Over here there is a petition starting, asking the government to allow marriage to 2d characters with the following translated text.

“We’ve no interest in the 3D. If we could, we’d like to live in a 2D world. However, with current technology, this is not possible. So at the very least, can we have marriage to 2D characters legally recognised? If this were to come to pass, I intend to marry Asahina Mikuru.”

A few thoughts about this come to mind after reading about this…

1. This is both pathetic and sad on a level that is utterly amazing
2. Why would they ever think of signing something like this and submitting it to any government official?
3. If by some incredible stroke of luck this did get passed, what do you think the laws would be on the minimum age limit?
4. How would they deal with the millions of people who would want to marry the same character like Konata or Haruhi. Would they be married to all of them at once or is it a 1 character to 1 person type deal?
5. Finally, how would the honeymoon work? Would they have use 1 of those hugging pillows?

Anime and manga reviews are quite common. The more popular series get the most and smaller series sometimes get really passionate reviewers. A good example of this would be solanin which was linked on Manga Blog to this review. This review and ones like it stick with someone. Good (in this case manga) reviews give information about the volume they read, style, and descriptive points about the story. A good review also is honest and don’t give pointless scores or grades. Oh hey, this manga is scored .3 points more than this. Buy it! Not having such an silly system tacked on to the end is what made Newtype USA reviews great. They tapped in to the hearts of people who would be interested in that franchise. If someone wouldn’t like something then chances are they wouldn’t get more than half way into the review. Other then that a reviewer should work on descriptions. Just saying an anime or manga looks great won’t make a lot of people buy something. If only becoming skilled at such was easier said then done.

The one thing to remember about reviews before moving on: They’re almost always of a series the reviewer really hated or loved. Why write when you have no connection or care of something?

Crediting of sources (graphic, information, or other) is another issue. Many times on sites like LiveJournal or forums you have people crediting the wrong person or a large site without crediting. Saying you have image stock from Photobucket, 4chan, or some awful manga reader site. The online reader site is obviously wrong to credit when they did nothing with the scanning or translation. Thanking an image hosting site isn’t giving any thanks to the person who created whatever fanart, artbook scan, or screenshot. As for large sites like Anime News Network or others…people thought out and typed those descriptions. >:3

These should be the basics, but maybe once and a while something like this should be mentioned or discussed. Never hurts.

First of all what’s this news doing on an anime site? Well i’m not really sure but I had to post about something and this is the newest thing to happen of any interest to me besides me getting a new computer, so I figured that this at least has some form on anime to it in the way of Music Videos to the songs you can play. Regardless of all that, for those who actually own a PSP and play the game (and those who don’t, shame on you) you’ll be happy to know that the new game DJ Max Clazziquai has been released. I must admit to obtaining this game in less than reputable ways, and am partially a contributer to the following problem but this is just because i’m broke right now. I’ll be buying the game when I get money next week or so. So anyway, this is what was planned to happen.

The new DJ Max game was set to be released in 2 parts… sort of. There was to be a Beginner game this month, to introduce new people into the world of DJ Max. This game had the following features

– Eaiser modes of play such as 2 Button, and 4 Button FX in addition to the usual, 4, 5 and 6 button modes.

– 48 or so songs from mostly new artists, and the band (group? idk who they are) Clazziquai. I suppose this could be a Guitar Hero Aerosmith type deal only the korean version.

– Eaiser note charts for beginners to follow and play, although at the harder levels things heat up a little bit. They are ment to prove a challange to newer players.

This game is entirely noob friendly as the original did have a little bit of a learning curve for people who have never tried a game like this before. I love it even though i’m quite a decent player (I can finish every song in DJ Max Portable 2 except for Nightmare which is damn hard) Anyway part 2 was set to be released next month. Enter Black Square. This follow up was for the veterans of the series who wanted a challange. It included

– 8 button mode for people who have pet spiders to help them work the buttons. I can’t play 8B at all because my hands are so big, that even holding the psp without the game on is a bit uncomfortable

– Music from the first 2 DJ Max games, along with a ton of new songs from the classic people such as Nein, Planetboom, Croove and so forth totaling over 100 songs

– Harder note charts than Clazziquai for extra difficulty.

This was set to release next month in november sometime.

According to a rumor and a korean website, someone (not sure who, I doubt it would be the developers) are pissed off that Clazziquai was leaked/released onto the internet a day, or on the day that it was on sale. This shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone who knows how fast the game scene moves on the internet. Usualy games are out, and cracked before they are even avaliable in stores.

So what have they decided to do? Why put Black Square on hiatus of course. I have no clue as to why they would even think of doing this but according to some it’s their way of saying “buy the game or else we wont release part 2” This got me thinking. Can you imagine if another company did this?

We all know by now how Starcraft 2 will be released in 3 parts yeah? Imagine the shitstorm that would happen if they said “parts 2 and 3 are on hiatus for an unknown time until we are happy with sales because of people downloading the game” They would be burnt alive and hung for treason to gamer-kind. Ok mabye not that hard but you know what I mean. I guess since the DJ Max series is really a korea-first type game that they don’t really care about what other countries think about what they do.

Either way it seems the wait for the next DJ Max game will continue and be a bit of a long one. I hope i’m wrong on this and it is just a false rumor, or that the game will only be on hold for a few months.

Here are a 8 of the brilliant new songs which happen to be my favorites, with their background videos to go with them. Man the videos they have are so much better quality than their first and even their 2nd games. The first 2 looked like someone could have done it or better with a flash program and some time. These ones are really quality looking, Especialy First Kiss.

Flea – Ok I found this song last night while playing and without a doubt is my favorite song in the entire game. Bravo Clazziquai, you are now officaly awesome. Oh and this is also the opening video to the new DJ Max game so you have the credit screens before the song actually starts.

 

Eternity – This song is stunning to me. Its so peaceful, and yet has such a great beat to it and of course Miya (the singer in it) has her beautiful voice as always which makes it such a charm to listen to.

First Kiss – Such a nice feel to this song

Creator – I love this song so much. Deffinately in my top 4 songs

Night Stage – Another awesome song. I love the guy’s voice.

The Clear Blue Sky – I didn’t like this song at first but it’s grown on me

I Want You – Quite a bouncy song that I really enjoy listening to and playing.

Closer – Not a real fan of the video but the song is great to play even on the easiest setting. Only it’s ruined by that stupid rapper JC. God I wish they would give him the ass and not let him do any songs anymore. At least ones where he isnt the main singer. Just shut the hell up and stop ruining songs.

Honeymoon – Again this has a good beat to it and a catchy tune that i’m already humming to myself.

And that’s that. There is no shortage of gameplay videos to watch on youtube so if your even kinda interested in music games and own a PSP this is is a must have. This is the only reason I turn my psp on anymore

This is where someone would say sorry for the lack of blogging, but it’s best to blog instead. Just a series of unhelpful events and uncertainty of life. There’s been a lot of good things this year.

Moon Boy returns – Yen Press took off as it announced many new series along with the manhwa picked up from ICEkunion. One of them being this adventure of rabbit and wolf people. Volume four had a September release and it can be found on Amazon for a fairly cheaper price.

The basic idea of the story is that these rabbit like people once lived on the moon, but were forced off and came to earth. It’s either that or be eaten. These people fit in society like normal, but many have no knowledge of this or their power. Myung-Ee Joo is the (loud…) main character who’s…okay stop. She’s not really the main character. The story pretty much drags her along with it.

Back to the basic idea. You have these loose rabbit people along with a fighting force called Rabbit Tribe who helps Myung-Ee Joo and protects Yu-Da Lee. Their goal is to save Yu-Da Lee from the foxes who believe they’ve completely wiped his mind and surround him everyday. Both sides are able to form swords either from fox claws or by the will of a rabbit.

Each volume comes with a small folded poster, the art is always styled, and the series gets straight into the fun and drama. There’s not really any character development minus learning about what one capable of and their different ways of not being serious. Publishers Yen Press and Orbit are now under one roof so now there’s going to be volumes of the Moon Boy series with three different logos and companies on it…

ADV and Tokyopop – Tokyopop licensed Mirai Nikki as Future Diary with the first volume in May 11, 2009. Other than that ADV and Tokyopop have been more of a pain than good. Tokyopop dropped Lagoon Engine, Beyond the Beyond, and others. ADV dropped Sergeant Frog and gave up after releasing 5 Centimeters per Second.

More? Yes and who knows what ADV Manga will do when and if volume two of Lagoon Engine Lagoon Engine Einsatz comes out. With Yotsuba&! being on hold and the big list of canceled manga from ages ago…Gamerz Heaven, The First King Adventure, and Rise R to the Second Power as examples. ADV tossing out both the profiting Newtype USA and the poorly thought PiQ anime magazines.

Mirai Nikki from Tokyopop? No thanks.
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Kaiba was a crazy adventure, Yozakura Quartet is animated, Kyo no Gononi has a new series, a cosplay magazine comes to the US with a large massive hard cover, and Soul Eater became popular.

Where’s the hard cover of Q Ko-chan volume two, though?

Next year maybe Geneon will return, Lolifox the web browser will make a come back, Letter Bee has a TV series announcement, and more Japan based comic publishers will cross the sea themselves to other countries. Guess this entry serves more of what to expect in future writings (but hopefully easier to read and coherent).

Guess the first thing to notice is the site has a new layout and the forum returned to one of the previous look. They’re finished except for a few minor tweaks in Internet Explorer.

There’s a new Strawberry Marshmallow mood set, default Air Gear avatar, a thanks system, personal links and panel when logged in, a new help page, better quality Youtube embedding in posts, an Anime Gerad MySpace was added, and the user blogs have been removed.

There are a lot of great moments in anime. These of course vary from person to person and 1 I never really hear or see all that much are sad moments. I don’t mean moments that you go “oh thats a shame”. No no no, that will hardly do at all. I’m talking about moments that bring you almost to tears or make you feel so depressed that you need to do something else to cheer yourself up. So why do a list about this then? Well because I can and these moments while indeed are sad, they are so wonderful in their own way that they deserve to be seen by all. These are in no particular order so lets get down to it shall we?

Clannad Episode 9 – Fuko’s Arc End

An incredible series converted from an equally incredible game that should be on everyone’s list to play. This episode was the most sad for me of the entire series. At least what I saw of the series. I stopped watching around episode 17 as I had just come off playing the Visual Novel, and refused to have the endings i’d played through, ruined for me by the show. Fuko is a girl who on the day of her opening ceremony at school, got into a car accident and was left in a coma. If my memory serves me correct, 3 years later, when the story takes place, her ghost shows up in school carving starfishes for everyone so they can celebrate her sister’s wedding. Long story short, at the very end there is a really tearful moment where she appears in front of her married sister, congradulates her and dissappears, making everyone forget all about her, with only deja vu type memories remaining. It’s such a sad yet touching scene where she finally gets her only wish granted, seeing her sister happyly married. 

At the very very end of the episode, we get a sweet moment where Tomoya is imaging Fuko coming up to him and offering him a starfish while she asks for him to be her friend. This is the happy ending for Fuko’s good ending. Now some of these story arcs have 2 endings. a Good, and True ending. Each different ending moments or tales that play out past certain intervals. Since the show is based on Tomoya eventualy choosing Nagisa as his girlfriend and future wife, the true ending could not be shown on tv. This is unfortunate as Fuko’s true ending is what stopped me from almost crying. Yes call me a wuss or whatever names you want, but ever since playing Kana: Little Sister i’ve almost, and have cried numerious times during anime. But that is another story all together. 

Fuko’s true ending goes like this; bearing in mind of course that it has been a long while since I played this, so details may be a tiny bit fuzzy or off, but are nearly spot on. Fuko and Tomoya go to the school at night (this is shown in the anime, but with Nagisa present) and they have a sort of celebration for her. Party hats and what not. Very cute. As the night goes on and both of them become tired, they decide to sleep at school. Tomoya sits down and fuko sits down beside him. They talk for a bit and after awhile Tomoya pulls Fuko onto his lap and hugs her. Here is where her endings split into 2 paths. You are given the option to kiss her, or stay hugging her. In the TV version you get the “keep hugging her” option. So Tomoya kisses her and finaly confesses he likes/loves her. They fall asleep together hugging. When Tomoya wakes up Fuko is gone and no one can remember her except for him. Of course he is sad but goes on with his life. I’m not sure how much longer, a girl runs into him in the halls at school. Fuko has woken up from her coma finaly (long story) and holds up a starfish for Tomoya and says “Will you go out with me?” And thus ends Fuko’s arc. Of course he would go out with her.

Since I can’t find a video of the ending i’m talking about, here is a short video of Fuko doing what she does best, Spacing out.

Oh and there is this AMV of Fuko’s whole story which should show you what she is like, and why she is my favorite Clannad character.

Kanon Episode 10 – Makoto Arc End

Another anime from the awesome story tellers Key, who are responsible for Clannad. In this episode, we see the close of an even sadder story than Fuko. Granted this is a little bit more supernatural than a ghost. Yuichi (the main character) found a little fox that was injured 10 years before the main stories of Kanon start. he rescued it and all summer long looked after it, nursing it back to health. When the summer break finished he released it back into the wild and said goodbye. 10 years later when the story starts. Runs into a girl called Makoto. She has no memories of anything but knows she hates Yuichi. Another long story short (key are very good at building romance, so just watch the series already) it turns out Makoto is the same fox that Yuichi took care of when he was a child and she has transformed into a human only for a brief period of time so she can be with him. 

Both Yuichi and Makoto fall in love together, and her time starts to run out in the world. She starts to revert back to her more fox like qualities like being unable to talk or remember things except for Yuichi. Seeing (and after being told what will happen by another person) what is happening, Yuichi decides to give Makoto what she wanted, which was to marry him and stay with him forever. They go to a hill where Yuichi has bought a wedding veil and puts it on her. He says the usual speech and they get “married”. As the sun starts to set Makoto starts to slowly fall asleep and before long, she disappears entirely from Yuichi’s arms leaving him all alone. I just cannot get over how much crap this guy goes through. This isn’t even the half of it. Of course due to the original material being a visual novel, he meets 3 or 4 other girls who all either dump him, or die on him. This guy has the worst luck in the anime dating world and he is THE single best male lead character in romance shows. Still, all the other girls pale in comparison to the epic tragedy that is Makoto.

Finding videos of the specific endings is kinda difficult so you’ll have to make do with this beautiful AMV that is about Yuichi and Makoto. The scenes of her finaly disappearing are in there shuffled amongst the build up between the 2. Enjoy

Elfen Lied Episode 8 and 9 – Lucy Finally Gives Up

This comes in 2 parts, and everyone who has seen this will know exactlly what I mean. This is deffinatly worthy of being on this list. But first a bit of backstory is required to get the full effect of this. Lucy is a Diclonius. Diclonius are humans with 2 small cat like ears on their heads and are able to controll what are called Vectors. Think of these as invisible (to humans) arms that can carry, block, cut or destroy nearly anything they come into contact with. Now since it has been awhile when I last watched this, I cannot remember if it is in a Diclonius’s nature to be destructive or just something that comes as a result of how they are treated. However  this flashback looks at Lucy starting off as a child that is picked on, made fun of and teased constantly about her horns. She is given horrible names like freak and animal. Even her own family aren’t very loving of her. Growing up this way is never easy, but since she is a diclonius it is a little different for her. She has this voice inside her head telling her to kill people, like a concious gone wrong. This could be her diclonius nature coming out but I do not remember exactly, but she is a nice person.

1 day she finds a little puppy out in the woods, or area she goes to be alone. She likes him and starts to look after him sort of. Feeding him and being friends with him. Meanwhile at school things are getting worse. The kids are beating her up trying to make her cry or get some reaction out of her and a girl steps in to stop them. She befriends Lucy and is shown the little puppy. A few days later the bullies at school corner Lucy after school I presume and pretty much tell her they intend to antagonize her again. But this time they have the puppy with them. Seems that “friend” (at least to me) was only nice to her in order to betray her. Lucy finaly starts to sees that humans will only hurt her. Lucy finaly fights back to try and save the puppy, the bullies take things too far and right in front of Lucy, kill the puppy by bashing it to death with a flower vase. This is a very disturbing, and sad scene where Lucy says 1 of the most memorable quotes in anime history.

“When you’re miserable, you need someone even more miserable than yourself”  

What happens next is a scene that everyone will remember. Lucy, for a brief moment snaps and in a shower of blood destorys everything in the room. Children, furnature you name it. After the carnage subsides the area looks like a slaughter house. 

Warning, this scene may be disturbing for some/most. The dog sound… aw man thats rough.

Understandably after this Lucy is upset and goes to her place to be alone. There she meets Kouta, the main character of the story as a boy. For the first time she meets someone who thinks she is great. He loves her horns and they become friends. They go to the zoo together and play all the time. She genuinely starts to like him… a lot. One day a festival happens and Lucy asks Kouta if he would go with her. Kouta has to turn her down however as he has already promised his cousin he would go with her. Lucy starts to worry and asks if his cousin is a boy or a girl. See where this is going? Kouta lies and says a boy and she is releaved. 

So she decides to go anyway, I suppose hoping to run into Kouta. Indeed she does only to find out Kouta’s cousin is a girl who is acting very close to him (Yuka loves him but that is another story). This finaly becomes to much to her and she has a breakdown right there in the street. She has a full conversation in her mind with her diclonius’s evil nature and finaly starts believing that humans only bring pain. She finaly snaps and decides to “change the world into her world”.

“No more. I can’t take it anymore. Friends or a place to stay… I don’t… have anything anymore”
“Kouta… Goodbye. I really liked you”

As in the last episode, there is a spray of blood and she clamly walks killing people that come to help her or are near her as she says 

“I’ll wipe you all out. Every damn last one of you”

With that, the good natured Lucy is gone, at least for now, and what follows is a lot of death involving her killing people as she goes from house to house slaughtering entire families just to take their house and food.

Again, finding actual scenes is kinda hard on youtube so you have this AMV that has all the scenes im talking about in it. Well at least the main ones. Also take note, this video has nudity, however brief it may be, and a bit of blood. If you’re not ok with that then don’t watch.

Well that is it for now at least. Its late so I should wrap this up. I may do another of these since these certainly weren’t the only moments I can come up with. Time will tell.