Couple days ago my pre-order of Lon’s best of CD came. Lon is a singer on Japanese video site Nico Nico Douga who does Vocaloid songs and many collaborations with other Nico Nico artists. Many of her songs are Kagamine Len and Rin with her ability to smoothly switch between them. She’s known for her little boy voice and many of her hits get millions of views. Her works include Remote Control, Hanging Garden, and GHOST which are also on the disc. A preview can be found on Nico Nico Douga along with Lon’s video list that has some of the included songs.

Bonus features include a strap for sticking on a keychain or apparel and a small mousepad both with designs of Lon’s character. Insert has lyrics and credit pages as expected. Releases such as these that have some of the songs with Vocaloid origins show human vocals can be as good if not better than the original.

EhNani here helped introduce me to this music quite a while back…all your fault. Thanks.

It can be bought on Amazon or many sites that sell similar music.

It’s so easy to leave manga around wherever, run out of space from having too many, or just not enough room among other personal belongings. Storing on a wall can add more space and create creative ways to show off or to make a more pleasant environment. The one above in the image can be found here on a site called Etsy. Browsing the site will lead to many other designed goods and many sellers at the site even offer custom work.

Give the appearance of manga on the wall without something holding it there with the Conceal or Z Shelf wall shelves by Miron Lior. The designer’s site is Flash based, so the items can’t be linked to directly but one can select the times in the shop tab to find where to buy. Conceal is the small and inexpensive one that doesn’t show the shelving and Z Shelf has a zig zag design that holds the books on their side. Slip the cover around the metal bit and there are small parts that hold the cover from opening. Always remember to find the studs in the wall to make sure the shelving is held tightly to the wall.

Bed readers can enjoy bedside lighting with easy access to their reading with the Lili Light. One half of it stores while the other half has the light that turns on and off if there is a book laying above it. Works as a bookmark without having to stick something inside your manga and has a manual switch if you don’t want to lay a book there for extended periods of time.

If looking for something custom or homemade, try out this tutorial on how to make your own upside down shelf. There’s five steps and the tutorial author even suggests glueing toys or small things to finish off the illusion.

Drawr.net is a Japanese artist community for creating and sharing illustrations and oekaki doodles. It sports a Flash web editor for making your own works on the site itself or to reply to images and people in image form. Each image has the process of the drawing saved where you can watch line by line of the image being created. The Pixiv owned site also has RSS feeds for all its members, new images, and the most recent popular. Unlike Pixiv you can browse the site freely without registration, but registration does mean having a Pixiv account. People and images can be bookmarked, as there isn’t a tagging or search system.

Genji
Works from Genji generally have a gang of these four or so characters and often times characters from GeGeGe no Kitaro and Akuma-kun. Works have a very rough appearance, layered hair, and well-chosen colors. Often times there will be subtle or not so subtle references to indie music or bands.
drawr | Pixiv | Tegaki | Site

t
Another artist with a flawless sense of style in character designs. Lots of abstract and fantasy imagery and the Vocaloid twins Rin and Len with consistent use of soft colors. Most works keep it simple and limit the number of different colors.
drawr | FC2 | Twitter | Pixiv

spring-buffalo
Akuma-kun and GeGeGe no Kitaro characters set in much darker, violent, or suggestive themes. Many of the drawr images are sets that can be viewed together when you try select one of the images and those sets can be often times very dramatic.
drawr | FC2 | Pixiv

Eating and snaking is something everyone shares in common. Get ready to show off your tasty treats, get to know the community, score some fame, and hopefully find out what others eat that you might not have tried.

Prize:
1. An online $10 USD gift certificate for JBOX.com
2. Blog entry announcing the winner

The gift certificate can be used on either the jbox.com or jlist.com (NSFW) websites and they have worldwide shipping. Use it on anything from snacks, books, toys, apparel, and more.

Rules:
Must have a valid email address for your prize
Recipe must be something original (something of yours) you or your family makes
Does not need to be anime, manga, manwha, holiday, or Asian inspired
Does not need to be complicated or “cooked”
You must be registered to the forums in order to post your entry and to be able to answer questions
Contest starts now and will close January 4th and the winner will be notified by personal message on the forum
Entries are judged on creativity and if there is any meaningful story or history behind it

How to Enter:
Log in or register and post a new thread in the Om Nom Nom Nom food forum with what your recipe or dish is, how it came to exist, if there were any amusing stories behind it or holidays, and how to prepare it if preparation or steps are required. More details the better and even images help. Be sure to check for replies from members or staff to give more detail or to answer any questions.

Any questions about the contest itself can be asked on the forums, personal message, or by relying in this blog entry. Image source for the above image can be found here.

Good luck and happy holidays.

Twitter Integration
-Register here on Anime Gerad and from that point on sign in using your Twitter information.
-Update your Twitter from your forum profile and your forum’s profile status with your Twitter status. Go to My Settings, Profile tab, Manage Twitter Connect, and set up.
-Forum profiles and blog comments can link to your Twitter.
-Forum threads have icons for easy tweeting of forum topics.

Other odd stuff
Avatar size increased to 150 x 150 pixels from the previous 100 x 150 and profile image dimension size increased to 200 x 250 from the previous 150 x 150.

Image Source

In between the new titles the manga publisher Tokyopop licenses, they picked a series from many that they mass dropped to return. They previously released the fifth volume with some major lag between the time they released the later books because licensing issues. Volume seven will hit stores August 31st despite being announced canceled July of 2008 along with volume six, even though six apparently came out December of 2009 last year. Lagoon Engine is one of many that appear on Tokyopop’s site which falls behind in lack of news, people moving on, bookstores not carrying it, or has people assuming it’s canceled for good.

Lagoon Engine is another series by Sugisaki Yukiru of DNAngel, Rizelmine, and Candidate for Goddess. All three of those even made it to an anime form and DNAngel had quite the following way back then. The story of this manga gives you two brothers who can’t speak each others real name or they’ll be easily defeated by spirits called Maga. Yen is the brighter of the two and much more serious while Jin is the impulsive and a little dim. You have a grown up cross dresser, mystery around some of the main characters that the author hints to, and a neat mildly chibi style for many of the characters. I personally won’t be surprised by another delay in release or even no release of volume seven though. Thanks Tokyopop.

Image Source – Pixiv
Source – Anime News Network