big Publishers, please retrogress the quality of anime, and start releasing them in small clunky DVD compilations encased in cheap plastic for the standard low-wage American audience. This is for the sake of the anime community.

Oh, but they’re not the only sinners. The rest of you better stop streaming anime, get a job and start buying shit. Otherwise, the fate of anime in the United States is doomed. All the best anime will never make it to American shores, and the price will only drop once the company that released them goes bankrupt and disappears. Or in the case of Nanoha (Geneon), cost you $240…

From what did manage to jump the Pacific onto American soil, despite the constant sabotage by you fucking pirates, here are some of the more “decent” titles you may consider buying:

Angel Beats
AnoHana: The Flower We Saw That Day
Eden of the East
Highschool of the Dead
Infinite Stratos
Occult Academy
Arakawa Under the Bridge
Baccano!
Star Driver
Squid Girl
The World God Only Knows
Princess Jellyfish

There are still so many titles I have yet to see make it to America…

The beginning of EVOLUTION 2012 started out with a bang, with the announcement that Persona 4: Arena for the PS3 will be region-locked.

Since the article I linked to is just too wordy, I’ll copy and paste the important bits.

[...] we are not doing this out of malice or a desire to control.
The decision to region-lock P4 Arena was a business one, [...]
[...] the dramatic difference between the Yen and the Dollar makes
for a dramatic difference in price.
- AtlusUSA

 Indeed, the reason for region-locking was not out of malice or a desire to control. It was simply an innocent act wrought from harmless greed. God bless capitalism!

Honestly.

Arcana Heart 3 never took off like I hoped and prayed it would. People were just too afraid of getting vanned.

So now I have to place my hopes on the next craze from Japan: Persona 4: The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena, also known as “P4U” for short. It is a collaboration between Atlus (Shin Megami Tensei, Digital Devil) and Arc System Works (Guilty Gear, BlazBlue) to milk the money train that is Persona.

I did not play Persona 4, but if it plays out like the Shin Megami Tensei series, then it’s probably a repetitive dungeon crawler. I don’t really care for the background of this animu fighter, but I like jumping on bandwagons, so I’ll pretend to be a Persona fanboy just long enough to work my penis into the pants of one of these annoying Persona fangirls.

Remember to pre-order your copy today! more…

So in commemoration of the Avengers movie opening tonight, I decided to browse through my old blog and pull up something that is no longer relevant. Note that this was written over six years ago.

Oh, and speaking of American comics… what’s with these Original English Language (OEL) manga that’s been filling up bookshelves in the manga section? Two years ago, I took it for a passing fad, but now every comic-book publisher appears to be releasing their own versions of “Home-Made Japanese”. Some of them steal the Japanese right-to-left format (I see no reason to do this since English should be read left-to-right.) and after reading the shitty stories within some of them I’m beginning to wonder if Americans are just trying to adapt all the wrong aspects of Japanese comics…?

The Hair
To quote the Shopping Blog on the thankfully-deceased Garnier’s Manga Head advertising campaign, “Looking for a wild new hair style? Garnier suggests a new style based on the popular Japanese Manga comics.” If you’re too new to the manga scene to have missed seeing the L’Oreal line making such beautiful asses of themselves, their “Manga Head” page featured images of poorly drawn dragonball-esque characters, possibly submitted by primary school students all across the United Kingdom, all with one unique characteristic: gravity-defying hair. Accompanying these awful flashy pictures were images of real people imitating the hair style with Garnier’s Fructis Style product.

So there we have it. Clear proof that one of the defining points of manga to the ignorant west are the buoyant hairstyles. There is a bit of truth to this; it would be be nigh impossible to find a manga in any shounen publication that does not make use of the pointy hair, the floating bangs or the middle antennae. However, fans of more true-to-life artist such as Ikegami Ryoichi(MAI THE PSYCHIC GIRL) and Marita Masanori (Rokudenashi Blues, Rookies) know this to be not true. [...] Still, their knowledge doesn’t seem to extend beyond the scope of the hair.

The Eyes
If you were to make a comic and you wanted to call it a manga, but your Japanese vocabulary is very limited and you couldn’t draw a decent manga setting if hell came after you… how else could you affirm its status as a manga? The answer is of course, the eyes. Apparently having the eyes take up more than 40% of the face constitutes any drawn image as an official Japanese character. Sometimes giving them Japanese names like Sora, Tsubasa, Bob and the like makes them all the more authentic.

Big eyes are definitely a Japanese drawing trait, and it wouldn’t be a lie to say that the trend of bigger white:pupil ratio is influencing the drawing styles of many new and upcoming American comic artists. What separates them from the slew of other American manga-artists is that their work is still labeled “comics”.

So where exactly is the fine line drawn? I’m sure it must be the language barrier or in the inking. Maybe it is the Japanese’s heavy usage of tones to create atmosphere and moods, made obsolete in American comics because of our preference of having everything in color, or could it be…

The Setting
OELs are interestingly enough always about silly relationships, furries, vampires and goths, geeks, all of the above, or about the actual medium itself: Japanese anime and manga. In that sense, I guess there isn’t much differentiating them between their Japanese counterpart. Well, except for one thing….

The OELs are just fucking awful. A futuristic setting with samurais and gunslingers is fine… if you’re Japanese. If you’re an American, you’re better off making a story about Jedis. At least you’re playing on your own field then. It just doesn’t seem right. I used to expect class whenever I read American works, but these OELs are just killing me.

Americans are just too engrossed with making their comic more than just a “comic”, into something called “manga”, that they overcomplicate it with silly American wisdom when what they really need is something nice and simple. They could start off by making a decent story and calling it a comic. [M]any people in America have come to expect their manga to have depth (and pretty art), maybe with a slight scattering of humor throughout every chapter in moderate amounts to prevent it from becoming all serious and no play. The American “manga” I have read either take it too far with the humor, or go nowhere with the depth. It’s overall a bland read, and I sometimes stab myself at night so that I’d never pick up any american OELs again.

Anyways, It’s 6 in the morning and I’ve gotten sleepy. I’ll check back later and this post will seem very retarded in the afternoon.

And I now leave you with a picture.

Oh, so true...