takayama central japan two huge festivals (1 major festival split in 2) spring and fall alps , skiing, onsense, hiking, etc.

day trips: 2h bus ride matsumoto (famous for second original castle left in japan) very close by world heritge site Shirakawa-go back to pre feudal era japan kanazawa japan gradens kenroku-en

nv 27

PC dating-sim games @ J-List

For the past few years I have participated in the Reverse Thieves’ Anime Secret Santa project. This group blogging experiment pairs up bloggers who recommend anime for each other to watch and review, only it’s done Secret Santa-style, where you don’t know who your recommendation is coming from. Each year I’ve gotten really good picks that I have enjoyed watching and reviewing; however this year’s Anime Secret Santa choices were particularly hard to choose between – it seemed that my Secret Santa zeroed right in on my brainwaves (which is ironic given the series I chose to review, you’ll see why in a bit) and picked three really good shows that sounded really interesting to me but that I had somehow passed up. The first, Spice and Wolf, was a character-driven fantasy/romance that seemed perfect given my love of other shows with great character chemistry. But since I had recently been watching some more lighter fare I was ready for some hard-hitting action/thrillers. Fortunately my Secret Santa did not disappoint, as they picked two very action-oriented series, Psycho-Pass and Mirai Nikki. I literally could not decide which one to watch and review… so I left it up to chance and flipped a coin. Fortunately, Psycho-Pass won out.

Psycho-Pass is set in a near future, in a seemingly perfect world, where citizens are assured a safe environment and a bright future thanks to the Sibyl system. A person’s mental state can be instantly scanned and quantified, and such scanning is done routinely. If a person’s “hue” (mental health) becomes clouded this causes their “crime coefficient” — a measure of how likely they are to commit a violent crime — raises. Individuals with a cloudy Hue and a high crime coefficient are either incarcerated and treated or — if their values are particularly high — eliminated. However some latent criminals choose instead to work with the Ministry of Public Security as “Enforcers,” who work under “Inspectors,” and use their criminal knowledge and tendencies to help track down other criminals. Meanwhile the rest of the citizenry live a seemingly peaceful and secure life, with Sibyl managing every aspect of their lives, including education and career choice.

Yeah, sorry about that…

Unfortunately things have been a bit crazier than usual for me this holiday season, and, well, I just didn’t have time to put it all together. But fear not, I’m not going to abandon this fine tradition of ours. The 12 Days of Kurisumasu will continue… it’ll just be a bit late this year. As I’ve explained previously there are actually two interpretations of the “12 Days of Christmas.” One interpretation (the one I’ve been adhering to so far) is that it starts 12 days before Christmas, with the 12th day falling on Christmas Day itself. The second interpretation is that the 12 Days starts on Christmas Day, and ends… well, 12 days after. And this is the interpretation that we’ll be going with this year. So, starting on Friday, December 25, be sure and check our Twitter and Facebook feeds to see what the Otaku no Podcast elves have chosen for you every day. (Of course, our picks can always be found on the 12 Days of Kurisumasu page as well.)

Hope everyone out there has a safe, happy and healthy holiday season, and we wish you all the best for the New Year!

Well, at least there’s one good thing to come out of this holiday madness. (Well, that plus the actual fun parts of the holiday itself — giving (and receiving) gifts, eating delicious foods, catching up with good friends, etc.) Yes, you guessed it, The Anime Secret Santa project is back!

I can hear it now, some of you are probably staring at your screens yelling “WHAT YOU SAY !!“. Well obviously you must be new around here, because if you’ve been hanging around this blog and podcast for any appreciable length of time, you would know about Anime Secret Santa. After all, I’ve written about it several times before, and we’ve even participated in it for the past few years as well.

Basically the Anime Secret Santa project involves a bunch of bloggers (and perhaps podcasters too) who get together and put their names into a virtual hat, which the Reverse Thieves then proceed to mix up. They then pair off bloggers, and ask each of them to recommend an anime for the other to watch. The trick is that they don’t tell them who the recommendation came from. Once you have your anonymous donors’ recommendations in hand, you then proceed to pick an anime off their list, watch it and review it. Yes, exactly like that whole Secret Santa thing, which you are undoubtedly familiar with. (After all it’s probably been used as a plot device in at least a few Christmas-themed anime episodes…) The idea is to get people to step outside their comfort zones if you will, and watch and review shows they may not have considered before, and to get to know your fellow anibloggers and maybe even get some cross-blog promotions/interactions going on. It’s a great way to find out about anime that, maybe you might not have considered before, but ended up liking a lot. (Or maybe you hated it, and then you can write a really scathing review. There have been some pretty hilariously epic ones.) Plus it’s a lot of fun.

Want to participate? It’s pretty simple. First, you’ll need to set yourself up on one of those “keep track of what anime I’ve watched” sites, such as Anime-Planet (my personal favorite) or MyAnimeList. They are all free to join, and are pretty useful in their own right. Then, once you’ve listed all the anime that you’ve seen, e-mail your name, blog/podcast’s URL and the URL to your anime listing site profile page to the Reverse Thieves (secretsanta [dot] rt [at] gmail [dot] com) with the subject line “Secret Santa Participant.” (Also, if for whatever reason you would prefer not to have to watch/review fansubs, be sure and mention that in your email.)

All entries are due by Saturday, October 17th (that’s in less than a week!) so you better hurry! Check out the Reverse Thieves blog post for full details and where to send in your entry. Naturally, if the fates allow it, Otaku no Podcast will be participating this year as well. And we hope that you will too!

Gothic & Lolita Products, magazine subscriptions from Japan

Update: we’ve finally nailed down a time when we’re all able to get together and record our AX wrap-up of Doom. (Better late than never!) And I think (knock on wood) I’ve gotten to the bottom of my computer problems. So look forward to a new podcast episode soon!

By now, hopefully everyone has checked out our latest Cool Find, and are having fun with it. I sure am, as you can probably guess by my Twitter feed. (By the way, if you haven’t seen it yet, please do check it out.) I wanted to throw together a quick list of tips, tricks and techniques that I found helpful, and that I hope will help other new players as well.

This guide is meant primarily for beginners, though you might want to glance through it even if you’ve been playing for a while – you might learn something. (Or, at the very least, maybe you’ll spot a glaring error that I made, and you can correct me.) Also, some of these hints may seem obvious, but you never know, maybe there are things that some people find “blindingly obvious” that others don’t. Finally, some of what I say below may be repeats of what people have said in some of the other guides out there. Again I am doing this as a convenience for new players, so that you can get as much information as possible here in one (hopefully) easy to read place. (Plus some of the guides may seem kind of intimidating, especially to newbies.) I would definitely still read the various guides out there, once you’ve gotten into the rhythm of the game, if you’ll forgive the pun.

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

When the whole DDR craze hit, I was just entering my Second Wave of Anime Fandom, having recently come back from a (less than stellar) attempt at getting a higher education, and with very little to do except mope about town while taking computer classes at the local community college and working odd jobs. It was then that I reunited with some of my old disreputable friends from school (yes Scott, I’m talking about you 🙂 ) and where one day, as we were randomly shooting the breeze, I happened to start talking about my first love, he turned to me and said “So, you like that kind of stuff, huh? Well you really oughtta check out this ‘anime’ stuff… here, you can borrow these…” And the rest, as they say, is history.

(Man, less than a full paragraph in and I’m already rambling… Time to get back on topic… er, off topic… before getting back on-topic… whatever…)

Where was I? Right. Late 90s/early 2000s. I was pretty much locked into the anime fandom by that point, and had started branching out into other things like JRPGs and video games in general. I started going to anime cons right around this time as well. Back then I remember DDR machines popping up pretty much everywhere you went — arcades (those few that remained by then, that is… sniff), pizza parlors, bowling alleys… I think even my community college rec room had one at one point. And when the home release came out, it instantly became a staple at anime con gaming rooms across the land.

But I never really got into the whole DDR craze — but not for the reason you think. It’s true, I’m ordinarily not the kind of person to do something as embarrassing as gyrating wildly in front of complete strangers; but with enough persuasion (mixed with a little alcohol, and maybe a Klondike bar as well) even I could eventually be convinced to debase myself in such a manner. No, the real reason for my reluctance is an entirely practical one: I hate con funk — not just on other people, but especially on myself — and nothing does a better job at generating con funk than stomping around wildly and vigorously, as one tends to do when playing DDR. (This is why I almost never visit an anime con’s game room nowadays. Oh God, the funk. passes out and dies)

As for home-based setups, it’s true, a home-based DDR setup would eliminate (or at least greatly reduce) the con funk factor, since (A) there are generally less bodies around to cause con funk, and (B) when you’re in your own home, you can more easily control your own body odor (e.g. changing your shirt or taking a shower.) But I never really had either the money or the physical space to get a DDR setup (or any of its uber-popular spiritual successors like Guitar Hero and Rock Band.) (I also didn’t have enough friends to play it with… sniff… but that’s another story.)

But when portable game consoles came on the market, and decent rhythm games started showing up there, that’s when I finally started getting in on the genre. True, you didn’t get the same kind of physical exercise as you did when playing DDR, but playing a rhythm game on a portable device was still just as fun, and the lack of physical exertion meant that there was little to no con funk potential involved. It also could be done solo — while most rhythm games had a multiplayer component (either using a console’s built-in wireless networking, or the tried and true “hand your console off to the next player” method) most games could be played single player, where your “opponent” is either the computer, or yourself (i.e. beating your own score.) One of my all-time favorites is the K-On! game for the PSP. I played the heck out of that thing, that is, until my PSP broke. I also discovered that, contrary to my beliefs, I was actually a pretty decent rhythm game player (which was another reason why I didn’t really feel like getting into the genre in the first place.) No, I can’t pull off those m4d 1337 Hard mode Full Combos you see on the YouTubes, but I have gotten to a point where I can consistently get high ranks on easy and (most of the time) normal, and have even managed to low-rank on an Hard level song every now and again.

Fast forward to today. Nowadays, just about everyone is carrying around a device just as powerful, if not more so, than most portable game consoles. Yes, I am speaking about smartphones and tablets. And developers have taken note. Even longtime mobile gaming holdout Nintendo has started putting out mobile titles. (a moment of silence as we mourn the passing of Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata) Mobile gaming is big business, and just about everybody wants in on a piece of the action. This brought about a huge explosion of mobile titles, including – yes, you guessed it – rhythm games. A rhythm game is a perfect fit for a touchscreen device like smartphones and tablets — tapping on-screen buttons is even easier than dealing with actual physical gamepads, plus the quick nature of rhythm game play sessions (most rhythm game songs are in the 1-2 minute range) fits perfectly with the short play sessions typical of smartphone gaming (e.g. you play in brief spurts when you have a few minutes, waiting for the bus, in line at the grocery store, etc.). Unfortunately many of these titles are only available in the Japanese app stores. But even if you could buy an app on the Japanese app store (which is certainly possible, there are companies that can help make that process (relatively) easy for both iOS and Android users) there is still that language barrier to overcome. We now have some great companies like JAST and MangaGamer that are localizing PC and console content. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for mobile games. Which is why we rejoice on those few occasions when a developer sees fit to bring their title to a wider audience outside of Japan. Such an event has happened recently, and it is based on none other than that über-popular multimedia franchise that has pretty much dominated the Internets lately, Love Live!

In case you’ve just woken up from a years-long coma, or been living in a cave in the Himalayas or something, Love Live! is a ridiculously popular multimedia franchise, consisting of manga and light novels, anime, a hit movie that recently came out in theaters, and a metric crapton of music CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays. It tells the tale of high school student Honoka Kosaka who, when she hears the news that her beloved high school will be closing soon due to lack of applicants, decides to form an idol group, µ’s (pronounced “Muse” — and no, I’m not talking about these dudes) to try and generate interest in her school and attract new students — and maybe, just maybe, win the nationwide Love Live! idol competition. It’s pretty much the only thing the people I follow on Twitter have been talking about recently, and so I finally broke down and watched the anime — and I liked it! Cute, lovable characters, a down-to-earth and heartfelt story, pretty and shiny animation and above all else, some really catchy music. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you can be persuaded to step outside your comfort zone even a little, you should watch it — you might just like it.

Well the latest property to join the Love Live! franchise is none other than Love Live! School Idol Festival, a rhythm game put out by Bushiroad and KLab on both iOS and Android. And – good news for all us non-Japanese speakers — not only did they make the app available in non-Japanese app stores, they went one step further and localized (translated) the app into English, Chinese and Korean. So now everyone can play along!

As a rhythm game, it’s fairly typical of the genre. There are 9 spots on screen where you can tap (corresponding to the 9 members in the idol group µ’s.) As the song plays, circles will start flying down the screen towards one or more spots, timed to the beat of the music, and you must hit the corresponding button right when the circle hits the correct spot. If you timed it right, and hit it dead-on, you get a Perfect score; if you’re off by a little, you get a lesser score, and if your timing is way off (or you miss entirely) you actually lose points. You have a certain amount of Stamina which goes down every time you screw up. If your stamina goes to zero, you fail. But if you manage to plow through the entire song (accurately or not) without completely draining your stamina, you will clear the song and get a final grade, based on your performance, how accurately you hit the notes, how long your longest combo was, etc. Usually you’ll see single notes coming down the screen, one at a time. (Although sometimes they will be in quick succession, one right after the other, so pay attention!) Sometimes you will also see a pair of notes with horizontal bars through them; these need to be hit simultaneously. A note with a trail behind it needs to be pressed and held until the trail ends. And there are notes with stars in them that, if you screw up on those notes, you lose even more points than you would if you screwed up on a regular note. Songs are available to play in Easy, Normal, Hard and Expert modes. (Although I’d avoid Expert and maybe Hard mode, at least at first, unless you’re an android or something.)

But there’s another portion to this game too. Your idol unit is composed of cards, which you get as rewards when completing songs, or you can “scout” (i.e. random draw) for them using friend points and Love Gems, which you win at various stages throughout the game. Most cards are “normal,” meaning they have no special abilities; but there are also Rare, Super Rare and Ultra Rare cards that you can get that give you special bonuses or powers when placed on your team, such as a chance to increase your score or relax the timing or recover lost stamina periodically; with enough of these, you can survive (and maybe even score decently on) even Expert level songs. Cards can also be leveled up to increase their stats and special abilities. In this respect the game has kind of a Pokémon aspect to it (“gotta catch ’em all”) or something like Magic: The Gathering or similar type of collectible card game.

Finally, there’s also a visual novel-esque component to the game. As you go through the main story, which involves the 9 members of µ’s, you unlock new songs to play and you also obtain various rewards. Also, as you play songs, you increase your “bond” with the cards on your team; when you’ve maxed out a particular card’s bond, you unlock that character’s side story, which you can view for additional rewards.

(This description is somewhat oversimplified (not to mention kind of lame, now that I re-read it) so you really should check out some of the resources below, especially the videos – they do a much better job of explaining the game mechanics than I.)

The game can be played alone, but there are regularly occurring “events” (usually about two every month, lasting about a week apiece) where you can compete against others (in sort of a tier/ladder type format) and win some cool prizes, including unique super-rare cards. But regardless of whether you play it alone or go gonzo and dive headfirst into each and every event, you’ll have a lot of fun. The game works well even on older devices, the graphics are shiny and cute, and the songs are catchy as hell. You’ll recognize a lot of them from the anime, as well as the various music CD/DVD/Blu-ray releases if you’re familiar with those.

Get it today for iOS and Android – it’s free! (Yes, there are in-app purchases – you can buy Love Gems, but you really don’t need to, it’s pretty easy to get them in-game without paying a thing, sometimes as easy as just logging into the game.) And if you like, feel free to friend me up! My friend code is 767074992, and provided that I still have enough space on my friends list, I’ll be glad to friend you back.

Need help getting started or learning how to play? This guide on the LLSIF subreddit (there’s a subreddit for everything apparently) is very helpful, as is this guide by Twitter user @sproutella. Finally, YouTuber ErynCerise has a great series of videos on how to play the game, build and optimize your teams, play the various types of events and so on.

Music S.T.A.R.T!!

Click for J-List now!

The reality is that, unlike some of the big-name podcasters out there, I cannot make my living off of the podcast alone. Which means that, in order to keep a roof over my head, put food on the table and pay those oh-so-pesky bills that tend to show up regularly, I have to keep up a Real Job just like the rest of you. This leaves me with very little spare time in which to do the podcast, and almost no money to put towards it (remember those pesky bills?) And this really upsets me.

But as I was thinking about this the other day, an idea suddenly hit me: why not do the trendy thing and crowdfund? It seems that every day more and more anime and video game projects are jumping on the crowdfunding bandwagon, and for the most part they have been quite successful. So, never one to shy away from the latest trend, we’ve set ourselves up a Patreon campaign.

Patreon is similar to the other crowdfunding sites out there (Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, etc.) except it is specially geared toward creators of episodic and/or periodic media-type content – books, music, TV shows, movies, YouTube videos, and, yes, podcasts as well. Rather than just a simple one-shot contribution, Patreon contributions are regularly reoccurring, either episode-by-episode or month-by-month. The idea is that if you support your favorite project on Patreon (such as Otaku no Podcast) you in essence become a patron of the arts, similar to how, in the olden days, artists, sculptors, painters, musicians, etc. would find themselves a rich benefactor who basically supported them in exchange for them creating works of art for them.

Similar to Kickstarter, etc., there are multiple levels of funding available to choose from. You can donate any amount, as low as $1 per month; but if your donation meets or exceeds a certain level, you get certain perks. For example, donate $1 or more (the base amount) and we will add your name to the Patrons’ Wall, a new section on the Otaku no Podcast website where we’ll put the names of our wonderful supporters. (Not much there now, so don’t bother going to it yet.) Donating $5 per month or more will not only get you a spot on the Patrons’ Wall, but we will also announce your name and publicly thank you on an actual podcast episode. And so on.

“But what about the ad banners?! What about the affiliate links (Amazon, etc.)?!” you might say. Unfortunately these just don’t generate the kind of steady source of income that I would need in order to bring about the improvements I’d like to make around here.

What sort of improvements? My first priority is to get some more regular content — both blog posts and podcasts (audio and/or video — and for that I’d need to bring on some guest bloggers and co-hosts. Ideally I’d love to be able to pay them, either a regular monthly “salary” of sorts, or to pay them for each contribution (article, guest apperance, etc.); or at the very least I’d like to be able to buy them an anime/game/whatever for them to review, etc. I’m also looking to fix up the website. It leaves much to be desired; it definitely needs some work behind the scenes (improving the code, loading speed, etc.) And we could use some new artwork for both the website and the podcast itself (album art, etc.) – ideally, I’d love to be able to commission some custom stuff (that we would legally “own.”) And — this may be pie-in-the-sky, but one can dream — maybe, just maybe, we might be able to afford equipment upgrades; or maybe even give us an actual travel budget, so that I could start bringing you coverage from the other great anime cons and other Japan-related cultural events out there (or find people to go do that for us.)

So please, become a Patron today and help support this blog and podcast. You can help us out for as little as a paltry $1/month. There is no contract or anything like that; you can change your contribution level, or even cancel entirely, at any time. And if you’re not up for a regular monthly commitment, there are plenty of other one-time ways you can help out – by purchasing products from our various affiliates, or with a donation. All of those can be found on our How You Can Help page. Finally, if you are unable or unwilling to help us monetarily, we would still appreciate your help in other ways as well; spread the word about us, post about us on your blog or on forums and so forth, and rate and/or review us in the various podcast directories (e.g. iTunes) and app stores. However you choose to help us, we very much appreciate it. You guys (and gals) rock.

Gothic & Lolita Products, magazine subscriptions from Japan

Well, anime songs (the songs used during the opening and ending credits of just about every anime under the sun) are not immune to this phenomenon, even though they’re (mostly) sung in Japanese, which most of us Westerners don’t speak. You’d think that not being able to understand the language would hamper one’s ability to find “kiss this guy” style moments, but in fact, it seems to be the opposite – our brains are terribly good at pattern-matching, picking known patterns out of otherwise unintelligible fields of data; and as it turns out, the sounds of the Japanese language can sound humorously similar to certain English phrases. A recent RocketNews24 article points out YouTube user AzukanoAMVs, who recently put together an absolutely hilarious video of just a few examples. Check it out on YouTube or via the embedded player below the cut. (Warning: somewhat NSFW. Also be warned, these are really freaking hilarious, don’t have soda/food/etc. in your mouth when watching them, or else you risk splattering your monitor/walls/coworkers/etc.!) The RocketNews24 article collects some examples, including what the original Japanese was supposed to say (translated into English as well.) For the other examples, you can find the lyrics of the songs at a site such as Anime Lyrics

Thanks, guys and gals at RocketNews24 and AzukanoAMVs. You totally made my day.

Hentai PC dating-sim games at J-List

Ordinarily, we get together to record our giant review/wrap-up/opinions/etc. podcast session of Doom on the weekend right after AX; however, this year, that was impossible, as San Diego Comic-Con was held the weekend after AX — which is somewhat unusual, Comic-Con usually happens more towards the end of July — and some of our esteemed panelists were unavailable since they attended Comic-Con as well. (Hopefully they have large reserves of stamina and/or a large supply of energy drinks.) We hope to schedule our wrap-up podcast within the next week or two, though this is always difficult considering everyones’ busy schedules these days. Rest assured we’ll get our group podcast review recorded and out the door as soon as we possibly can.

In other news, I’ve had a chance to review the photos and videos that I took, and they all came out beautifully. For once, I managed to not take over 9,000 photos! Unfortunately this was for a kind of lame reason; I accidentally left all but one of my camera’s memory cards at home. But the good news is that since I now only have a few hundred photos to cull through, rather than thousands and thousands of them, there is actually a good chance that I’ll be able to find the time to go through, edit and post them. Look for those to come out over the next few weeks. Unfortunately you’ll have to go to our Flickr page directly for those; the Flickr gallery on our own website quit working a couple of WordPress updates ago and I haven’t been able to find a replacement that I like as much as our old one. For our videos, you’ll likewise have to check in to our YouTube channel directly as well.

And finally, keep an eye on our Twitter and Facebook, we will post announcements when various bits of our AX related media (podcasts, photos, and videos) goes live.

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

Well guess what, Japanese Github user “nagadomi” has come to the rescue with a truly awesome piece of (free!) software. Waifu2x is an image processing app that uses some pretty freaky cool technology to upscale image files while preserving line detail and shading, and vastly reducing graphical glitches/artifacting. It does this using “convolutional neural networks,” a technology that even I can’t wrap my head around (and I work in the technology industry!) Basically (and this is in extreme layman’s terms) a neural network is a way for a computer system to “learn” a particular task, similar to how the human brain “learns” by forming neural pathways. Specifically, the convolutional neural network that Waifu2x uses is specially designed to simulate the way we process visual information; which explains why it’s so good at what it does (processing image files.) What exactly does it do? It is designed to optimally upscale images while preserving the strong lines that an animator uses when drawing characters’ features, etc., while minimizing artirfacting and digital noise. And the results are, in a word, stunning. Don’t believe me? Check out some of the sample images on the project page on Github. In the words of one Redditor, “[T]his performs unbelievably well on images with clean linework and shading, creating near-perfect upscales.”

And lest you think that this piece of software is a frivolous waste of time and energy, there are people using it for other (non-anime) tasks as well. It is, after all, an image upscaler, and the neural network can actually “learn” to process different types of images. One enterprising individual is using it to upscale traditional Japanese artwork that is not available in high-quality scans, only small reprints in a book. There are even some enterprising souls that are using this to upscale video as well.

Unfortunately, all this computational awesomeness comes at a rather high cost. These heavy-duty computations are too much for even the beefiest of CPUs, and requires a fairly high-grade GPU for its processing power; specifically, an NVIDIA GPU that supports the CUDA parallel computing platform and Compute Capability 3.0 or later. If you’re one of those hardcore gamers, then you’re probably set, so go ahead and download and install it! (it’s not too difficult, just follow the instructions.) But if your hardware isn’t up to snuff, fortunately the author has set up a demo site that you can try out with your own images.

Case in point: if you’ll be going to Anime Expo, and if you are a fan of (or are even at least a little bit interested in) Hatsune Miku and/or Vocaloid in general, then you might want to check out this cool event hosted at the Gallery Nucleus, a mere 12 miles from the LACC. “Hatsune Miku Dreams of Electric Sheep” is an exhibit being put on by Crypton Future Media in partnership with Gallery Nucleus, and features an exciting line-up of original art featuring our favorite blue-haired, leek-wielding virtual diva, Hatsune Miku. The exhibit features a large and exciting collection of original art featuring Miku & Co. done by various artists, each depicting Miku in their own unique artistic style. This collision of worlds will no doubt surprise and entertain fans and curious onlookers alike.

In addition, there will be some merchandise available for purchase, including limited-edition prints, T-shirts, a gallery exhibition catalog (which includes a download card for a special Hatsune Miku EP) and many Snow Miku goods available for the first time outside of Japan. (Another reason to have some extra cash lying about.)

The exhibit will be running between July 2, 2015 – July 19, 2015 (just in time for Anime Expo) at the Gallery Nucleus, located at 210 East Main St, in Alhambra, which is only about 12 miles from the LACC (check out the route on Google Maps or in the map embedded below this post). It’s open Tuesday through Sunday from 12 noon until 8 PM (they’re closed Mondays.) The Opening Reception, which will be held on Jul 2 from 6:00PM – 10:00PM, will feature a Hatsune Miku concert screening (tickets are $5, must be purchased online and are limited to 200, so better act quickly if you’re interested.) Otherwise, the exhibit is open to all and is completely free and does not require a reservation. (though you will need to get yourself there, either driving or public transportation, hence the “why you might need to keep some extra money around” comment earlier.)

(In the fantasy world inside my head, I am imagining the AX staffers crowded around their computers, listening to the podcast, when one of them (the leader, who, naturally, has adopted the Gendo pose) calmly intones, “So, they don’t think we can release an event schedule until way closer to the event, do they? Well we’ll show them! Mwahahaha!!!” complete with that little smirk that Gendo puts on whenever he says something devious. The reality, being much more boring, is that it was probably just nothing but coincidence. )

Anyway, yes indeed, Anime Expo announced that the preliminary schedule for AX 2015 is now available online for your viewing pleasure. With over 200 hours of programming already entered, this is definitely shaping up to be one awesome weekend — and they’re nowhere near finished filling in the schedule yet! Definitely keep an eye on it. In particular, this schedule does not include any autograph sessions, video room schedules, gaming schedules, or any event/guest/whatever that they haven’t yet announced. (Surprise 11th hour guest/programming announcements, anyone?)

Now for the bad news: there is not (as far as I can tell) a downloadable PDF version of the schedule as there has been in the past. Maybe they’ll make one available closer to the event; this is, after all, still early days. Also there is no word on whether the schedule will be made available through some sort of mobile-friendly format (hopefully Guidebook again… fingers crossed…) Again, I’m guessing that they’ll probably wait until very close to the final version of the schedule before releasing that.

However, they did set up a web portal where you can view the schedule, using the SCHED app, which they’ve used before in the past. As web portals go, it’s pretty decent. You can view the schedule in one of several formats: as a simple list of events ordered by time, as a list ordered by location (room) or as the traditional schedule grid. The events are color-coded to make identifying the various types of events (panels, main events, workshops, etc.) easy. There is a search function that lets you easily find a particular event or panel you’re looking for. And finally, you can create an account on the site, and mark down events that you are interested in, which puts them in a special “My Schedule” section for easy access. (Note: there are two ways you can register for the site; either by supplying a traditional email and password, or by using your Facebook account. I could not, for the life of me, get the email/password to work; I had much better luck going through my Facebook account.)

Go check it out today!

Crowdfunding initially gained popularity with the tech industry, with tech-related products making up the first wave of crowdfunded projects; however now other industries are waking up and taking notice of these successes, including the entertainment industry, who have successfully crowdfunded several movie & TV shows, including a few fan favorites.

Now the anime and video game industries are getting in on the action too. It seems that not a day goes by when I don’t see some news article about some crowdfunded anime or video game or whatnot. Sadly, there have been a few notable failures; still, the successes are impressive. Well, the latest one of these to garner the public’s attention is one that is particularly near and dear to our hearts, since it involves a unique animated classic that just happens to be the inspiration for the name of this very blog and podcast.

Otaku no Video, created by the folks at Gainax, is an oddball but delightful animated tale which tells the story of Ken Kubo, a normal, average-Joe college student, who one day runs into an old high school friend, Tanaka, who turns out to be a hardcore otaku. Soon he and Tanaka start hanging out and Ken finds himself drawn into the world of the otaku, to the extreme annoyance of his girlfriend and other “normal” friends. Soon Ken’s transformation is complete, and he dives headlong into his new otaku lifestyle, with the ultimate goal and desire to become “King of all Otaku,” or “OtaKing.” Interspersed with the animated segments are a series of really odd yet humorous “real-life” interviews with otaku of various persuasions (all of whom just happen to be members of Gainax.) The entire piece serves as a delightful “mockumentary”-style homage to the otaku culture, and is also, in a way, an animated telling of the history behind the studio Gainax. (And yes, like I said before, it also serves as our namesake. “Otaku no Video” can be translated as “Geeks’ Video” — hence our name, “Otaku no Podcast,” or “Geeks’ Podcast.”)

Well, as it turns out, next year is going to be Otaku no Video’s 25th anniversary, and to commemorate this momentous occasion, AnimEigo announced that they would be crowdfunding a brand new Blu-ray release of Otaku no Video, just in time for its 25th anniversary. People who back the campaign will receive the “OtaKing Edition,” which includes the entirety of Otaku no Video, presented using a gorgeous new HD transfer of the film that was created for the Japanese Blu-ray release which shipped last year. It’ll include Japanese audio and English subtitles. In addition, the disc will feature four audio commentary tracks (Japanese with English subtitles) featuring commentary from various people involved with the project. The discs will not be region-coded, and will be available to ship anywhere except Japan. Their goal is US$40,000, and if the project exceeds its funding goal, AnimEigo will also throw in some additional “stretch goal” perks, including patches, art books, dōjinshi and more. AnimEigo has successfully funded a previous Kickstarter campaign — a rather nicely-done Blu-ray release of one of my favorites, Bubblegum Crisis — so I have high hopes that they’ll succeed in this venture as well.

The Kickstarter will go live at 10 AM Eastern time on Tuesday, June 2. I’ll update this post once the Kickstarter page has gone live. In the meantime, you can check out a video that they produced (which shows off the excellent HD transfer they’ll be using) at Vimeo or via the embedded player below the cut.

Update 06/02/2015: The Kickstarter campaign is now live! Their goal is $40,000; however after less than a day of being up, they’ve already amassed over $35,000 of that! This one looks like it’s in the bag!

Update 06/02/2015 only just a little bit later than the above update: They’ve met their $40,000 goal in less than a day! Amazing!

Update 06/03/2015 late evening: This thing’s riding to number one with a bullet – not only have they exceeded their $40k goal, they’ve almost doubled it – the kickstarter is at $60,900 as I write this, and there’s still 21 days to go, if you’d still like to get in on the action.

Click for J-List now!

Japan Animator Expo (not to be confused with that other Expo with a similar-sounding name) is a cool, relatively new (started in November of last year) joint venture between Hideaki Anno’s (yes, that guy) studio, Studio Khara, and Dwango, a telecom/media group in Japan and parent company of famous Japanese video streaming site Niconico (formerly Nico Nico Douga, that offers relatively new animators exposure to a worldwide audience by giving them an opportunity to produce a series of anime shorts, with fairly little creative restrictions, which are then streamed on NND. You’ll also see a healthy sprinkling of more seasoned talent in the mix as well, in both the production side as well as the voice acting side. Still, these shorts are a great showcase of the sort of new, up-and-coming talent that is brewing in the Japanese animation industry. The animation styles and character designs are as jaw-droopingly gorgeous as they are eclectic, and the storylines/plots are just as unusual and widely varied. (You can read about some of them on the Wikipedia page.)

Japan Animator Expo will produce a total of 30 shorts, one each week. We’re currently on week 24; however some of the older videos are about to expire. At midnight Japan Standard Time (use this link to convert that to your local timezone) on the morning of Monday, June 1 (that’s less than a week from now) videos #1-12 in the series will no longer be viewable. Hopefully this venture has generated enough interest and buzz to convince them that it’s worth doing something like this again. Having this as a once-a-year event would be great, and would really spread the word and continue to bring new talent into the industry. Be sure and check them out today! (Note: unless you read Japanese, be sure to click the “EN” button at the upper right of the page.)

PC dating-sim games @ J-List

As I may have mentioned in the past, my attempt at getting a higher education (beyond high school) was brief and ended in tragedy. The culture shock of going from living a fairly sheltered, overprotective life at home, to the absolute freedom and chaos of life on campus was too much for me, and I let the freedom of finally emerging from behind the iron curtain of my parents’ rule get to my head, and basically crashed and burned in pretty much all of my classes. I have fortunately learned a great deal since then; but, as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

However, there was one positive thing to come out of this debacle. Coming out of a sheltered childhood, it was my first taste of what the “real” world was like, and as such, I learned a lot about how life and the real world work, and how to survive in them. I learned how to communicate and socialize with other people – not that I do it particularly well, even now, but I at least can cope in a social situation without falling over in a heap. And I also met a lot of cool friends, many of whom I remain in touch with to this day.

One particularly enjoyable aspect of dorm life that I miss even now is the long hours we spent, lasting way into the night (and often well into the next morning) sitting in our dorm rooms talking (and often arguing) about various and sundry topics such as religion, politics, current events, social/cultural issues, music, books, movies, TV shows, Mac vs. PC, or vi vs. emacs (hey, we were all computer geeks/engineers, okay?) Often these discussions would morph into arguments, and pretty heated ones at that, with each of us defending our position with a fiery passion. But these arguments never got out of hand, and we always seemed to make up (or at least agree to disagree) and return to our usual amicable (if perhaps somewhat sleep-deprived) selves by the next morning. Well, one of the many topics we discussed/argued about, perhaps with a particularly high level of passion, was, of course, anime, and I couldn’t help but reminisce fondly on these good times when I ran across today’s Cool Find, the Anime & Manga Stack Exchange.

By now you probably know that, as part of my day job, I work together with a group of friends on various computer hardware and software projects; they bring me on whenever they need some additional help. I work on various jobs and projects on the side as well. So I suppose you could say that I’m a sort of “geek gun-for-hire.” (I’ve been wanting to change my business cards to have my title say “Ninja Consultant”, but sadly my boss hasn’t been too keen on the idea.) Two websites I absolutely depend on in my line of work are Stack Overflow and Server Fault. These sites are a great way of getting help with your computer and programming questions. First of all, odds are that your question has already been asked (and answered) by someone else. But if it wasn’t, then all you have to do is submit a new question (be as descriptive as possible) and you are likely to have some answers within hours. The site is heavily moderated and is reputation-based, so answers (and questions) are usually of very high quality.

Well these two sites, as it turns out, are merely the tip of the iceberg that is the Stack Exchange Network. They host a ton of sites dedicated to all manner of topics — not just computer-y things (gaming, security, UNIX & Linux (not only in general but also Ubuntu in particular) but also plenty of non-computer-related topics, such as home improvement, photography, cooking and even bicycles! And yes, they’ve got anime covered too.

Anime & Manga Stack Exchange is, as its name implies, a place where you can ask (and answer, if you happen to know it) questions about anime & manga. What sorts of questions, you might ask? Well, if you ever had a question about a plot point, or how a character’s special ability works, or anything like that? For example (and these were picked completely at random, so they should represent no bias whatsoever) “Did Jiraiya meet Naruto by chance?” Or “What technology/jutsu do the Akatsuki members use to communicate with each other?” Or perhaps “Will Sasuke’s Kirin work against Obito?” Or even “Is Haku a man or a woman?” A site like this can help put a stop to (or perhaps even start up) one of those long dorm-room-style “discussions” between friends (which is why I thought of that when I found this site.)

All joking aside though, the site is also a great place to ask about other, more down-to-earth topics, especially about Japan and the anime industry itself, such as “What are the anime censorship laws in Japan?” or “Do Bluray releases contain more scenes than their DVD counterparts?” In particular, it is a great place if you have one of those “name that anime/manga” type questions. Do you vaguely remember seeing an anime that looked interesting — maybe during a convention, at an anime screening room or during an AMV, or at a friend’s house, whatever — and can remember parts of the plot, some of the fight scenes, or what the main character looked like, etc., and nothing more? Well, post about it and you might just get your answer. Try and be as descriptive as possible, include pictures/screenshots if you have ’em, etc.

Like all the other Stack Exchange sites, Anime & Manga Stack Exchange is reputation-based, so not only do you need to create an account to ask and/or answer questions (it’s completely free) but you are also encouraged to vote up (or down) other peoples’ answers — and if you submit answers to other peoples’ questions yourself, your answers will be voted up/down as well. This helps keep the site friendly, open and relatively troll/flame free, as opposed to your typical web forum, which is quite refreshing if you ask me.

Dreeps (available on the iOS App Store) claims itself as the world’s first “Alarm Playing Game,” and bills itself as the perfect fit for those of us who don’t have the time to play JRPGs any more. You “control” a little robot boy as he explores mysterious lands, fights fearsome enemies, meets fellow travelers and other NPC’s, and gathers treasure and experience points. Every night, you set an alarm, and both you and your character go to sleep, regenerating lost hit points. When the alarm rings, both you (hopefully) and your character wake up and begin a new day of exploration and adventure. You can check into the game periodically throughout the day, tamagotchi-style, and see how your character is doing, or if he needs to be revived, etc. The 8-bit graphics and chip tune soundtrack are both gorgeous and charming and are very reminiscemt of many classic JRPGs such as Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger and the like. Now, calling this a “game” is a bit of a stretch, because there isn’t really a whole lot of interaction involved. You set the alarm every night, and also, if your character gets KO’d in battle, the game will notify you and give you a chance to revive him. Still, this is still a really cute and fun app; it’s fun to check in throughout the day periodically to see what cool new area he’s exploring, or what enemies he’s fighting. Still, it might be nice if there were a little bit of interactivity added into the game; for example, getting prompted with decision points every once in a while (“Should I go to the abandoned city, or the crystal forest?”) or some tiny interactions with NPCs or something; but not too much, as the “mostly sit back and see what happens” hands-off approach is a good fit for this title.

Dreeps is available for $2.99 (c’mon folks, that’s less than the cost of one morning coffee) on the iOS App Store and is compatible with all iOS devices (iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.) Read more about it and check out screenshots at the Dreeps website and watch their trailer video on YouTube or via the player embedded below the cut.

Gothic & Lolita Products, magazine subscriptions from Japan

White Album 2 tells the story of high school senior Haruki Kitahara and his fellow light music club member Takeya who’ve got a big problem — all of the other club members have suddenly left the club, mere weeks before the school festival, where they had wanted to perform! Being an all-around nice guy, Haruki tries desperately to find replacements, but isn’t meeting with very much luck. Until one day, while practicing his guitar in the music room, he starts playing the chords to an old but popular song, White Album, only to be suddenly joined by a mysterious pianist and vocalist — and they sound really good together. Who are these mysterious players, and can he get them to join the band? Of course there’s much, much more to the anime, but you’ll have to watch it yourself if you’re curious, I’m not gonna spoil it for you!

(By the way, in case you’re wondering if there is a White Album 1, yes there is, but, although both it and White Album 2 take place in the same universe, they are completely different stories. They are only linked by the songs “WHITE ALBUM” and “SOUND OF DESTINY,” which were written and/or performed by the main heroines of White Album and figure prominently in White Album 2. And now you know.)

Anyway, you can probably guess by now how this review will go, but since you’re here anyway, why not stick around and continue on with my review?

Every year I look forward to the holidays, not just because of the delicious foods, blinkenlights and the giving (and receiving) of gifts, but also for the Anime Secret Santa Project, a really cool collective anime reviewing project thingie organized every year since 2009 by the Reverse Thieves. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to participate each year, and have enjoyed it every year, and thanks to Secret Santa, have found quite a few really good anime titles that I hadn’t considered before. And, every year, in spite of my extremely unpredictable work schedule combined with my legendary penchant for procrastination, I have always managed to get my review posted by the Christmas Day deadline, even if only just barely.

Until this year, that is.

Unfortunately, I am unable to get my review posted on time this year due to several things. For one thing, my work schedule has been incredibly busy starting right around Thanksgiving, and straight on through Christmas; usually it’s the exact opposite. Second, for some inexplicable reason, every relative on the planet decided “Gee, maybe this would be a good year to drop in on the California branch of the family!” In the past two weeks I’ve met branches of the family that I didn’t even know existed. Finally, despite my best efforts, I managed to catch one of the many seasonal cold bugs that are making the rounds, and that had me out of commission for a couple of days.

Anyway, I have told everyone involved in no uncertain terms that I will be taking the week between Christmas and New Years’ off, not just because I need the time to finish various things (such as Anime Secret Santa) but also for my own sanity. And as soon as I can tear myself away from The Family, I’ll work on finishing Secret Santa, and hope to have it posted soon. So stay tuned! And, again, my apologies. (bows his head in shame)

(ps: In case you were asking yourself “Well then, how did you manage to find the time to come up with a 12 Days of Kurisumasu pick each and every day, and more or less on time even?!” Well, after last year’s difficulties in getting entries posted every day, I wanted to find a way to post them automatically. Thankfully someone wrote a WordPress plugin that lets you automatically show/hide text on a given day, and using that, combined with a service that lets me schedule Twitter and Facebook posts to automatically post at a future date/time, I was able to write up all 12 Days entries ahead of time and have them automatically post. Sadly, this sort of automation can’t help me with Secret Santa; the level of AI technology hasn’t yet progressed to the point where an automated assistant can help me finish writing my Secret Santa review… someday maybe… sigh)

PC dating-sim games @ J-List

Anyway, yeah, the holidays are here. (Pauses to wait until everyone has stopped screaming in terror.) You’re probably thinking to yourself, “Oh crap! I’ve still got to get gifts for (insert name of various family members/friends/coworkers/etc. here)!!!” Or maybe you’re trying to figure out what cool items you want to get with the money you’re getting for Christmas, or the Christmas bonus your employer is giving you, or whatever. Guess what, we can help you with that! Just use one of our many affiliate links to do your online shopping. You can get your gift shopping done in the comfort of your own home/office/dorm room/secret underground lair, and avoid the gladiatorial combat arena otherwise known as “the mall.” You will also help us keep the lights on and the bits flowing. (Remember, using our affiliate links will cost you nothing extra.) Whatever type of gift you’re looking for, we’ve got it. There’s Amazon, who sells literally everything (including a rather nice selection of anime-related goods.) There’s CDjapan, for all your anime soundtrack, Jpop and Jrock needs. (They also sell some other anime-related things like figurines, character goods, etc.) And, who can forget Jlist and Jbox, who sell a staggering array of products — anime stuff (character goods, wall scrolls, etc.); traditional Japanese cultural items (bento, etc.); cosplay outfits and accessories; visual-novel and dating-sim games; calendars; Japanese snacks and drinks; Japanese kitchen tools; and, ahem, “those” kinds of things as well.)

But what if you’re having trouble deciding what to get? Well, guess what, we can help you there too. Because The 12 Days of Kurisumasu are making their triumphant return for the 2014 holiday season! In case you’ve been living under a rock (or in the desert, or deep in the Himalayas, or on Mars, or in a distant galaxy/another dimension/etc.) for the past year, and haven’t the faintest idea what the heck I’m talking about, here’s the scoop: starting on Sunday, December 14 (that’s tomorrow!) and going through Christmas Day, Thursday, December 25, I will be picking a cool new otaku-themed product each day and will be featuring it on our Twitter and Facebook. (They’ll also be posted on the 12 Days of Kurisumasu page, along with a witty (well, at least I think so) writeup.) And if you’re still clueless as to what the heck I’m talking about, you can also check out the 12 Days of Kurisumasu from years gone by at that page too.

Each product I’ll be featuring will come from one of our affiliate advertisers — Amazon, CDjapan, Right Stuf, J-List, etc. Yeah, I know what you’re saying, you’ve been waiting for the “catch” and it finally came. But as catches go, this isn’t much of one. Remember that purchasing through any of the links here costs you nothing extra but brings us a little much-needed income, which helps keep the lights on and the bits flowing.

What products will you be choosing, you might be asking. No real rhyme or reason to it, really. As long as it’s even tangentially related to anime or other otaku-worthy pursuits, then it’s fair game. That means anime DVDs (and even Blu-rays); calendars; figures; “stuff from Japan” (food, snacks, etc.); plushies; dating-sim games/visual novels; whatever. Hopefully, among this cornucopia of consumer goods, you’ll find something cool and out of the ordinary to give to any otaku-leaning friends/acquaintances you’re looking for gifts for. (Or even yourself…)

So why subject yourself to the hassle, expense and bloodletting of doing battle in the malls and on the streets, and come shop with us instead?

Update: It has been pointed out to me that Ars Technica beat me to the punch with their own printable iPhone 6 mockups. Story of my life, right there. Still, I can claim some superiority with the fact that, unlike theirs, my models are actually in 3 dimensions! So there!

People who’ve visited this blog/podcast before are probably doing a double-take right about now, and wondering if they managed to wander onto some other website by accident. Either that or they’re facepalming and wondering how on earth this has anything to do with the normal topic of this website. It’s true, I feely admit it. I could try and come up with some far-fetched means of justifying this as something worth talking about here (after all, we have talked about iOS apps and devices before.) But I’m not going to. Because, you see, this really is the only place I have to post stuff that I want to draw attention to. This is my bully pulpit. I do have my own blog but it’s pretty badly neglected (it’s been on my “I’ll get to it one of these days” lists for ages now,) doesn’t get nearly the same level of traffic that this site does, and (perhaps more to the point) doesn’t have the web ads and analytics infrastructure in place. Yes, I freely admit that I am a click whore, I won’t deny it. But, unlike, ahem, certain linkbaity news sites out there (edit: I certainly do not mean you, Ars!,) I intend to back up my linkbaitiness with some actual useful content (at least I hope so!) And, hey, who knows, maybe one or two of you will decide to pay us a visit again sometime. So if this ends up getting me a few new listeners… well, so much the better. (Welcome, by the way. Make yourselves comfortable, I think you’ll like it here.)

Anyway, enough jibba-jabba, on to the actual subject of this blog post!

So, unless you’ve been living under a rock, or traveling in another dimension or something, you are no doubt aware that a certain fruit-flavored company held a little event yesterday in which they announced a few new products, including the inevitable iPhone 6. And, true to the rumors, they have made two different sizes available; the iPhone 6, which has a 4.7-inch screen, and the iPhone 6 Plus, which has a positively gargantuan 5.5-inch screen. (They also unveiled some sort of wearable thingie…)

As it happens, not only am I due for a carrier-subsidized upgrade (I didn’t get the 5S, even though I was seriously tempted) but my poor iPhone 5 is also on its last legs. So this announcement couldn’t have come at a better time. The problem though is, which one should I get?

The iPhone with its 3.5-inch screen has been the smallest of the smartphones for quite some time now. Still, that has never really bothered me. The smaller size makes one-handed operation simple, which is very important to me. But as apps grow more complex, their user interfaces tend to grow as well, and this UI growth has really started to push the limits of the 3.5-inch screen size. When Apple moved to the 4-inch screen of the iPhone 5, that helped significantly, without compromising the one-handed ease of use. (If I needed to tap something single-handedly at either extreme end of the phone, I would perform a maneuver I’ve dubbed “the iPhone shimmy,” where I sort of wiggle the iPhone in my hand which lets it slide up or down in my hand until my thumb can reach the desired area of the screen.) But, once again, the ever-increasing complexity of apps has really started to push the limits of the 4-inch screen too.

Meanwhile, my Android-toting friends have been mocking me, and shoving their 4.5-, 5- and even 6-inch behemoths in my face. So I mocked them in return. The “phablet” form factor never really appealed to me. Sure, the screen is big, but you would need the hands of an NBA all-star player to hold it, and putting something the size of the Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey against your face when making a call just seemed… wrong. And forget about one-handed use! But then I hear people swear up and down, saying stuff like “no, it’s not really that big,” “you quickly get used to the bigger size,” etc. I’ve been thinking all night about how to solve this (admittedly first-world) problem when the answer (or at least a tool that might help me arrive at an answer) hit me: why not create mockups of the two new iPhones? Then I could play with them and experience how actually using them might feel. So, armed with this idea and a copy of Adobe Illustrator, I set to work. And this is the result.

First, the disclaimers. I really, really suck at Adobe Illustrator. Frankly I’m amazed that I was able to produce something even remotely iPhone-like. The only thing I can guarantee is that the dimensions of these mockups are the same as the specs that Apple has published, which, for the iPhone 6, are 5.44 x 2.64 x 0.27 inches (138.1 x 67 x 6.9mm), and for the iPhone 6 Plus, 6.22 x 3.06 x 0.28 inches (158.1 x 77.8 x 7.1mm). Also, the actual iPhones will be much rounder than these mockups; both the edges as well as the front and back surfaces are subtly curved, and I couldn’t really duplicate this in my mockups. So these models will look and feel decidedly brick-like. Finally, the size of the screen, the app icons depicted on it (which are also decidedly box-like) and the size of the physical controls (home button and earpiece) are best-guess approximations. We only know the diagonal measurement (4.7 and 5.5 inches), and I suppose there is probably some sort of magical equation that would let me calculate a length and width based on that, but I haven’t the foggiest of how to do that. However, in spite of these caveats, I still believe these mockups will give you a reasonably close idea of what holding and using the actual device would feel like. (Oh yeah, one final caveat: since you’ll be walking around with what is essentially a slab of cardboard, and pretending to tap on it, talk into it, etc., people might think you are a little bit strange…)

To use these, simply print these out (preferably onto a heavy paper or card stock), cut along the outermost lines, and fold along all the other lines. Tape or glue shut. For added realism, find yourself a postal scale and, before sealing them up, fill them with small objects (paperclips, coins, what have you) to approximate the actual weight of the devices: in the case of the 4.7-inch iPhone 6, that would be 4.55 ounces (129g) and for the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus, 6.07 ounces (172g).

Go download them now!. They’re available as both Illustrator (.ai) and PDF files.

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

We have spoken at great length about the tips and techniques we recommend to ensure you have the best, least stressful and least-drama-inducing experience at con. One of the main points we drive home is that one should always research the con you’re going to. For one thing, read up on the Guests of Honor. That way, if you happen to be with a group of friends who decide they want to go to (insert random GoH)’s panel, you won’t have the pain and embarrassment of having to admit that you have no freaking clue who that is. Also, it always helps to know what’s going on, where it’s going on, and when it’s going on. In other words, peruse the con’s schedule just as soon as they make it available. Most cons put up a preliminary schedule 2-3 weeks before the event, with the caveat that, being preliminary, it is subject to frequent change (and often does indeed change frequently.) Still, grabbing the schedule as soon as it’s available and making note of the events that might interest you is always a good idea.

All of this long-winded rhetoric leads up to the announcement that, after a bit of a false start, the folks at Anime Expo have put the preliminary schedule online. It’s available in PDF form, which pretty much every computer, as well as most smartphones and tablets, can read without difficulty. Grab it, print it out, put it on your smartphone or tablet’s PDF reader app, and start planning out your schedule. We’ve only got just a hair over 2 weeks to go till AX time!

But wait! There’s more! Smartphone and tablet owners, pay attention! Rather than downloading the PDF, you might want to take a look at the Guidebook app instead! Because Anime Expo has, once again, and to my extreme delight, made their schedule available in the Guidebook app! This is by far the best way to view con schedules if you have a mobile device. Once you’ve downloaded the app and downloaded the Anime Expo guide, you can browse through all of the panels, workshops, main events, video screenings, and list of dealers’ hall exhibitors. As you browse, you can mark down events that you are interested in, and they will automatically be added to the “Your Schedule” section of the app, where you can see at a glance the events you’ve marked. You can even set alarms to warn you X minutes before a must-see event starts. Or you can use the handy search feature to quickly find what you’re looking for. The app doesn’t require a data or WiFi connection to browse the guide. However, if you do have a connection available, it will automatically check to see if there are any updates to the guide, which is awesome, especially at con, when schedules can (and often do) change from moment to moment. Note: the current version of the Anime Expo guide in Guidebook doesn’t yet have event information in it. I’m sure they’ll be updating it shortly to include that information, and when they do, your Guidebook app will automatically download the update! The Guidebook guide does have information on Guests of Honor and dealers’ hall exhibitors, so you can start looking at those right away. Update 06/20/14: The Guidebook guide has been updated, and now contains the complete schedule, as well as general info, event policies (weapons policy, code of conduct, etc.), GoH and industry guest info, and a transportation guide! Guidebook is available for pretty much all mobile platforms, including iOS (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad,) Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, etc.

Get the Guidebook app on other platforms

In fact, Viz Media has licensed all 200 episodes of the classic anime series, plus three feature films and assorted tie-in specials, for both streaming and physical media distribution. Currently, twelve episodes are up, and they will be releasing two new episodes every Monday (or “Moonday,” as they like to call it.) This represents the first time that Sailor Moon has been broadcast in the U.S. for over a decade. Moreover, this will include the first North American release of the final television series, Sailor Moon: Sailor Stars. They are able to do this thanks to having recently acquired the license from Toei.

Viz is releasing the series with the original Japanese audio and English subtitles. They are also working on an all-new English dub with a brand-new cast, and will start releasing those later this year. For you physical media diehards, they will also be releasing the show in DVD and Blu-ray/DVD combo releases, in half-season sets, starting this fall.

Best of all, the show is being presented completely uncut and unbowdlerized. Content that was considered “questionable” back in the day and that was removed has been restored, and non-mainstream character relationships (i.e. yuri) have been restored.

The show is also being streamed on Neon Alley, which makes sense, since Neon Alley is Viz’s own service. (Incidentally, a lot has changed at Neon Alley since we looked at it back in 2012. They’ve switched away from the “broadcast TV station” model to the more mainstream “streaming on demand” model that everyone else is using. They’ve added computer/web browser-based streaming, but have sadly removed their PS3 app, instead directing people to use the Hulu Plus PS3 app. But Neon Alley is now a free service, so one can’t complain too much!)

So go watch it on Hulu or Neon Alley today!

Sailor Moon served as the “gateway drug” for many a current anime fan. Now it’s poised to do the same to a whole new generation of fans. And that’s a Good Thing.

Hentai PC dating-sim games at J-List

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J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

As its name implies, you’ll need a Netflix account to take advantage of Flix Roulette. But, with plans starting as low as $7.99, and with Netflix’s vast catalog of available titles (both anime and non-anime,) having a Netflix membership is definitely worthwhile.

Anyway, the next time you have trouble figuring out what you want to watch, just head on over to the Flix Roulette website. Click the “Spin” button to spin the wheels of fate and let Flix Roulette pick something random for you to watch. If that’s way too random for your tastes, you can filter by genre (only choose from titles in a certain genre, such as anime, sci-fi, comedy, action/adventure, etc.); type (movies and/or TV shows); rating (titles rated between X and Y stars, to filter out the crap – or to specifically zero in on crappy shows, if that’s what you want); and by director, actor, or keyword.

Once you click the “Spin” button, Flix Roulette will think about it for a bit, then it’ll come up with a random title for you. It’ll show you the show’s title, rating, a brief description of the show, the director and cast, and a thumbnail (usually the DVD/Blu-ray cover or poster art from the show.) Click the “Watch on Netflix” button and you’ll jump straight to the Netflix website and begin streaming the chosen title. It’s as simple as that.

Flix Roulette is a fun way of solving that age-old problem of “what are we going to watch now?” Try it the next time you have a group of friends over. Check it out today!

PC dating-sim games @ J-List

One such video that, to this day, remains one of my absolute favorites is “Fate Matrix” by Shin (AMV.org profile, YouTube page) and GuntherAMVs (AMV.org profile, YouTube page) of PixelBlended Studios. Drawing from an amazing 27 anime, including Angel Beats!, 5 Centimeters per Second, Ore no Imouto, and K-ON!, this AMV tells the story of the “Little Sister of Fate,” played by Alice of Heaven’s Memo Pad, who sits in her ethereal headquarters, manipulating the “Threads of Fate” that bind various characters together, causing them to find their true love, avoid disaster, achieve happiness and so on.

I absolutely adore the concept behind this video; it really spoke to the heart. In addition, it is a very well put together video from a technical standpoint. The editing is flawless, and the creators did a great job of blending the various anime, with their different styles, into a single cohesive vision. Finally, the music they chose, “Tell Me (Clock Opera remix)” by Au Revoir Simone, is a perfect fit.

I first saw this video during Anime Expo 2012 where it was a finalist in the AMTV Pro category. Unfortunately it didn’t win. This made me very sad, since I felt that it was better, both from a storyline and technical standpoint, than the other videos in its category, and that it really should have won. However, I am happy to learn that it did win Best Drama at Anime Boston 2012.

In addition, the creators are working on a follow-up video of sorts, “Fate Network,” which expands on the Fate Matrix universe.

Watch Fate Matrix and Fate Network on YouTube or via the embedded players below the cut.

Bravo, creators! Well done!

PC dating-sim games @ J-List

We’ve spoken quite a few times in the past about our love of Crunchyroll. In our not so humble opinion, it’s the best way to legitimately enjoy low cost (as low as $6.99/month, or even FREE, if you’re willing to put up with a few restrictions) high quality (up to 1080p) streaming anime, straight from Japan (new episodes are published literally hours after they air in Japan!) If you aren’t already a Crunchyroll Premium member, then what are you waiting for?! For less than the price of two fancy coffee drinks a month, you can enjoy beautiful streaming anime at home or on the go, while directly benefiting the companies that bring anime to you, without having to resort to certain, uh, controversial methods. Epic karmic win!

Of course, Crunchyroll streams beautifully on any computer-like device, running Windows, Mac OS X or even Linux. And when you are on the go, you can also enjoy streaming Crunchyroll on a wide variety of mobile devices, including iPhones and iPod touches, iPads, as well as a wide variety of Android smartphones and tablets. But many of us now have nice big-screen HDTVs in our homes. What about those? Fortunately, Crunchyroll has got you covered, thanks to its PlayStation3 and Xbox 360 apps. They have apps available on several other set-top boxes as well. And recently, they’ve added yet another set-top device to their lineup, and an inexpensive one at that: Crunchyroll now supports the Google Chromecast!

The Chromecast, in case you haven’t heard of it, is a very inexpensive (only $35!) yet powerful set-top box released by Google. Based on their Android and Google TV operating systems, the Chromecast attaches directly to any TV’s HDMI port, and allows you to stream content from an ever-growing set of third-party apps on both iOS and Android. And it now supports Crunchyroll as well!

Once you’ve plugged in and set up your Chromecast, just download the Crunchyroll app (available on iOS (iPhone/iPod touch/iPad) and Android) and, once you’ve launched the app and logged in (you did go and get your Crunchyroll Premium Membership, didn’t you?) just tap the Cast button at the upper right of the screen, and you should see your Chromecast appear as a menu option. Tap it, and the app will connect to it. Then just play your desired anime. Instead of showing up on your phone/tablet, it will start playing on your lovely big-screen TV. Playback works flawlessly and the video quality is excellent. Tap the Cast button again to access playback controls (pause/stop.) Easy peasy.

The Chromecast is an excellent addition to the Crunchyroll device lineup, and is by far the most inexpensive way of enjoying your Crunchyroll on the big screen. Go buy yourself one today, and definitely go grab the Crunchyroll app for your mobile platform of choice. And, hello, have you gotten your Crunchyroll Premium Membership yet?!

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Even after 3 years, both the land as well as the people are still scarred and in shambles. Recovery efforts will likely continue for years to come, many families and individuals are still homeless and in need of work. And those who lost their loved ones… well, that kind of wound never heals. And the country as a whole is still reeling from the economic impact of this disaster. Japan is also still facing a very real threat in the Fukushima nuclear reactor situation, which continues to leak dangerous nuclear waste to the environment.

This disaster brought out the worst in humanity. Almost immediately the scammers took advantage of our compassion and generosity to line their pockets. Then there were the religious nutjobs, so-called “environmentalist” whackos, politicians with an agenda, and various other mean-spirited asshats who came out and said that Japan deserved it. Here’s hoping that these wastes of oxygen go die in a fire.

But it also showed that humanity still has a heart, and is capable of much good and compassion. Immediately offers of financial assistance came pouring in from countries large and small. But even more impactful were the offers of physical assistance, both from the military as well as countless civilian organizations – even individual citizens. Many are still on the scene today.

I remember the night of March 11, 2011 well. I had been busy all day working on some code for a work project. It was around 10:45 and I decided to take a break and get a snack and check in on Twitter, email, etc. Then I started seeing tweets coming in about a terrible earthquake in Japan. Information was still quite sketchy during the early hours of the disaster. Finally someone who had access to a good news source fired up Ustream or some other streaming video app on their smartphone and pointed it at their TV. Fortunately it was an international channel so it was being translated into English. As I watched the horrible pictures of destruction and devastation come in my heart sank. I began to worry about the four Japanese exchange students we hosted several years ago, hoping and praying that they weren’t in an affected area. (Fortunately they were safe.) Later I got word that the crew of the AX Live webcast/podcast/videocast, who were coincidentally livestreaming and recording an episode when the earthquake hit, decided to continue the livestream and provide news coverage of the earthquake and related news. And, damn it all, they did a bang-up job bringing us the news. They did some real journalism there. Of course they also did some opining along the way, but they clearly indicated it as such when they did. I just could not sleep that night. The news was riveting, plus there was a possibility that the Southern California coastal community in which I live might get some of the tsunami, so I needed to be ready to GTFO if necessary. I kept one eye on the AX Live broadcast and another eye on Twitter, along with several local news websites, and I also tuned in some local radio stations on our emergency radio. Fortunately it turned out not to be a concern for our area. The water may have risen a bit, I’m not sure, but that’s about it. Sadly, others weren’t so lucky. I gather Hawaii was hit rather hard. And, up the US West Coast a ways, someone was swept out to sea and lost his life. Anyway the AX Live crew went above and beyond the call of duty and continued their excellent coverage, going on until 4 or 5 AM the next morning. Finally after they stopped coverage and the rest of the news started to get repetitive, and when I was convinced that nothing was going to hit me, I went off to bed. But the rest of the weekend I was in a daze, it almost didn’t seem real. I remember it well because that next day (Friday, March 12) was the day that the iPad 2 was released. I still went to our local Apple Store to buy one. But normally on an Apple product launch day, I am like a kid in a candy store who has gotten hopped up on way too much sugar even before he got to the candy store. And yet, on that day, I was in a weird, somber, almost surreal mood.

I urge everyone reading this to keep that infamous date, March 11, 2011, in their minds and hearts. What we must remember is that, even though it’s been 3 years, it ain’t over yet. Not by a long shot. There is still a ton of cleanup and rebuilding to do. If you are in a position to where you can volunteer your time and physical strength, by all means do so. Otherwise, please consider donating. There are still a ton of charities desperately in need of money to keep on going. And perhaps you should check out the film Pray for Japan. Not only is it a somber yet hopeful and ultimately uplifting story that really shows the compassion and dedication of the volunteers, as well as the resolve of the Japanese citizens, but all proceeds from the sale of the film go towards charities providing relief efforts.

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I’m still here. Busy podcaster is busy. Haven’t had any time to produce any content lately, even blog posts. So sorry! I’m hoping to have some time to record an episode soon. In the meantime I’ll try and find the time to kick out some blog posts such as this one.

When my girlfriend and I went to Japan in 2004 (wow… that’s 10 years ago now… sigh) communication was a major concern for us, since neither of us knew a lick of Japanese. (Thanks to my anime watching, I could understand a very small smattering of Japanese, and could more or less speak some of it, but it was definitely not enough to carry out even a brief conversation with a native speaker, unless they wanted to talk about transforming giant robots or special attack moves or something. :)) The good news is that most of the signs in Japanese rail stations, as well as the train stop announcements, plus signs in more popular businesses in larger cities are in both English and Japanese. That helped a lot. Also most of the major hotels had signage in both languages, and their staff spoke both as well. But there were still plenty of times where we needed to communicate with someone who didn’t understand English, be they a restaurant employee, store clerk, etc. We had an absolutely wonderful tour guide that helped with making arrangements and translated for us (Hi, Iko-san, wherever you are!) However she wasn’t with us 100% of the time, and there were plenty of moments during the tour when we were given free time to roam about when we really needed to be able to communicate in Japanese.

Unfortunately, the smartphone and tablet hadn’t come out yet, so all we had to rely on was our trusty Japanese phrasebook. It worked fairly well, although using it was kind of awkward. We had to flip through it to find the section appropriate to the type of conversation we were having (ordering food at a restaurant, buying something in a store, getting directions, etc.) Then, once we found the phrase we needed, we had to stumble through the phonetic pronunciation, hoping and praying that we got it right and didn’t end up accidentally saying something offensive about the other person’s parents or something. Then there were those times when none of the canned phrases in the phrasebook were really appropriate to the situation, which is when we had to resort to the stereotypical dumb tourist’s technique of enunciating loudly and slowly, combined with a lot of hand waving, pointing and various other gesticulations. It’s a miracle that we weren’t arrested and charged with criminal insanity or something.

Well, you lucky travelers of today have it easy, thanks to the aforementioned smartphones and tablets which are now all the rage. Today, smartphones and tablets and their always-on Internet connections are a traveler’s best friend. Gone are the days when you had to lug around large collections of maps, guidebooks, etc. Now all of that information is at your fingertips. Lost your way while wandering about? No problem, just pop open your Maps app and you’ll be back at your hotel in no time. Looking for a good place to eat? Between the over 9,000 restaurant review/travel sites out there, I’m sure you’ll find something pretty quickly. Bored and looking for something cool to do? Well, Google can help you with that; just search for wherever it is you’re staying at and soon you will have plenty of search hits telling you the various museums, parks, gardens, and various other interesting spots nearby. But what’s even cooler is that now, your smartphone and/or tablet can actually translate for you too!

Simply install the free Google Translate app (available for both iOS and Android) and your device becomes a lean, mean translating machine. Just type in or speak (!) the phrase you want to translate, choose the language you want to translate it into (the app supports many languages, including of course Japanese), tap a button, and voila! – your phrase gets instantly translated. It’s displayed in the language you chose to translate it to (e.g. into Japanese characters if you chose Japanese) and is also spelled out phonetically, should you want to attempt to speak it yourself. Or you could have the app speak it for you by tapping on the speaker icon. Or turn your device sideways, and the phrase is displayed in large type, perfect for if you want to show the translation to the person you’re attempting to talk with.

But what happens if the person talks to you in response? Well, you can tell Google Translate to reverse the translation. You can have the person speak into your smartphone/tablet and it will actually translate their words back into English for you! Unfortunately I had no Japanese-speaking volunteers to help me test this, so I tried the next best thing: I put on some anime and held my phone up to the speakers. And it worked surprisingly well, well enough for me to get the gist of what was being said. Your mileage may vary of course, and using this with regular peoples’ voices (as opposed to voice actors doing their in-character voices) may work better.

Now, bear in mind that this is machine translation, which doesn’t always get it right. (If anyone can read/speak Japanese, I’d be curious to hear your opinion on how good (or bad) its translation is.) But it should be at least good enough to get your point across. (Although you might get a snicker or two from the person you’re “talking” with if the translation is particularly weird or funny.) But I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s a darn sight better/faster/easier to use than those phrasebooks of yesteryear.

So go grab it today on the iOS App Store and Google Play – it’s free!

PC dating-sim games @ J-List

Of course, us anime fans are most familiar with the anime incarnation of Pokémon, which began its long and illustrious career back in 1998 when the infamous 4Kids Entertainment, Inc. licensed and began broadcasting internationally the original Pokémon animation. This served as many a fan’s introduction to anime, and helped bring quite a few newcomers into the fold.

In my case, I hadn’t really taken notice of the whole Pokémon thing. My introduction to anime (though I didn’t know what “anime” was at the time) actually came courtesy of Robotech, back in the mid-80s.(I have spoken ad nauseum about this in the past; I will refrain from doing so now so as not to infuriate or bore those reading this post.) I wasn’t (re)introduced to anime until the early 2000s, when, while casually chatting with a friend, the subject of Robotech came up, and he turned to me and said “you know, you should really check out this “anime” stuff…” and lent me his badly-degenerated (must have been 8th or 9th generation) VHS tapes(!) of a little show called Bubblegum Crisis, which remains one of my favorites to this day. So, yeah, the whole Pokémon thing sorta passed me by: it came during my long dark years when, after coming home from a failed attempt at getting a higher education, I slummed around SoCal jobless, penniless and rather sad.

By now you’re probably wondering why I’m blathering on about Pokémon and/or shouting at your computer for me to STFU. Patience, grasshopper. For today, I bring you, as my Cool Find, the Pixelmon mod for Minecraft!

As the name implies, Pixelmon adds a Pokémon-inspired game mechanic to everybody’s favorite retro blocky sandbox game. Fortunately, no Pokémon knowledge is required to enjoy this mod. When you first create a character (or the next time you log in to an already-created world) you will be given the option to choose your first Pokémon. (Don’t worry, you won’t miss out if you happen to sleep through your alarm and end up arriving late to the party.) With your new-found friend, you can go out and explore the lands of Minecraft. As you do so, you will find many other Pokémon wandering around, whom you can do battle with and attempt to capture. (gotta catch ’em all!) If you’re on a multiplayer server, you can do battle with other players on the server; and in single-player mode, you will also see computer-generated (NPC) Pokémon Trainers wandering about whom you can challenge.

Of course, a young Pokémon trainer needs quite a few supplies — Pokémon balls, PCs, healers, trading machines and the like — and you can either find a convenient Pokémon Center and use theirs (they are randomly generated and scattered throughout the world) or you can go out, harvest resources, and craft your own.

As for the Pokémon themselves, as near as I can tell (remember, I’m no Pokémon expert) pretty much every Pokémon from the franchise is represented. You’ve got your Pikachus, your Magikarps, your Squirtles, your Bulbasaurs, your Mareeps, your Miltanks, and… You get the idea. There are even Pokémon fossils that you can find while mining, which you can regrow into ancient Pokémon. And, every now and then, a Legendary Pokémon appears, which you can take down and make yours, if you’ve got the right skills. Each Pokémon is lovingly rendered in Minecraft block style, and the developers have also recreated many of their signature noises. Each has its signature attacks, and as your Pokémon win battles, they gain levels, increasing their stats and unlocking new attacks. And under the right conditions, your Pokémon will evolve as well. Of course, there’s an in-game Pokédex you can craft up that helps you identify Pokémon and look up their stats, etc.

Oh, and by the way, the Pixelmon mod is very well written specifically to maximize compatibility with other mods. It works with all of the mods I use, including littleMaidMob, Mo’Creatures, Flan’s Mod, Twilight Forest, Millénaire, and more.

You don’t really need to be a Pokémon fan, or know a lot about Pokémon to enjoy this mod. It’s really fun. Read more about it and download it at the Pixelmon website or the Minecraft forums. Check out the installation video (also embedded below the cut) to find out how to install it (it’s really easy). They have a Getting Started guide with the basic steps to get started There’s also a third party wiki with an even better Getting Started Guide, along with tons of other info. And finally check out YouTuber and Minecraft “let’s play” video creator paulsoaresjr’s Pixelmon Let’s Play videos (also embedded below the cut) to see the mod in action (and besides, his videos are always awesome).

Gotta catch ’em all!

Hentai PC dating-sim games at J-List

Well, good news for those of you even remotely interested in attending Anime Expo (our favorite con, and not just because it’s located practically in our backyard): the Anime Expo hotel blocks have opened up! Yes, folks, that’s right, the online hotel reservation system is now live, meaning you can book your rooms right now, from the comfort of your own desk. And doing so ASAP is a really good idea. Considering how the number of people attending Anime Expo keeps going up and up (61,000 last year!) these hotel spots are bound to fill up fast. And it’s looking like the mad rush has already begun. It has now been a few days since the hotel system went live, and already most of the hotels are starting to show unavailable days (with some of them even being completely sold out). They’ll probably open up some more room blocks in the weeks and months to come, but you never know, so you might want to make yourself a “just in case” reservation – remember, you don’t need to pay anything upfront, and reservations can always be changed or canceled until a few days before the reservation date without penalty. (This policy could vary, so it’s best to check with your prospective hotel just to be sure.) Definitely keep an eye on the hotels page as well as the main Anime Expo site, so that you’ll know when more hotel room blocks have opened up!

Currently, single and double rooms are available at the L.A. Hotel Downtown for $172/night; the Westin Bonaventure for $170/night; the JW Marriott for $194/night; the Millennium Biltmore (recipient of the prestigious Otaku no Podcast Seal of Approval) for $130/night (single) and $150/night (double); and the Sheraton LA Downtown for $160/night.

Yeah, it’s almost half a year before the convention, but it’s never too early to start planning. So get on it already! The guest list has started taking shape and is looking to be pretty impressive. Pretty much the entire English voice cast of Sailor Moon will be in attendance (just in time for its 20th anniversary), plus Kimura U will be the fashion guest of honor. Of course there’s all the usual anime con fare as well: a dealer’s room of epic proportions; an Artists Alley of equally epic proportions; panels and workshops galore; an AMV contest that always impresses us; a masquerade unlike any other; and tons more events equally worthy of hyperbole. Registration is open and will currently run you $60 for a full 4-day adult pass, and $25 for a 4-day child pass. So go register already, but then right after doing so, better get yourself a room pronto!

“But how will I know when you have posted something new?” you may be asking yourself. Easy! You can keep an eye on our Twitter and Facebook statuses, as every time I post something new, those get automatically updated with information on the new post. And if you have the Otaku no Podcast app, you can choose to have it send you a push notification whenever a new podcast episode or blog post goes up. (And, before you say it, yes, I know, the app needs updating pretty badly, plus there still isn’t an Android app. Those are two things that I hope to fix soon.)

Well, if you happen to be a Mac user running OS X Mavericks and you use the Safari browser, you now have a third option. We have just added support for Safari Push Notifications. The next time you visit otakunopodcast.com you will see a popup (pictured above) asking you if you would like to subscribe to push notifications. Once you click “allow,” nothing else will appear different to you. But, the next time I publish a new podcast episode or blog post, you will receive a push notification announcing that glorious event, either as a banner that appears momentarily, or an alert that waits for you until you acknowledge it. (This setting can be changed in the Notifications panel in System Preferences.) Clicking on the push notification will instantly launch Safari, bringing you straight to the new podcast episode or blog post. Easy peasy.

We’ll only use this to announce new blog posts or podcast episodes — nothing more. And at any time you can choose to stop receiving these messages by going to Safari Preferences, and in the Notifications tab, click the “Deny” button next to Otaku no Podcast.

I have spoken at length about my love of the two Key visual novel based anime, Kanon and Clannad. Give me half a chance and I’ll talk your ear off about the subject, extolling their virtues and emotional impact long into the night. Listening to me prattle on about it, you’d think that Key and/or KyoAni has the lock on tear-jerking, soul-wrenching emotionally-charged romance stories. As it turns out, nothing could be farther from the truth. Perhaps this is the reason why my Anime Secret Santa picked ef – a tale of memories as one of my choices to review. And I am glad that they did.

ef – a tale of memories is a 12-episode series animated by Shaft (they say that anime studio Shaft is a bad mutha – SHUT YO’ MOUTH!) and is based on the visual novel series ef – A Fairy Tale of the Two published by minori, which I honestly have never heard of before. (Then again I’m still a neophyte when it comes to visual novels.) It follows a cast of characters as they struggle through life and as their lives intertwine with each other. Hiro is an aspiring mangaka trying to juggle his work and school lives, and feels that his world is “missing a certain color.” Kei, his childhood friend, longs for Hiro’s affection but is unable to confront him with her feelings. Miyako, a cheerful, somewhat ditzy girl who Hiro runs into one evening, immediately becomes attached to Hiro, but underneath that cheerful exterior she is hiding some past sorrow. Kyosuke, a photographer and cameraman, seeks to capture true emotion in his work, but never feels like he has done this satisfactorily. Renji, a high school upperclassman, is faced with the decision of how he should go forward with his life; he has aspirations to become a novelist but is unsure of himself. Finally, there’s the quiet and mysterious Chihiro, who Renji encounters by chance one day; always cheerful if quiet, but who seems to be a different person every day. As the story progresses we see that these seemingly disconnected individuals’ stories do relate to each other.

So how does ef – a tale of memories stack up against my beloved Key/KyoAni properties? Read on to find out!

In case you’ve been living under a rock (or in the desert, or deep in the Himalayas, or on Mars, or in a distant galaxy/another dimension/etc.) for the past year, and haven’t the faintest idea what the heck I’m talking about, here’s the scoop: starting tomorrow, Saturday, December 14 and going through Christmas Day, Wednesday, December 25, I will be picking a cool new otaku-themed product each day and will be featuring it on our Twitter and Facebook. (They’ll also be posted on the 12 Days of Kurisumasu page here, along with a witty (well, at least I think so) writeup.) And if you’re still clueless as to what the heck I’m talking about, you can also check out the 12 Days of Kurisumasu from years gone by at the 12 Days of Kurisumasu page.

Each product I’ll be featuring will come from one of our affiliate advertisers — Amazon, CDjapan, Right Stuf, J-List, etc. Yeah, I know what you’re saying, you’ve been waiting for the “catch” and it finally came. But as catches go, this isn’t much of one. Remember that purchasing through any of the links here costs you nothing extra but brings us a little much-needed income, which helps keep the lights on and the bits flowing.

What products will you be choosing, you might be asking. No real rhyme or reason to it, really. As long as it’s even tangentially related to anime or other otaku-worthy pursuits, then it’s fair game. That means anime DVDs (and even Blu-rays); calendars; figures; “stuff from Japan” (food, snacks, etc.); plushies; dating-sim games/visual novels; whatever. Hopefully, among this cornucopia of consumer goods, you’ll find something cool and out of the ordinary to give to any otaku-leaning friends/acquaintances you’re looking for gifts for. (Or even yourself…)

So why subject yourself to the hassle, expense and bloodletting of doing battle in the malls and on the streets, and come shop with us instead?

This year has been especially hard for me, thanks to some unexpected bad medical news (and the large medical bills that tend to come with things like that) so your help is gratefully appreciated. If you don’t see anything that strikes your fancy among my picks this year, then perhaps you can find something else among our many affiliates? Donations are also accepted (and are very much appreciated). You can find links to all our affiliates as well as donation links on our How You Can Help page (which, I just noticed, looks really weird/crappy on the iPad. Gotta fix that.). And, as always, you have my thanks. You rock.

I can hear it now, some of you are probably staring at your screens yelling “WHAT YOU SAY !!“. Well obviously you must be new around here, because if you’ve been hanging around this blog and podcast for any appreciable length of time, you would know about Anime Secret Santa. After all, I’ve written about it several times before, and we’ve even participated in it for the past few years as well.

Basically the Anime Secret Santa project involves a bunch of bloggers (and perhaps podcasters too) who get together and put their names into a virtual hat, which the Reverse Thieves then proceed to mix up. They then pair off bloggers, and ask each of them to recommend an anime for the other to watch. The trick is that they don’t tell them who the recommendation came from. Once you have your anonymous donors’ recommendations in hand, you then proceed to pick an anime off their list, watch it and review it. Yes, exactly like that whole Secret Santa thing, which you are undoubtedly familiar with. (After all it’s probably been used as a plot device in at least a few Christmas-themed anime episodes…) The idea is to get people to step outside their comfort zones if you will, and watch and review shows they may not have considered before. It’s a great way to find out about anime that, maybe you might not have considered before, but ended up liking a lot. (Or maybe you hated it, and then you can write a really scathing review. There have been some pretty hilariously epic ones.) Plus it’s a lot of fun.

Want to participate? It’s pretty simple. First, you’ll need to set yourself up on one of those “keep track of what anime I’ve watched” sites, such as Anime-Planet (my personal favorite) or MyAnimeList. They are all free to join, and are pretty useful in their own right. Then, once you’ve listed all the anime that you’ve seen, e-mail your name, blog/podcast’s URL and the URL to your anime listing site profile page to the Reverse Thieves with the subject line “Secret Santa Participant.” (Also, if for whatever reason you would prefer not to have to watch/review fansubs, be sure and mention that in your email.)

All entries are due by Sunday, October 6th, so you better hurry! Check out the Reverse Thieves blog post for full details and where to send in your entry. Naturally, if the fates allow it, Otaku no Podcast will be participating this year as well. And we hope that you will too!

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

Greetings. First of all, yes we did go to Anime Expo, and we returned safely, albeit not in perfect health (you guessed it, con crud). That, combined with a metric crapton of work that has suddenly decided to dog pile on me, has prevented me from getting any Anime Expo coverage out. However rest assured that this situation will change soon. We just recorded our Anime Expo wrap-up podcast, which I will be editing this week and hopefully will have out in the feeds by this weekend. I’ve got a few AX-related blog posts in the works, and there’s also pictures and video that I hope to release soon as well. So stay tuned! In the meantime, here’s a Cool Find that I was recently made aware of, and felt I had to share with you.

Several times in the past I’ve written about my quest to watch my downloaded anime on the go (only unlicensed works from fansub groups that follow the fansubber’s code of course). I had eventually settled on the program HD Player which, while far from perfect in the user interface department, did such an amazingly good job at rendering complex subtitles that I was willing to overlook its clunky user interface and occasional crashiness. And, while ostensibly free, the developer was charging a $1.99 fee to unlock some necessary video format decoding capabilities without which the program was basically useless. Well I have found a new solution for iOS users (iPhone, iPod touch and iPad) that is completely free – VLC!

For the probably 2 or 3 people in the world who do not know, VLC is pretty much THE go-to program for watching any form of video on desktop computers. It decodes and plays pretty much all of the video formats, and it can even work around damaged or malformed video files — it’s successfully played video files for me that the standard tools (Windows Media Player, Quicktime, etc.) totally choke up on. On top of all that, VLC is an open-source project, meaning that a large group of software developers around the world are all working on VLC and constantly improving it, so it just keeps getting better and better. Available for Windows, Mac and Linux, it is a definite must-have — and is completely free.

Well, a while back some VLC developers decided to take VLC and create a mobile version of it, and thus the VLC iOS app was born. Unfortunately it was short-lived; one of the VLC developers got all high and mighty, believing that the VLC license was violated by the App Store’s license, got on his high horse, and got Apple to remove VLC from the App Store. But, just like your typical action movie hero, you can’t keep a good guy down, and the Mobile VLC developers went on the warpath, eventually (somehow) re-licensing all of the VLC code into a more App Store-friendly form. And finally we get to see the fruits of their labors: VLC for iOS is BACK, baby!

VLC operates much like any of the other over 9,000 video players. You can load video files into it using iTunes’ file sharing panel, or you can turn your iOS device into a temporary Web server, browse to it from one of the computers on your home network, and upload files to it that way. But VLC adds a few new methods to the mix. With its built-in web browser, you can download video files directly off of a website, or you could link to your Dropbox account and grab any videos stored there.

Once you’ve gotten files into it, VLC displays your list of files in a nice format, including the filename, length of the video, resolution, and a nice graphical preview. Unfortunately there is no support at all for organizing these videos — there’s no folders or playlists, and there isn’t even a search button. So if you have a ton of videos loaded onto your device, you’ll have to scroll through them all to find the one you want to watch. Hopefully the developers will add some sort of file organization mechanism in a future release.

However, once you tap on a video and start playing it, that’s when the magic starts. You can play back the video on your device’s screen; but you can also use AirPlay to playback the video on any AirPlay-compatible device, for example the Apple TV hooked up to my giant living room TV and home theater sound system. This is absolutely fantastic. You can even configure VLC to continue playing a video’s audio track while you’re out of the app, so if you need to switch to Mail to answer a quick email, or to Tweetbot to post a quick tweet, you can still hear what’s going on in your video. Speaking of audio, if your video file has multiple audio tracks, you can easily switch between them using the on-screen controls. (When I rip my own DVDs, I like to create dual-language rips, that way I can choose whether I want dub or sub) And VLC for iOS supports the same variety of file formats as does VLC for desktops. I’ve thrown quite a variety of files at it and it plays them back beautifully.

All of this versatility does require some power, however. VLC needs some processing power to do what it does. I was able to play a 1080p normal H.264 video on my iPhone 5 with perfect quality, as well as a 720p Hi10p video. However my iPad mini could not play a 1080p normal H.264 video; it was pretty stuttery and jerky. Interestingly enough, the iPad mini was “sort of” able to play a 720p Hi10p file, albeit with a fair amount of stuttering. Fortunately the app warns you if it thinks that it won’t be able to play a certain file. However I’ve found that its warning threshold is a bit on the conservative side; some files that it has warned me about play back just fine.

Finally, let’s get to the question that I’m sure everybody has on the tip of their tongue. How does VLC score in the subtitle rendering department? Well I’m happy to report that VLC’s handling of subtitles is as good, if not better, than HD Player’s, which I consider to be the “gold standard.” I’ve thrown a wide variety of fansubs with some very complex subtitles, and it displayed them perfectly.

VLC for iOS definitely deserves a look, and it is now my preferred video player on iOS. If they just fix the file management issue, then it would be perfect. However it’s definitely worth a download, especially considering that it’s absolutely free. Go grab it now on the App Store or on Google Play.

Click for J-List now!

Well boy did that turn out to be a prophetic statement, because that’s exactly what they just did! (Maybe I should try playing the lotto or something…) Simply download the free Guidebook app, available for iOS (iPhone, iPod touch and iPad) and Android, and using the app’s search feature, search for Anime Expo, and download the guide. That’s it. The guide doesn’t need an internet connection to function, which is great, since (A) phone data connections are pricy; (B) hotel/convention center WiFi (when available) is either pricy or horribly slow (or both); and (C) most convention centers, being ginormous structures made of steel and concrete, tend to eat radio signals for breakfast. However, if you do get connectivity, the guide will automatically check whether an update is available (and they often are), and will update itself. Within the guide you can search through the available programming, including live events, panels, main events and video screenings; check out info on the various Guests of Honor; look through the various exhibitors in the dealers’ room; and much more. Once you’ve found an event you’re interested in, you can add it to your own personal schedule or “to do” list, and can even set an alarm to remind you X minutes before the event starts. This is a really slick app, and as mentioned earlier, it is one of our favorites. So go grab it today! (Remember folks, it’s free.)

By the way pre-reg is still open, and unless you like standing in Xbox huge lines for over 9,000 hours, is highly recommended. And if you STILL haven’t made your hotel reservations (you damn slackers!) then you better hurry – vacancies are still available at the Sheraton LA Downtown and Millennium Biltmore, but they won’t be for long!

Gothic & Lolita Products, magazine subscriptions from Japan

Well, if you can’t make it, here’s something that may take a little of the sting out of that disappointment. A newcomer to the streaming video scene, and one that I honestly hadn’t heard of before now, SimulTV, will be livestreaming some of the key AX events, including opening and closing ceremonies, fashion shows, some of the industry panels as well as the Cell, Kaya and Moonstream concerts.

They’re also taking the opportunity to announce their new streaming anime-on-demand service, which lets you watch episodes from many popular shows at $0.99-2.99 a pop. You can get a free 14-day trial by signing up for a SimulTV subscription during AX, either online or by scanning the QR code available at the SimulTV screening room, which is room 405.

SimulTV is available on most computers and mobile devices and offers on-demand streaming of a variety of titles, both anime and non-anime. They bring a unique social aspect to the table as well, allowing you to add social features such as voice/video chat, twitter, Facebook, and search, all right within the video playback window.

Check out more info here or at the SimulTV website. You can also sign up there.

Updated 06/29/13: New version of the schedule has been released. See the end of this post for a summary of the changes.

Good news if you’re planning on attending this year’s Anime Expo: the program schedule is now up! Go grab it now (in PDF format) and plan away! With a huge guest roster, not to mention the myriad of traditional (and even quite a few not-so-traditional) events that you typically find at anime cons, there’ll be lots to do and see.

And now for my yearly “Why the hell aren’t more cons using smartphone/tablet scheduling apps?!” rant. More and more people have ’em these days, and they make excellent companions while you’re at con. So why aren’t more cons putting out their schedules as smartphone/tablet apps?! Sure, you can load up the PDF schedule in a PDF reader, but that’s clunky compared to an actual schedule app. You can do so much more in an app — searching and marking favorite/want-to-watch events (and setting reminder alarms to automatically notify you X minutes before said events) being the two most important benefits of app-based schedules. In years past AX has put out an iOS schedule app which, while quirky and non-standard, still worked reasonably well. More recently, they’ve gone with a web app (an “app” that runs within your device’s web browser.) Not only does this require a data connection (expensive, and doesn’t work too well (if at all) in most convention centers, aka giant steel and concrete structures that eat radio signals for breakfast), it was also slow, buggy and a pain to work with. Why oh why can’t they go with a well-established scheduling app that well over 9,000 other anime conventions (not to mention a lot of other conventions) have used, such as our favorites, Guidebook? OK, end of rant. (disclaimer: we have no connection with Guidebook, nor do we benefit in any way, financial or otherwise, by mentioning them. We just really love their app.) Guess what, the schedule is now available in the Guidebook app too!

By the way, pre-registration is still open (and is highly recommended; it really helps cut down on linecon) and will run you $70 for a full 4-day adult pass, $60 for a 2-day pass, $40 for a single day pass, and $20 for an expo hall only pass; child (6-12) passes are $25. And if you haven’t made your hotel arrangements yet (shame on you!) as of the time I am writing this, there are still rooms available at the Sheraton LA Downtown and the Millennium Biltmore; better book ’em now (Danno) while they’re still available.

Updated 06/29/13: New version of the schedule has been released. Here is a summary of the changes:

• Red Carpet Removed (Now Press Only Event)
• Open Ceremonies Moved to 10:00 AM
• Wolf Children Changed from Dubbed to Subbed
• Crunchyroll Presents: Wandering Son 1-3 Added to Day 2 @ 9:15 AM
• Buso Renkin Removed from Day 2
• The Everyday Tales of a Cat God 1-3 added to day 2 @ 9:45 AM
• Crunchyroll Presents: Saint Seiya Omega 1-3 Added to Day 2 @ 9:00 AM
• Gosick 1 added to Day 2 @ 11:30 PM
• Dark Horse: Celebrating 25 Years of Manga moved to 10:00 AM
• Gintama: The Movie removed from Day 3
• Starchild Special Premiere and Trailers! added to Day 3 @ 10:30 PM
• NISA Exclusive Anime Movie Premiere! added to Day 3 @ 12:30 AM
• Nyarko-san 1-2 [S/16+] Added to Day 3 @ 9:00 AM
• Hellsing Ultimate OAV 1-3 extended to 12:30 PM on Day 3
• SPJA Charity Auction moved to 12:30 PM on Day 4
• Crypton Future Media Inc Presents: Hatsune Miku added to Day 4 at 3:30 PM
• Crunchyroll Presents: Muromi-san 1-2 [S/13+] added to Day 4 @ 9:15 AM
• Crunchyroll Presents: Arata the Legend 1-2 [S/13+] Added to Day 4 @ 9:00 AM
• Crunchyroll Presents: Nichijou 1-2 [S/13+] Added to Day 4 @ 9:00 AM
• GIRLS und PANZER 1-2 [S/14+] Added to Day 4 @ 9:00 AM

Hentai PC dating-sim games at J-List

Big news if you own an Apple TV, Apple’s answer to the set-top box: you can now haz your Crunchyroll on it!

Crunchyroll is, in our not-so-humble opinion, the best thing to happen to anime fans since, well, the invention of anime itself. Streaming anime on demand, 24 hours a day/7 days a week, in HD quality (up to 1080p), with full English subtitles. Best of all, members get to watch currently airing series literally hours after they are released in Japan. All of this for a low monthly fee (as low as $5/month), which goes to benefit the anime creators themselves. And now, if you own an Apple TV, you can enjoy your Crunchyroll on the big screen!

You need to be running the latest version of the Apple TV software in order to get the new Crunchyroll app icon. Go to the Settings screen, then tap General, then Update Software. Once the software update is complete, you will see the orange Crunchyroll icon on the main Apple TV screen. You might have to scroll down a little bit to find it. Once you’ve found it, if you want to move it to a more prominent place, press and hold the center button on your Apple Remote until all the icons start wiggling, then use the direction buttons to move it where you want. (Unfortunately you can’t put it in the top-most row of icons, which are reserved for the Apple apps. :P)

Tapping on the Crunchyroll app icon brings you to a screen where you can watch previews from the latest shows, and sign up for an account if you don’t already have one. However we humbly ask that you use our handy-dandy affiliate link to sign up; it costs you nothing extra and gives us a little “somethin’ somethin'” that helps keep the lights on and the bandwidth flowing.

Anyway once you’ve logged in to your account, you are brought to the main screen, where you can view your queue, browse through the various titles available, and perform searches. You can choose to view available titles grouped by various criteria (featured/hot titles, by genre, by season, etc.) or you can drink from the firehose and view a list of everything. When viewing your queue, you can either view it by series, and you can also view a history of what you’ve been watching recently. (Note that I said “viewing;” unfortunately you cannot edit or otherwise manage your queue through the Apple TV app. You’ll have to log in to the CR website on your computer to do that.)

Once you’ve selected a series to watch, tapping into it will show a general synopsis of the series. You can also automatically stream it from the beginning; great for those marathon viewing sessions that people like to do sometimes. Or you can scroll through the episodes, viewing a synopsis and screenshot of each. Once you’ve selected an episode, you get a more detailed synopsis, a listing of related shows (great for finding new content that you might like as well), and a big “play” button.

The app performed quite well; navigating is fast and fluid, and playback is smooth and stutter-free. Quality looks amazing, definitely above DVD quality, and perhaps even on par with Blu-ray; however the quality varies by show — not all shows are available in HD. Unfortunately, unless your TV supports overscan compensation (sometimes called “true pixel mode,” “full pixel mode,” or “1:1 mode”) you may see parts of your screen cut off. This is particularly annoying with subtitles, as depending on which series you are watching, some of the subtitles are placed so low that they fall within the area of the screen that is cut off, meaning that you lose part of the subtitles. Unfortunately there’s no way around that, except to get a new TV. Fortunately only older/cheaper HDTVs suffer from this overscan problem. (Note: This is not a problem specific to the Crunchyroll app. Any content played on an Apple TV, whether it is through the native iTunes app, Crunchyroll, Youtube, etc. is susceptible to this overscan issue.)

It is great to see Crunchyroll joining the list of channels on Apple TV. I had been thinking about getting a home theater PC or a PS3 or something similar so I could watch CR in the living room, but couldn’t really justify the cost since the device would only be used for that. Now that CR is on the Apple TV (which I already have hooked up to my living room TV), that is no longer an issue.

Check out our gallery of screenshots below the cut.

When I heard that the plot of Steins;gate involved time travel, I naturally took interest and added it to my “must watch” list. Steins;gate is, in fact, based on the second in a series of “science adventure games” published by 5pb. and Nitroplus. Steins;gate is the second game of this series, preceded by Chaos;head and followed by Robotics;notes, both of which were also adapted into anime form. I had in fact watched Chaos;head some time ago, and while I found it to be enjoyable, it didn’t “wow” me. So I didn’t really have very high expectations for Steins;gate, which is why I put off watching it until recently. Well, if I had access to a time machine now, I would go back and tell my past self to drop everything and watch this show RIGHT NOW. Yes, it is that good.

Steins;gate tells the story of Rintaro “Okarin” Okabe (aka Hououin Kyouma), self-proclaimed “mad scientist” and all-around goofball, who, together with several of his friends have formed the “Future Gadget Lab,” ostensibly tasked with inventing strange (and largely unsuccessful) gadgets, but who mostly loaf around in their Akihabara headquarters surfing the Net, attending various otaku events, playing dating-sims and doing various other random things. One day Okabe discovers that he and his gang have unwittingly invented a device that can send text messages back to the past. And that’s when everything starts going pear-shaped, in a BIG way.

Gothic & Lolita Products, magazine subscriptions from Japan

A while ago we wrote about the apparent demise of MikuMikuDance, the free 3D animation software that Vocaloid fans created to allow people to make those really cool animations featuring the various Vocaloids that are popular on the Youtubes (as well as animations using characters from other franchises). At that time the developer had stated that he wasn’t planning on releasing any future versions of MMD. Well, he seems to have reversed that decision, because the developer, Higuchi U, just announced that a new release, version 7.39m, is now available for download.

So far all that is known about this version is that it contains the following enhancements: (the release notes here are almost as terse as Apple’s)

• Improvements to program speed and response time.
• Improvements to stability, bug fixes.
• MMD now remembers your last open and save folder locations.

IMPORTANT NOTE: according to the developer, there are one or more impostor versions of MMD floating around out there that contain viruses and various other malware. He recommends that you download only from his website directly.

At the time we wrote about MMD’s apparent demise, we also wrote about a successor program called MikuMikuMoving, which some would argue as being more powerful, containing more features and with a better user interface. Anyway, the MikuMikuMoving folks have also recently put out a new version, Version 1.2.1.3, which you can download from the MikuMikuMoving website.

Have you created anything cool with either of these tools? Let us know so we can link to it!

Click for J-List now!

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I started a series of podcasts which I called “Anime on the Cheap.” Well, it was going to be a series of (at least) 2 episodes, but I never got around to finishing it. But I kind of don’t have to now, since thanks to services like iTunes, Amazon Video, Netflix, Crunchyroll, Neon Alley and new kid on the block Daisuki (not to mention all the licensors that have their own streaming sites for their content) it is now easier than ever for a computer- or smartphone/tablet-owning otaku to get his or her fill of anytime, anywhere, all-you-can-eat streaming anime for pennies on the dollar.

Unfortunately, for many folks, online streaming is either infeasible or impractical. Either their computer can’t handle online video playback; or they don’t own one of those newfangled smartphones or tablets; or, as is all too common these days, their Internet connections are throttled and/or impose strict data caps. Until these problems are solved, there will still be a place in the world for physical media (good old DVDs and Blu-rays). But, although prices have come down significantly, physical media releases of anime still cost a significant amount of money when compared to streaming services; plus, with the demise of retail outlets where one used to find anime (Borders, Sam Goody/Suncoast, etc.), it’s getting harder to find locally.

Well there is one place where you can oftentimes still find some decent deals in used anime in physical media form: thrift stores! This also applies to other places where you can get used stuff, such as garage sales, flea markets, swap meets and the like. Even Craigslist, And, if you happen to live in a college town, you’re in luck; college life and financial destitution seem to go hand in hand, and you’ll always find broke students willing to sell their worldly possessions to help pay their bills or buy that next cup ramen. This is something that I honestly never thought about until, a few weekends ago, while out with friends checking out some cool local thrift stores, my eye happened to fall on a stack of anime DVDs.

However, as you’re browsing around, it is useful to keep the following caveats in mind:

• You probably won’t be seeing the latest and greatest releases here. Most likely you’ll be seeing releases from a few years ago. But don’t let that put you off; there’s some good stuff out there. In fact, you can probably find a lot of stuff that’s either hard to find today, or out of print entirely. And, yes Virginia, there is anime (good anime even) out there other than Naruto, Bleach and DBZ. Be adventurous; try something new every once in awhile. Fortunately you can do so for not a lot of money this way.
• Be sure and check to make sure that the DVD or videotape set contains every volume in the series. Or, if there are volumes missing, think about whether or not you’d be willing to track down the missing volumes. Also check to make sure the disks aren’t horribly scratched up, the videotape is mangled, etc.
• You MAY see a few Blu-rays, but odds are that you’ll mostly run into DVDs, VHS tapes, or perhaps even laserdiscs. The good news is that oftentimes you can find the equipment needed to play back these older formats sold there as well.
• Keep an eye out for other cool stuff too. Used video games and game consoles can often be found at very reasonable prices. There’s also non-anime media aplenty: TV series, movies, music CDs (maybe, just maybe, even Jpop/anime related), etc. And of course there’s also electronics such as computer equipment, software, stereos/speakers, home appliances, etc. And if you’re a cosplayer, or thinking about getting into cosplay, a thrift store is a veritable treasure trove of costume source materials.
• Be mindful of price. Don’t pay more than what an item’s worth. Good places to check for rough pricing guidelines are eBay, Craigslist, used items on Amazon, etc. Also remember that it never hurts to try and negotiate; especially at swap meets or garage sales, sellers are oftentimes willing to haggle with you and sell at a lower price. But don’t be rude or forceful about it.

So, the next time you’re bored and looking for something to do over the weekend, and want to go in search of your next anime fix, why not consider a thrift store/swap meet crawl? It’s a lot of fun (especially in groups), and hey, you’ll probably find something cool in the process. Good hunting!

Hentai PC dating-sim games at J-List

As I have said countless times before, I put on this dog and pony show as a hobby, due to my love of anime and Japan, not to mention playing with geeky things like audio hardware and server software. It is by no means my primary source of income. Unfortunately, this doesn’t come cheaply — audio hardware, servers, etc. cost a pretty penny — and in this down economy, I could use every little bit of help I can get. That’s why I am extremely grateful for all of the listeners and viewers out there who have taken the opportunity to help me out by buying from one of our affiliate sites, clicking on ad banners and/or donating.

Well, you can now help us out in yet another way, by donating using Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a fascinating new secure, decentralized digital currency technology that promises to revolutionize the way we exchange money and transact business, both online and offline. (Here is a really good video that explains the basics of Bitcoin, what it is and how it works.) Anyone can set up their own Bitcoin wallet and start receiving and sending Bitcoins right away. Or, if you’re feeling particularly ambitious (and you have shiny powerful computer hardware), you can get into the wild world of Bitcoin mining (here’s a cool video explaining the concept) and start generating your own Bitcoins. And, lest you think all this digital currency crap is worthless, well, it isn’t: Bitcoins are actually worth real money and can be freely exchanged with actual currency, and there are an increasing number of businesses that will sell you goods and services for bit coins instead of traditional currency.

Well, Otaku no Podcast is the latest such entity. You can donate using the handy donate button and/or QR code on our Help Us page, in the sidebar of every page on this site, and also at the bottom of this article; or, if the links don’t work for you, our Bitcoin address is 14hYjheG9W7aWip7KwLPcfXxoXdALwDcma. And, once again, thank you for your help and generosity. You rock. Seriously.

Bitcoin Address:
14hYjheG9W7aWip7KwLPcfXxoXdALwDcma
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Hentai PC dating-sim games at J-List

The App Store is about to hit 50 billion downloads, and, just like they did last year at the 25 billion mark, Apple is celebrating by putting on a contest. If you download an app (free or paid) and are the lucky 50 billionth app downloader, you could win a $10,000 iTunes gift card. But, even better, the next 50 downloads (50 billion and 1th to 50 billion and 50th) will get a $500 gift card too!

Full disclosure: You can enter the contest without purchasing or downloading an app. But we would of course be very happy if you downloaded our app anyway And if you do, we would really appreciate it if you would be so kind as to rate and/or review the app, or even help out a poor app developer and podcaster in this down economy by purchasing the in-app ad removal feature.

Anyway, head on over to the contest page and check out the rapidly increasing download counter, and find out how to enter. And good luck!

Oh, and please download our app as well.

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

I have a love-hate relationship with computer speakers. I’ve owned many pairs over the years, but never really liked any of them. Either they sound mushy or flat (or just generally “off”), have either too much (or too little) bass, or they distort when you crank up the volume (I’m not even talking super loud, just moderately loud), or they just don’t sound “right” in general. So yeah, I guess that would make it more of a hate-hate relationship then. Every once in a while I decide to roll the dice and try another pair, and almost always I end up disappointed, not to mention somewhat lighter in wallet. And for me, good computer audio is important, since I do a lot of TV/movie (and anime) watching on the computer.

That is why when, on a recent episode of Tekzilla when host Patrick Norton reviewed the Lepai LP-2020A+ Tripath Class-T Hi-Fi Audio Mini Amplifier with Power Supply and the Dayton Audio B652 6-1/2-Inch 2-Way Bookshelf Speakers, my ears perked up (no pun intended). (The review starts in at 04:56) Here is a reasonably priced (around $75 total) amplifier and speaker package that supposedly boasts amazing audio quality (especially when you consider the price) and is suitable for almost any application, including being used as computer speakers. Well I just couldn’t pass that up. If Patrick Norton, noted audiophile and alpha geek, likes them, then they must be good, right?

In a word, yes. In two words, Hell Yeah.

The Lepai amp, although inexpensive, doesn’t look it. It’s constructed of metal and has a very solid feel to it. The knobs all turn smoothly, and there is even a cool blue LED illuminating the volume knob. The audio is crisp and clean, and the unit also has bass and treble adjustments. (It can also, at the push of a button, just play the audio straight, without any enhancements.) And even when I cranked it up to 11, I did not notice any distortion. (Sadly the volume dial doesn’t literally go up to 11. I so wish manufacturers would do that.) And the box runs nice and cool, and is small enough to fit on even my crowded messy desk. Plus, if you’re a hardware hacker, there is quite a large modding community around this amp.

Unfortunately by the time I was ready to pull the trigger and order, the Dayton speakers were out of stock. So I have no way of testing those. However by all accounts the speakers sound amazing. Instead, I rummaged through the garage and came up with a pair of crappy old Sony speakers from a long-dead stereo system. Which, when paired with this amp, sound incredible.

So if you do any music listening/video watching on your computer and/or good computer audio is important to you, definitely check this out. The Lepai amp is a no-brainer; just get it. Unfortunately the Dayton speakers are still out of stock as I write this, but almost any other pair of bookshelf speakers will work (you might even have some kicking around in the garage like I did). Do yourself (and your ears) a favor and check these out.

(By the way, when hooking things up, don’t get your left and right channels mixed up. I did, and was scratching my head wondering why things didn’t sound “right.” This handy online right/left channel test will tell you if you screwed up and got them reversed.)

Lepai LP-2020A Tripath Class-T Hi-Fi Audio Mini Amplifier with Power Supply -

Dayton Audio B652 6-1/2-Inch 2-Way Bookshelf Speaker Pair -

Buy Lepai LP-2020A+ Tripath Class-T Hi-Fi Audio Mini Amplifier with Power Supply at Amazon

Buy Dayton Audio B652 6-1/2-Inch 2-Way Bookshelf Speaker Pair at Amazon

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Anyway, by now I’m sure you’ve heard about that darling of the streaming anime world, Crunchyroll. (And if you haven’t yet joined, well why the hell not?) CR is, in our not so humble opinion, the best thing to happen to anime since anime. Streaming anime from a large catalog, anytime, anywhere, and with same-day simulcast of many of the shows that are currently running in Japan. And by signing up you will help support the anime industry. Karmic win!

But CR is by no means the only game in town when it comes to anime consumption in digital form. Of course you can buy and/or rent quite a lot of anime in digital form thanks to iTunes and Amazon. But there are quite a few other sites out there that have streaming anime for the taking. If you’ve got a Netflix membership, well, there you go. They have a fairly respectable collection of anime available in their Instant Streaming service online; and if they don’t have it in digital form, they may have it for rent on DVD or Blu-ray. There’s also Hulu, probably the next well known/popular series besides Netflix, which actually has a pretty decent catalog of anime titles as well. Many anime licensors (FUNimation, etc.) do their own in-house streaming. There’s also 24-hour anime networks such as, well, The Anime Network. And then there’s the new kid on the block, the dark horse (no, not that Dark Horse) in the race, Neon Alley.

Well, there is one other service out there, one that perhaps isn’t as well known as any of the others mentioned so far: Crackle. Backed by Sony, Crackle has your standard assortment of movies and TV shows available for streaming (oddly enough, mostly Sony-owned properties). But it turns out they have a fairly decent selection of anime as well, both movies and TV series, the likes of which include Fate/zero, Ah My Goddess, Durarara!, Blue Exorcist, and quite a few more.

First, the bad news: You’ll have to put up with ads. Crackle bills itself as “uncut,” but what they mean is that their shows aren’t edited for content. they still contain ads though. (But hey, you know what they say, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch…)

Now the good news: The service is completely free. You don’t even need to sign up for an account, though if you do so, you get some extra benefits, including the ability to set up Watchlists of shows that you are following, to make it easier to keep track of them). And the apps are free as well. Yes, I said apps. For not only can you watch Crackle content on your computer, but you can also watch Crackle using your PlayStation3 or Xbox 360, many set top boxes and smart TVs, and on your iOS or Android smartphones or tablets.

Go check it out today and download the free apps for iOS, Android, or whatever other game console or set-top box you own.

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

Well their latest marketing tie-in has generated quite a bit of buzz — a really cool iOS app. You can of course use the app to order pizza (but only if you’re in Japan; see below.) Throughout every portion of the app you can enjoy the various Hatsune Miku-related art and music created by the Dominos’ crew. You can also take augmented reality photos which include Hatsune Miku in various poses and wearing various expressions. And by pointing the camera at a Dominos’ pizza box, you can turn on a “virtual stage” mode where Hatsune Miku will perform. (Don’t worry, you can trick the app into activating this mode using this image.

Unfortunately the app’s order function only works if you’re in Japan, but the app is available for free in all iTunes App Stores worldwide, and the non-pizza-ordering portions of the app function normally. Plus it’s cute and fun to play with.

Go grab the app today – it’s free on the iOS App Store. Also, check below the cut for a few videos from the Hatsune Miku ad campaign, as well as a hilariously bad video of Dominos president Scott Oellkers demo’ing the app and showing off its features.

The idea is that once you’ve signed up for a Reddit account (they’re free), you can [join our subreddit][ONPR] and submit links to it. Links can be to anything even vaguely anime-, manga-, or Japan-related: news on an up-and-coming anime you’re looking forward to; an anime review that you found particularly noteworthy or humorous; news of an upcoming anime convention; or some fan art that you found and you really like (keep it clean please). Whatever. And you can either up- or down-vote other peoples’ stories: if someone submits a really cool picture, or a story that you like or think is particularly noteworthy, up-vote it; and if someone submitted something that is absolute crap, or spam, or off-topic, or whatever, give it a down-vote. The idea is that if a story gets enough votes then we can talk about it on the blog or podcast. And as for the problem we had in the past with scoundrels spammers, I am hopeful that, with Reddit hosting this, that spammer accounts will be kept to a minimum (and/or that they at least provide some tools to help us fight the spam).

[Go and check it out today!][ONPR]

[ONPR]: http://otakunopodcast.reddit.com/ “Otaku no Podcast Subreddit”

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We’ve spoken at length in the past of the virtues of staying at an official con hotel when attending an anime convention. You usually get a fairly reasonable discount on the room, sometimes get discounted or free admission to paid events associated with the con (concerts, etc.), and, hey, you’ll be staying at the same place where many other convention attendees will be staying at too, so there are usually plenty of cool hanging-out opportunities to be had. But most importantly, the hotels that conventions choose as official hotels are usually the closest to the actual convention itself. (As a matter of fact, at smaller conventions, the actual hotel itself serves as the location for the convention. What could be more convenient than that?) Trust me, walking to and from a remote hotel carrying all the crap that you typically carry when at con really sucks.

Now I may run the rest of my life (and Otaku no Podcast) in a fairly lax (read: lazy) manner, but the one thing that I normally don’t mess around with is reserving con hotels. Except for some reason, I really screwed up with last year’s Anime Expo hotel reservation. I somehow missed the early room availabilities, and we ended up having to settle for one of the last available hotels, and our experience there, well, it wasn’t pretty. This year I vowed to not repeat that mistake, and therefore when I heard that Anime Expo hotel room blocks had started opening up, I jumped right on it. So, come hell or high water, Team Otaku no Podcast has a room at a decent place this year.

At present they have announced only a few hotels with rooms; the Luxe City Center, at $189/night; the JW Marriott, at $189/night (but currently sold out); the Sheraton Los Angeles Downtown, at $152/night; the LA Hotel Downtown, at $165/night; the Westin Bonaventure, at $165/night; and lastly the Kawada, at $109/night (though unless they’ve shaped up their act significantly, I really wouldn’t recommend that one unless you are absolutely desperate.)

Incidentally, con registration is also open. Current prices are $60 for a 4-day adult pass, $25 for a 4-day child (6-12) pass, and $50 for a 3-day pass. 1-day and exhibit-only passes will become available starting June 1.

Well I’m not entirely sure how I missed this bit of news when covering MMD, but as it turns out, MMD has been discontinued by its creator. The program is still available for download, and it runs on all Windows versions from XP up through Windows 7 and even the newly-released Windows 8. And apparently there are still a few fans trying to keep the flame alive and updating the code. And if you want to experiment with it yourself, there are really good tutorials online. But in my eyes, the writing is on the wall, eventually MMD may start to fade away.

However, do not worry, because a new contender has emerged! MikuMikuMoving is a completely re-engineered 3D animation creation app in the style of MMD, but with a more modern, easier to learn user interface. The good news is that the program claims to be 100% compatible with MMD format models and motion data, and indeed I was able to successfully load and use the K-ON! MMD models with no issues. Also, the program is available in both Japanese and English straight from the get-go, and the English translation seems fairly credible. (it is my understanding that the English translation of MMD came after the fact) And, like its predecessor MMD, MikuMikuMoving is also completely free.

If you feel like giving it a spin, head on over to the MikuMikuMoving site to find download links and a complete user’s manual. Tutorials are starting to appear as well. The program runs on all 32- and 64-bit Intel systems running Windows XP or later, including Windows 8.

Incidentally, if you’re of the Mac persuasion like I am, the good news is that the program does seem to run pretty nicely in emulation software such as Parallels or VMware Fusion. However you might be interested in a similar software project, MMDAI. Whie it doesn’t feel quite as finished/polished as MikuMikuMoving, the program is available natively for the Mac, and tutorials for it are starting to appear as well. So you might want to keep an eye on this project.

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

But there is one area where the iPad could revolutionize an otaku’s life (or at least make it that much cooler) that I forgot to mention in my original article, mostly because I wasn’t really into it at the time I wrote my original post: visual novels, dating sims, raising sims and similar genres. It’s true that tablets (and the iPad in particular) are attracting plenty of attention from game developers. The problem arises when a developer tries to shoehorn a game onto the device that it isn’t suited for. Because most games are designed for PCs and consoles, where more traditional input methods are available (keyboards, game controllers, etc.), ports made for iPads and other tablets generally don’t work out very well. First person shooters are especially problematic; while some FPS ports manage to pull it off — barely — they still feel awkward and hard to control. (The one exception to this is ports of some DS games; there have been a few notable successes, including Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective and Scribblenauts.) However, a visual novel (from here on out I will use “visual novel” I mean all visual novel/dating sim/raising sim/etc. type games) would work quite well on a tablet, since the simple controls are ideally suited for a touchscreen; also the large, beautiful screens on today’s tablets would really show off the awesome artwork of these games.

Unfortunately, until recently, there has been a noticeable lack of visual novel type games in the various app stores. We’re finally starting to see titles from this genre appear, but many are fraught with translation errors, and most are fairly unknown works and of dubious quality. (Although recently iOS ports of Kira Kira and Higurashi When They Cry have surfaced) But a new player has entered the stage, and this one came as sort of a shocker, for it is none other than the much-beloved visual novel juggernaut Key, makers of Kanon, Clannad and Air. Fans all across the globe have been clamoring for native-language ports of these titles, especially after the successes of their anime counterparts; however Key has been entirely uncooperative on this point. (Rumors are that at one point there was talk of licensing one of their titles, but they allegedly demanded astronomically high licensing fees, so it didn’t go forward.)

Unfortunately, we still have yet to get a port of any of their better-known/top-shelf titles. (Sorry to disappoint you) What we did get, however, is a port of Planetarian – Dream of Little Star. It might not be as well known as Key’s other titles (I hadn’t heard of it before now); also, rather than a visual novel, it is a kinetic novel; but it seems to be just as adored by fans.

The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, 30 years after most of humanity was wiped out by a brutal, devastating war. The story is experienced from the point of view of the “Junk Hunter,” a bitter, weary individual who makes his living rummaging through the remains of civilizations and scavenging any useful parts or technology. One day, while exploring a “domed city,” said to be one of the most dangerous places, he stumbles upon a planetarium, and is promptly greeted by its chatty and slightly malfunctioning robotic greeter, Yumemi Hoshino, who sincerely believes that he is her first customer in thirty years. She invites him on a “voyage to the stars,” but the Planetarium projector malfunctions. After a succession of disjointed conversations, the Junk Hunter grudgingly agrees to fix it.

It was written by Yuichi Suzumoto, who also worked on other Key titles including Air and Clannad. Artwork and mechanic design was done by Eiji Komatsu, interesting in that there was no involvement from Key’s predominant artist at the time (and the one who worked on all Key titles up until Planetarian), Itaru Hinoue. Music and sound were composed and arranged by Key’s signature composers Magome Togoshi and Shinji Orito. Originally released in November of 2004, it was later ported to PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and various mobile devices, and achieved sales of over 50,000.

Planetarian – Dream of Little Star is available for $3.99 on the iOS app store. Go grab it today! Also check below the cut for some intro/promo videos showing off the game. (Unfortunately the intro clip doesn’t appear to include sound; the actual game does contain sound and is fully voiced.)

Now can we finally get ports of some of your other stuff, Key? Please? PC or iPad or (insert other tablet), I don’t care. Please?!

Hentai PC dating-sim games at J-List

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… ok, actually it was back in winter of 2010… one of the shows from that anime season that caught my eye was Sora no Woto (aka Sound of the Sky), which served as the debut of Anime no Chikara, a joint venture between TV Tokyo and Aniplex to create and produce original anime series which are not based on previously published material (manga, visual novels, etc.). I had heard of Anime no Chikara but was somewhat put off by the other shows that came out of it (the somewhat underwhelming Senkou no Night Raid and Seikimatsu Occult Academy). That, combined with the general consensus among the internets that Sora no Woto felt like a cheap attempt at cashing in on the popularity of “moeblob” shows such as K-On! made me hesitant to pick it up. Later I was somewhat surprised when I started hearing from people that it actually wasn’t half bad. So when I saw that Sora no Woto was one of the titles assigned to me in Anime Secret Santa, I decided that it was worth checking out. And I am glad I did.

Sora no Woto tells the story of Kanata Sorami who, after an encounter with a mysterious army bugler during her painful childhood, decided to join the army and learn to play the bugle. She is assigned to the Clocktower Fortress in the small town of Seize in the nation of Helvetia. After a long war with the rival Roman Empire, both nations are enjoying a tense cease-fire. She, as well as the other women assigned to the Clocktower Fortress, help the war-weary townspeople cope with their lives, and remain vigilant and prepared to defend the town in the event hostilities resume

But all of that in-game resource gathering and monster fighting can get tiring for a poor adventurer such as myself. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get some help with all of those mundane chores? A kawaii maid perhaps? Well with the LittleMaidMob mod you can!

Simply install the mod, and as you wander about, you will randomly encounter little maids wandering around aimlessly. Give them some cake and you’ve hired them. Giving them various types of items will change their role (swordswoman, archer, cook, etc.). Be sure and supply them with plenty of sugar or else they’ll abandon you (they also use sugar to heal any injuries). Your maids can either adventure with you, fighting enemies that get too close and collecting resources as they drop; or you can have them patrol and guard your home base. It’s pretty fun and really adorable.

Check out this forum thread for the download links and for instructions on how to install it, and check out this video (also embedded below the cut) for a demo of the mod in action, and instructions on how to use it.

Click for J-List now!

To install the app: 1. Launch Xbox Live Marketplace then go to Apps -> Browse Apps. 2. Currently the Crunchyroll app is one of the Featured Apps; however if it isn’t there, you can find the app by going to Video -> See All Apps, and scroll all the way to the right (where all the new apps show up). 3. If you don’t see the app, use the Search function and look for “crunchyroll.”

If you don’t have a Crunchyroll Premium Membership, you can stream the first episode of all currently simulcast shows. Log in with your Premium Membership ID to access all episodes, your Queue, and you can even share what you’re watching with your friends. (And why on earth haven’t you gotten your Premium membership yet?!) All videos stream in 720p (when available).

The app is available in the Xbox Live Marketplace (unfortunately the app is not available in Japan, Slovakia, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE). Check out this CR forum post for more details. And if you decide to sign up for a Crunchyroll Premium membership, be sure and sign up using our affiliate link (this helps us out and does not cost you anything extra).

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A while ago I wrote about my quest for a way to enjoy my downloaded anime while on the go on my iPad and/or iPhone. At that time I had settled on an app called ProPlayer, which, while far from perfect, worked well enough and satisfied my needs.

Unfortunately it appears that the app is no longer available for sale. It has completely disappeared off the App Store, apparently a victim of a new aggressive policy by Dolby Labs of going after app developers who use their AC-3 and TrueHD audio codecs in their apps. While most of the other apps which were affected by this new policy were simply updated to remove AC-3 support, the folks behind ProPlayer have apparently decided to give up for good and pulled the app entirely out of the App Store.

This may have been a blessing in disguise however, as it forced me to go looking for a new player app. Even though I still had ProPlayer installed on my device and could still use it, I nevertheless wanted to find a better player: I wanted a player that would work on both the iPhone 5 and the iPad, and would take full advantage of the iPhone 5’s new widescreen display, which ProPlayer doesn’t. And I believe I have found one that’s even better than ProPlayer – HD Player Pro.

At first glance HD Player Pro may seem like any other of the over 9,000 video player apps available on iOS. In fact, digging further into the program’s user interface, I found that its user interface is clunky compared to ProPlayer. There is no support for creating folders and moving files into them. The app does support playlists (which somewhat mitigates the lack of folders), but adding and removing files from playlists is somewhat clunky, and you can’t re-order items within a playlist (it’s always alphabetical). Also there is a search function, but it appears to be broken. Update: Looks like they fixed the search function in the latest update, it’s all good now.

But once you start playing a video, that’s when you’ll grow to love HD Player Pro. Why? Because HD Player Pro renders subtitles damn near perfectly — far better than any of the other video player apps I’ve tried. Not only does it support the three major formats — SRT, SSA and ASS — but it even renders most (if not all) of the advanced features of SSA/ASS — fonts, colors, text positions, etc.! It is truly a thing of beauty to behold. And, like I said, it does this pretty damn perfectly — out of the many files I’ve thrown at it, it only failed to properly display one small segment of subtitles (it was a title sequence in UTW’s Accel World where they were apparently doing something fancy to display their logo in a cool stylized manner).

The other bane of my existence has been the newfangled Hi10p file format that all the cool kids (and the cool fansubbers) are using these days. Most of the apps I’ve tested have been hit or miss with these files. Some work, some don’t. The good news is that HD Player Pro does a pretty good job at decoding them — if you’ve got the right CPU for the job. Unfortunately you need a pretty beefy CPU to do this without introducing jerkiness/dropped frames. The iPhone 5’s A6 chip is powerful enough, and I would wager so is the A6X in the new iPad; however the A5 chip in my iPad mini doesn’t cut the mustard. (Why oh why didn’t they at least put an A6 in the thing?!) So until they release the next iPad mini which (HOPEFULLY) will add a newer, faster processor, I am forced to transcode my Hi10p files (or download non-Hi10p versions, which are becoming much scarcer these days).

Unfortunately there are a few little issues that prevent me from giving the app a perfect score. There is the whole clumsy file management issue I mentioned earlier. Sometimes seeking within a file (quickly moving to a certain time point in the file) causes the app to go catatonic. Also I’ve had the app crash or freeze every now and then when starting playing a new file (usually restarting the app fixes this). Update: Looks like they’ve fixed these bugs. Seeking works beautifully now (even on large movie-length files), and I haven’t noticed any crashes since their most recent update. So, yay! But the beautiful subtitle rendering makes up for all of these shortcomings.

So I have once again found the perfect mobile video playback solution. At least until fansubbers stop including MP3/AAC audio tracks in their files and only include AC3 or TrueHD audio tracks. Then I’ll have to go off in search of another solution. sigh

The app works on all iOS devices (iPhone, iPod touch and iPad) running iOS 5.0 or later, although if you want to be able to decode Hi10p files natively, you’ll need an iPhone 5 or a third or fourth generation iPad. Go grab the app today for $2.99 free (with a $1.99 in-app purchase to enable support for various codecs including MKV) on the App Store — well worth every penny IMHO. (Ignore the low rating and negative reviews in the App Store; they are from disgruntled users who didn’t know about or do not understand the Dolby AC-3/TrueHD removal thing, and are loudly complaining about why their files are suddenly playing back without any sound.)

Gothic & Lolita Products, magazine subscriptions from Japan

You know that old saying about the best laid plans of mice and men? Well unfortunately all of my plans for the next few months went out the window when late last month (right around Thanksgiving) when I found out that we had lost a client, and hence, my job. So I’ve spent the month of December running around like the proverbial decapitated chicken looking for work, while working every little odd job that comes my way, not to mention also doing the typical busy-around-the-holdidays type stuff. Which means I have had almost no time to do other non-critical-survival-money-making activities; hence the often-late 12 Days of Kurisumasu postings, the horribly late PMX 2012 wrap-up, etc. And yes, my Anime Secret Santa review too. I could have probably pulled a few all-nighters and slapped together a review just in the nick of time, but I decided against it, because I really didn’t want to do a half-assed job of it — you, the audience, deserve better.

The good news is that I have actually managed to completely watch not one, not two, but all three anime that were assigned to me (it was the only way I was able to maintain my sanity during this crisis). And, after today, the holiday craziness will be officially over for me; and since the week between Christmas and New Years is usually pretty lax, I should have the time to sit down and bang out a review, and actually put a decent amount of time and thought into it.

When we received our Secret Santa choices way back in October, my initial plan was to actually try and review all three anime I was assigned. I should have known that this was tempting fate and that fate would somehow find a way to bitch slap me for my hubris. I may still do this eventually; who knows. But I will definitely post at least one review on or before New Years. So stay tuned!

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

In case you’ve been living under a rock (or in the desert, or deep in the Himalayas, or on Mars, or in a distant galaxy/another dimension/etc.) for the past year, and haven’t the faintest idea what the heck I’m talking about, here’s the scoop: starting on Friday, December 14 and going through Christmas Day, Tuesday, December 25, I will be picking a cool new otaku-themed product each day and will be featuring it on our Twitter and Facebook. (They’ll also be posted on the 12 Days of Kurisumasu page here, along with a witty (well, at least I think so) writeup.) And if you’re still clueless as to what the heck I’m talking about, you can also check out the 12 Days of Kurisumasu from years gone by at the 12 Days of Kurisumasu page.

Each product I’ll be featuring will come from one of our affiliate advertisers — Amazon, CDjapan, Right Stuf, J-List, etc. Yeah, I know what you’re saying, you’ve been waiting for the “catch” and it finally came. But as catches go, this isn’t much of one. Remember that purchasing through any of the links here costs you nothing extra but brings us a little much-needed income, which helps keep the lights on and the bits flowing.

What products will you be choosing, you might be asking. No real rhyme or reason to it, really. As long as it’s even tangentially related to anime or other otaku-worthy pursuits, then it’s fair game. That means anime DVDs (and even Blu-rays); calendars; figures; “stuff from Japan” (food, snacks, etc.); plushies; dating-sim games/visual novels; whatever. Hopefully, among this cornucopia of consumer goods, you’ll find something cool and out of the ordinary to give to any otaku-leaning friends/acquaintances you’re looking for gifts for. (Or even yourself…)

When it comes to selecting the perfect gift for your otaku-leaning friends or even treating yourself, the possibilities are endless. From anime DVDs and Blu-rays to calendars, figures, and plushies, there’s something to suit every fan’s taste. But why not go a step further and add a personal touch to your gift-giving? Consider a custom name necklace, an accessory that combines the love for anime with a unique personalization element. With platforms offering customizable name necklaces, you can engrave the recipient’s favorite character or their own name in beautiful craftsmanship. It’s a thoughtful gesture that reflects their individuality and passion. So, amidst this cornucopia of otaku-worthy goods, explore the realm of custom name necklaces and discover a truly extraordinary gift that will leave a lasting impression on any anime enthusiast in your life.

So why subject yourself to the hassle, expense and bloodletting of doing battle in the malls and on the streets, and come shop with us instead?

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

• NEW! Now supports the 4-inch Retina screen on the iPhone 5 and iPod touch (fifth generation).
• NEW! Otaku no Radio. Listen to our streaming anime/Jpop radio station. If you hear a song you like, you can buy it on iTunes too!
• NEW! Search field lets you quickly search blog posts and podcast episodes for exactly what you’re looking for.
• NEW! ConFinder. Find an anime con near you, wherever you are! (Note: this feature is still new, and we are adding anime cons to the database. If you know of a good con in your area, please let us know about it!)
• NEW! Photo Gallery. View our photos taken at anime conventions.
• NEW! You can now share interesting content via Facebook and App.net.
• NEW! Option to open any clicked URLs in Google Chrome (requires Google Chrome to be installed).
• Lots of bug fixes.

The app is compatible with all iPhones, iPod touches and iPads running iOS 5 or later. (the app is not yet iPad optimized, so it will run in iPhone compatibility mode. I hope to have native iPad support in place in the next major version of the app.)

Go grab it today on the iOS App Store!

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

Here’s an idea: Instead of spending hours on end stuck in traffic hell, jockeying for precious parking spaces at your local mega-mall, gearing up with sword and shield to do gladiatorial-style combat with crazed mobs of shoppers, and dealing with the inevitable Out-of-Stock Item Syndrome, why not do all your holiday shopping from the comfort of your own home? And, what do you know, Otaku no Podcast can help you with that, thanks to our large affiliate network.

There’s Amazon, who sells just about everything; CDjapan, for all of your anime/Jpop/etc. musical needs; The Right Stuf, home of outrageously outrageous deals on various anime goods; and J-List/J-Box, purveyors of many fine things from the land of the rising sun (including cough “those” kinds of items cough).

Remember that buying from any of our affiliates costs you nothing extra, but gives us a little extra “something” that helps us keep the lights on and the bits flowing. So not only will you be getting all your holiday shopping needs done in an easy and blood-free manner, but you’d be helping us out as well. Epic win!

Head on over to the How You Can Help page on our website for all of our affiliate links and search boxes in one single ultra-convenient location. And thank you; as always, you guys rock.

Gothic & Lolita Products, magazine subscriptions from Japan

Also amazing is that I have actually managed to start posting our photos and videos in a more-or-less timely fashion! CosFest (aka masquerade) videos are already up on our YouTube channel (including the ever-so-delightful Angel Hearts cosplay troupe’s halftime show); more videos, including some from the fashion show and maybe some panels (if they end up turning out OK after editing; lighting and audio conditions were far from ideal) will be going up over the next few days. I’m also working on photos, which will be going up on our PMX 2012 Flickr photoset within the next few days. (Of course you can view these in a much cooler fashion on our nifty Photo Gallery here on the Otaku no Podcast website.)

And of course what con journey would be complete without our usual panel-style wrap-up episode of Doom? Unfortunately that won’t be for a while yet as I’ve got to coordinate schedules with my fellow co-hosts; but rest assured that we’ll be recording this just as soon as possible, and it will of course be hitting the podcast feed as well as the website.

In the meantime, I invite you to check out our photos and videos at the sites linked to above, as well as the photo and video galleries of other PMX attendees I’m linking to below.

NOTE: I will be updating this post as I find more peoples’ PMX photos and videos. Also, if you have any PMX 2012 photo and/or video galleries of your own, please tell us about them!

Cosplay.com thread listing a bunch of PMX 2012 galleries
Cosplay in America’s PMX 2012 photoshoots, as well as other photos taken on his Samsung Galaxy S3 as well as a disposable camera (an interesting experiment)
David Ngo (DTJAAAAM’s) PMX 2012 photos

PC dating-sim games @ J-List

Viz officially launched the service last week on the Sony PlayStation3. The app is a free download; however you need to pay for service for it to be of any use. Neon Alley costs $6.99 per month, which is pretty similar to the other streaming options out there. As far as I can tell there are no “pay X months at a time and get a discount” plans. You do get a one-week free trial when you sign up, so you have a chance to test the service before committing. The service is available only in the USA and Canada.

I haven’t had a lot of time to play with the service, so this isn’t a full review; however I did want to jot down some of my thoughts on the service, to sort of take a first look at it if you will.

We’ve written about Stitcher before, and we have been available on the Stitcher platform for quite some time now. Stitcher is an award-winning provider of news and talk radio for your mobile phone. They have a truly wide variety of programming available, from the media industry’s premier content providers — tech news, sports, talk radio, business, entertainment, and much more. (And yes, Otaku no Podcast as well) The app is free and is available for iOS, Android, BlackBerry and webOS (and probably a few others which I have forgotten). And they have decided to put on their own Podcast Awards! And it would be really awesome if you could vote for us!

The difference here is, you are free to nominate us in whatever categories you choose. We recommend nominating us in the Film & TV and Entertainment & Pop Culture categories. (Of course you’re also welcome to nominate us for Overall Show too!) You can also vote once per day. After voting, feel free to enjoy games such as 벳위즈.

You have until Friday October 19th, so get cracking!

Voting is easy and fast (probably will only take you a minute or so). Either click this link or the nice big Stitcher Awards graphic in this article (you can’t miss it). And, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, thanks for your votes; you are awesome!

PC dating-sim games @ J-List

I can hear it now; you’re probably yelling at your screens “What’cha talking’ bout, Willis?!” Well, my name ain’t Willis, and if you’ve been hanging around this blog and podcast for a while, surely you must know about Anime Secret Santa by now. (And no, don’t call me Shirley either) After all, I’ve written about it several times before, and we’ve even participated in it as well.

Basically the Anime Secret Santa project involves a bunch of bloggers (and perhaps podcasters too) who get together and put their names into a virtual hat, which the Reverse Thieves then proceed to mix up. They then pair off bloggers, and ask each of them to recommend an anime for the other to watch. The trick is that they don’t tell them who the recommendation came from. Once you have your anonymous donors’ recommendations in hand, you then proceed to pick an anime off their list, watch it and review it. Yes, exactly like that whole Secret Santa thing, which you are undoubtedly familiar with. (After all it’s probably been used as a plot device in at least a few Christmas-themed anime episodes…) The idea is to get people to step outside their comfort zones if you will, and watch and review shows they may not have considered before. It’s a great way to find out about anime that, maybe you might not have considered before, but ended up liking a lot. (Or maybe you hated it, and then you can write a really scathing review. There have been some pretty hilariously epic ones.) Plus it’s a lot of fun.

Want to participate? It’s pretty simple. First, you’ll need to set yourself up on one of those “keep track of what anime I’ve watched” sites, such as Anime-Planet (my personal favorite) or MyAnimeList. They are all free to join, and are pretty useful in their own right. Then, once you’ve listed all the anime that you’ve seen, e-mail your name, blog/podcast’s URL and the URL to your anime listing site profile page to the Reverse Thieves with the subject line “Secret Santa Participant.” (Also, if for whatever reason you would prefer not to have to watch/review fan subs, be sure and mention that in your email.)

All entries are due by Wednesday, October 10, so you better hurry! Check out the Reverse Thieves blog post for full details and where to send in your entry. Naturally, if the fates allow it, Otaku no Podcast will be participating this year as well. And we hope that you will too!

Click for J-List now!

It’s really easy and will only take you, what, maybe one or two minutes tops. Just head on over to podcastawards.com and enter our name (Otaku no Podcast) and our URL (http://otakunopodcast.com/) into the categories category for which you’d like to nominate us. We suggest you nominate us in both the Cultural/Arts as well as Food and Drink categories category. (You do know that we’ve done some food-related video podcasts, right?) (Update: nominations for multiple categories are against the rules. Please only nominate us for Cultural/Arts.) Of course you’re also welcome to nominate us for the People’s Choice category as well!

Better hurry though; you only have until the end of day on October 15th, 2012 – that’s less than 2 weeks from now!. So get cracking! And thanks for your support!

Unfortunately my usual go-to source for the inevitable fall previews, Japanator, has yet to post their fall preview guide. Fortunately, other individuals and news outlets have jumped in to fill the void. ANN has an upcoming anime page, and a helpful ANN forum user has posted a fall 2012 preview chart. But the Master of All Preview Charts (as far as I am concerned) @cowboybibimbop has posted his masterpiece fall 2012 anime chart as well. (viewable below the cut, or by clicking the link above. Also be sure and keep an eye on his @animucharts Twitter account for updates.)

What am I looking forward to, you might ask? One word: Little Busters. (Okay, that was two words.) Naturally, since it’s based on a Key property, I’ve made a note to lay in an extra large supply of tissues. J.C. Staff will have to do an extraordinary job, they have some pretty damn big shoes to fill. I am also really looking forward to Robotics;Notes, the third installment in the Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate series (both of which I loved; Steins;Gate more so than Chaos;Head, which I thought was OK)

So what shows do you have your eye on? Let us know in the comments or on the Twitters (or the Facebooks).

Unfortunately their Podcasts app is not quite ready for prime time. It has some bugs, and more importantly, it has some limitations. The Podcasts app isn’t integrated with Siri, plus doesn’t work with some car iPod control systems or iPod speaker docks. Plus it has some other bugs, and in general isn’t quite ready for prime time.

But not to worry! I’ve found a little hack that you can perform that will bring Podcasts back into the Music app, and have put together a little video on the procedure.

Watch this video on YouTube or via the embedded player below the cut.

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

Of course, in order for this to work, and be as awesome as possible, I need to put together a comprehensive database of anime conventions. And for that I need your help!

So do you have a favorite anime con (or cons) you try and make it to every year, come hell or high water (or financial destitute)? Does your school’s anime club run a convention? Is there an anime convention in your city, or a neighboring city? Then please tell us about it! Whether it’s a large mega-con or a small fan-run con, we want to hear about it.

Fill out the form below the cut, or by clicking this link. And you have our eternal and undying thanks.

Hentai PC dating-sim games at J-List

The problem with that is that not all of us prefer to watch our anime on our computer screens. I mean, if you’ve got a nice shiny large-screen HDTV sitting in your entertainment center, wouldn’t you rather use that? Well, now you can, thanks to Crunchyroll’s brand-new PS3 app!

With this app, and assuming you have a Crunchyroll Premium Membership!, you can watch all of their available content, as well as easily access any series that you have in your Queue (very handy, that). Those of you without premium memberships can watch a subset of available content, including the first episodes of titles that Crunchyroll is currently simulcasting.

Unfortunately, the app currently only streams in 480P, and is only available to folks in the USA and Canada. But it does the job, and does it well, and they will be adding 720p and 1080p, as well as opening the app up to more international markets later this year.

Go grab it today! It’s available for free in the PlayStation Store.

Click for J-List now!

Apple recently released their Podcasts app. It is compatible with all devices that run iOS 5, so you can start using it now; and when iOS 6 comes out, this app will be the new way of downloading and listening to podcasts on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.

In this video I show you how to subscribe to and listen to Otaku no Podcast using the new Podcasts app.

Watch the video on YouTube or in the embedded player below the cut.

Gothic & Lolita Products, magazine subscriptions from Japan

Well, another Anime Expo has come to an end. I am now safely back home at Otaku no Podcast HQ, a little bruised and worse for wear, but otherwise very happy. Planning an event the size of AX is no small feat, and the staff have once again done an excellent job.

When we got together to record our wrap-up of last year’s AX, I expressed concern at how they would top their efforts that year. Well, they certainly tried. They were definitely basing their GoH selection on the popular trends in the anime world — with the popularity of Fate/zero (and the fact that it just recently ended its 25 episode run – perfect timing!) the whole Fate/zero related guest roster made perfect sense; and no one can deny Yuki Kajiura’s impressive musical contribution to countless anime (and of course there’s FictionJunction too); not to mention LiSA, with her undeniable meteoric rise in popularity following on from Angel Beats! and GirlsDeMo (popular in and of themselves). Did they succeed in besting themselves? Ultimately, the old saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” applies. To me personally, nothing could top Mikunopolis – that was truly epic. But that’s not to say that this year’s con was not enjoyable. Quite the opposite. It just didn’t have that “BAM!” like last year.

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

I’m sure I’ve missed tons of industry announcements, even at the panels that we went to (it’s hard to keep up sometimes). I’ll be going over the news coming out of AX later this week when I’ve had a chance to recover and decompress, and I’ll certainly post about it and/or talk about it during our inevitable wrap-up podcast, which we’ll most likely be recording sometime this coming weekend. So you can look forward to that.

Click for J-List now!

Attending an anime con usually involves a certain level of Con Drama. Fortunately I’ve been able to avoid this bit of unpleasantness. That is, until today. Unfortunately, today we had Drama and we had it in spades. I won’t go into the (disgusting) details, but in brief, today’s flavor of Drama involved missing bath towels, and a broken toilet, and resolving it to our satisfaction basically flushed the rest of our day down the drain (heh, there’s a metaphor for you!).

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

Day 1 got off to a promising start – I actually managed to get out of bed before half the day was over! (A miracle where conventions and I are concerned) Also, amazingly enough, the shuttle service has actually seemed to improve a little. They finally retired those ancient decrepit school buses and have a fleet of decent looking tour bus style buses. Reasonably comfortable, if a bit hard to get on and off (very steep stairs, and lots of ’em). We arrived at the LACC right around noon time, and headed toward the Press & Industry registration area — and a Line of Lesser Doom. It was fairly short as AX lines go, but it moved at a snail’s pace. At least it wasn’t as bad as what I’d heard it was yesterday (so our arriving late and not being able to do badge pickup yesterday may have turned out to be a blessing in disguise). A bit more efficiency in the line would be a good thing; for example, why not pre-print everybody’s badges? You know who’s registered, so why not print their badge and have it ready for them when they check in? Paper isn’t that expensive…

PC dating-sim games @ J-List

But, back to the point of this post: it is time once again for us to solicit questions you might have for any of the Guests of Honor. Yes, folks, that’s right, YOU get to reap all the benefits of their knowledge and expertise without the nervous sweatdrop-inducing act of facing a microphone and actually speaking in public.

So if there’s ever anything you’ve ever wanted to know about any of the GoHs, their activities, the projects they’ve worked on (or are working on now), etc., ask away! Either post them as a response to this post, or you can use our lovely contact us form (or any of the other methods of reaching us listed on that page), and we will do our best to get them answered for you. On video or audio if possible. You’ll need to act quickly though, so send ’em in as fast as you can think ’em up.

Unfortunately this year Anime Expo decided to hold their press interviews in the form of a free-for-all press conference, so we won’t be able to bring you the sort of intimate one-on-one chats we were able to bring you last year (bummer!) But, hey, anything is better than nothing.

So ask away!

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

Just as often, however, is the case where I find some cool music or a cool artist through AMVs. I’d hear a cool song and wonder “Oh, that song sounds cool, I wonder who did it?” Usually I’d have to either ask around on the forums, or wait a few weeks until the video hits the .org and look it up there. But now, for us “instant gratification” types, there’s an app that’ll tell you what song you’re listening to – Shazam.

Simply load this app (it’s free) on your smartphone or tablet, and, whenever you hear a piece of music you wish to identify, tap the big button. Shazam will listen in using your smartphone or tablet’s microphone, and in a flash, will identify your song. It’s amazingly accurate — even in a loud, echo-y AMV screening room, with sub-par audio, people yelling/talking at each other, etc., it has been able to identify music with a shocking level of accuracy. (Of course it’ll work anywhere where you hear music – your local coffeeshop, a restaurant, concert, whatever. And, again, even in noisy environments, it’s surprisingly accurate.)

Get it today for iPhone and iPod touch, iPad, and Android.

Hentai PC dating-sim games at J-List

Unfortunately going through them is going to take a while. I vowed to try and be more judicious in the use of the shutter button, but failed miserably – I ended up with over 1100 pics from Cosfest alone. Sorting through them is one thing, then I have to denoise, color correct, white balance, sharpen, etc. So you will see pictures coming up in fits and starts over the next few days.

Also, you will see a lot of pics with legs and feet cut off. Unfortunately the stage was set up in such a way that peoples’ lower halves were frequently blocked by stage equipment. (Why do they have to put those speakers at stage level? Can’t they put them off to the side and/or at ground level?) Wherever I needed to cut something, I tried to do it in the least gruesome manner possible.

Finally, while I did get video of the event, it’s kind of crappy. (Consumer grade camcorders such as the one I have aren’t well known for their low light performance) I’ll do what I can to fix this, but there’s not really much I can do at this point. Oh well. At least you’ll get to hear their skits.

So where can you view these, you might ask? Well, pics will be posted to our Flickr account (or you can check out our handy dandy Photo Gallery page), and video will be on our YouTube channel.

Finally, for the list of CosFest winners, look below the cut.

Click for J-List now!

Overall there were some amazing videos this year, and aside from the usual technical glitches (c’mon people, just burn a frakkin’ DVD and take all this unpredictable computer software out of the equation!) the contest went off pretty well. Unfortunately we missed the actual contest on Friday evening; fortunately they had a repeat showing the following day.

Thanks to Gintoki23 on the FanimeCon forums for posting this list – for some reason we never received a ballot, and I couldn’t read the video names on the screen, so I couldn’t write them down during the showing.

NOTE: I’ll update this post periodically as I find more links to the videos, so please check back often. Also when I learn which videos were the winners in the various categories, I’ll update this post with that info. If any of the videos that I linked to are incorrect (I have been known to make mistakes on occasion ;-). Plus I missed a fair chunk of the AMV contest, and on top of that, my memory is a bit hazy…) please let me know. Also, if you know of a link to any of the videos that I don’t have yet, please let me know as well.

Update: 2012-05-31, late evening: I’ve found a few more. For some reason I never think to look at other places (i.e. Youtube), and when I started searching Youtube, I started finding some more.

Update 2012-06-03: Removed a few incorrect links, and updated with the winners. Also found a link to the official listing of videos. Thanks to foester, Gaki and Marin Jei El on the Fanime forums for the additional info/corrections.

Behold the list of AMV contest entrants in all its glory, below the cut.

Hentai PC dating-sim games at J-List

Overall there were some amazing videos this year, and aside from the usual technical glitches (c’mon people, just burn a frakkin’ DVD and take all this unpredictable computer software out of the equation!) the contest went off pretty well. Unfortunately we missed the actual contest on Friday evening; fortunately they had a repeat showing the following day.

Thanks to (some poster on the FanimeCon forums, can’t look up his name right now because the forums appear to be down) for posting this list – for some reason we never received a ballot, and I couldn’t read the video names on the screen, so I couldn’t write them down during the showing.

NOTE: I’ll update this post periodically as I find more links to the videos, so please check back often. Also when I learn which videos were the winners in the various categories, I’ll update this post with that info. If any of the videos that I linked to are incorrect (I have been known to make mistakes on occasion ;-). Plus I missed a fair chunk of the AMV contest, and on top of that, my memory is a bit hazy…) please let me know. Also, if you know of a link to any of the videos that I don’t have yet, please let me know as well.

Behold the list of AMV contest entrants in all its glory, below the cut.

Just one week after our episode where we interviewed the fine folks at Pop Japan Travel (last year), in which I predicted that they would make their triumphant return soon… and they up and did exactly that!

So I say again: are we prophetic or what?!

(Rare is the opportunity when we are actually ahead of the curve; so you’ll have to excuse us a bit of boasting here…)

Anyhoo, yes indeedy, Pop Japan Travel is BACK! And they’ve pulled out all the stops. For their grand return, they will be offering the mother of all tours, the Amazing All-Japan Alpha+Omega Adventure Tour!.

Now, after listening to last week’s episode, you’re probably both really excited and really indecisive at the same time. After all, PJT’s offerings are many and varied. Which one to choose? Well, if you fall into this category, then the Alpha+Omega tour might be just the ticket (heh, pun) — because in this one tour, PJT has combined bits and pieces of all of their offerings! Spanning many facets of otaku culture, including anime and manga, Japanese fashion, theatre, food and traditional culture, the Alpha+Omega tour includes visits to anime and manga studios (where you can meet and interact with real manga and anime artists); a visit to the COMITIA independent manga exhibition (where you can even sell your own works at the Pop Japan Travel booth!); visits to top J-fashion hot spots including Shibuya 109 and La Foret (as well as an opportunity to work with professional photographers and produce your own J-fashion magazine); a tour of Akihabara, famed electronics mecca and now hotbed of otaku culture; an opportunity to see the famed Takarazuka Revue all-female theater troupe; a tour of Kyoto, center of Japanese traditional culture; dining experiences of all shapes and sizes, from the traditional and to the exotic; and oh so much more!

This tour is slated to run between August 29 – September 7. Unfortunately pricing details have not yet been announced. For more information, or to get on the “I’m interested” list, [contact PJT today!][CONTACTPJT]

[CONTACTPJT]: http://www.popjapantravel.com/about/contact-us “Contact PJT”

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

Like most geeks, I am a caffeine-based life form. If I don’t have my caffeine dose in the (time of day at which I awaken, unspecified here because it is highly variable) I’m either cranky as all get out and extremely unpleasant to be around, or so out of it that, at least once or twice, I’ve been mistaken for a whacked out drug addict. Or both, which can be truly terrifying. Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll verify this. So yeah, I needs me my caffeine.

Now my usual method of caffeine consumption is the ubiquitous soda drink — Coke being the preferred brand in my case. Which has caused some questioning looks from friends, waitresses and passers-by, especially during those rare moments when I am awake during the morning hours. “Wouldn’t you like a nice cup of coffee?” is what’s probably on their minds, or so I imagine anyway.

I don’t dislike coffee. It’s just not really the first thing I usually ask for. For one thing, the temperature at which it’s typically served (usually a few shades lower than the core temperature of your average nuclear reactor) does not agree with me, which results in me usually having to order a glass of ice along with my coffee on those very few occasions in which I’ve ordered it (which usually leads to puzzled looks and declarations of insanity). Then there’s the nasty bitter taste, which I usually must counter by dumping over 9,000 teaspoons of sugar in it (which results in a beverage my mom sarcastically referred to as “sugar water”). And of course there’s “coffee stain” to consider, that lovely brownish stain that develops on coffee drinkers’ teeth. (And yes, I know, Coke stains teeth in a similar manner as well. My oral hygienists are none too happy about that. Believe me, if Coke came in a non-staining variant that still resembled its stain-inducing counterpart in terms of taste and caffeination level, I’d be all over that.)

So, on second thought, I guess I really do dislike coffee after all.

Even with my dislike of it, however, I will concede that coffee offers a superior caffeination level than soda. I will also concede, even without firsthand experience, that coffee offers a wide variety of flavors. (Of course, your typical mass market supermarket/restaurant/coffee house coffee is pretty low on the flavor scale; and also, by the time I’ve surgically altered it so as to agree with my tastes, I’ve pretty much blown any taste it had out of the water.)

If only there were a way to get the intense flavor and caffeination level of coffee without the nasty bitterness…

Well, Science has come to the rescue, thanks to a lovely concoction created by the mad scientists over at Funranium Labs — The Black Blood of the Earth. In short, The Black Blood of the Earth (or BBotE as I will refer to it from here on out) is a cold vacuum extraction of various single varietals of coffee. Single varietal meaning only one type of bean is used, rather than the usual mishmash of several different bean types you get in commercial coffee. So you get to experience the vastly differing flavors produced by the various growing regions around the planet. And one discovers that coffee has a rather subtle but nice sweetness to it. (Interesting factoid: the creator of BBotE was diagnosed as a Type II diabetic, and he created BBotE so that he could enjoy the flavors of coffee without needing to add sugar or cream to it to make it palatable.) And cold vacuum extraction basically extracts all the flavor out of the bean, while leaving behind most of the nasty acids that cause bitterness and teeth staining. And, guess what, as a nifty side benefit of this extraction process, the caffeine concentration of BBotE is significantly increased compared to regular ol’ coffee. Win!

And by the way folks, when I say “increased caffeine concentration,” I mean it. Funranium cautions that one should not consume more than 100 mL a day. Fortunately this isn’t difficult, as the standard mode of consumption of BBotE is to mix it with other beverages of choice (because it’s concentrated, duh). Common combinations include:

• 4 parts cream to 1 part BBotE makes a rather nice iced latte-style drink.
• 3 parts hot water to 1 part BBotE will get you something akin to your typical morning cup of coffee, only with way, way better flavor. (The fancy-pants name for this is an Americano)
• 3 parts vodka to 1 part BBotE purportedly yields a “strangely sweet, delicious drink.” (I have yet to experience this firsthand, though I plan to soon. Also, I’m sure that it has many other creative uses when it comes to mixing drinks and cocktails. Mixologists will have a field day with this stuff no doubt.)
• You can of course drink it straight. It is recommended that, if you do this, that it be chilled. I tried this, and was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually, truly enjoyed its taste, even without any additions. They’re really onto something here!

Fortunately, rather than keeping BBotE a closely guarded secret available only to a select few, the Funranium Labs crew have seen fit to share it with the world! The cost might seem somewhat high, until you consider that (A) this ain’t your typical Starbucks vente latte here; (B) the guy (Funranium Labs actually consists of one man, a radiation scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Labs) makes it by hand (his production is normally about 9 L per day.); and (C) because of its highly concentrated nature, your standard 750 mL bottle of BBotE equates to about a month’s worth of caffeination by Starbucks standards.

BBotE is available for sale in various sizes. The 375 mL is probably the best starting point for a BBotE neophyte. The 750 mL is probably the most common size. He also offers a [1000 mL][10], as well as multi-packs of all three sizes. And if you are truly insane (or you want to stock up in case World War III/the zombie apocalypse/complete destruction of the world by evil aliens bent on galactic conquest/etc. happens), there’s the 4 L (!!!) Jug of Madness.

BBotE is available in several varietals, including Kona, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malabar, Panama and Sumatra. There are also occasional “special” varietals which change from time to time (basically whatever he can get his hands on at the coffee roasting place). And if you’re the adventurous sort, or just can’t decide on what varietal you want, he offers two Samplers (Sampler I, Sampler II).

You can order all of the above, and much more, from his online Store; or, if you’re lucky, you can obtain your BBotE fix in person from a local “dealer” if you’re lucky enough to live in a city that has one. Fortunately, no secret cash drops or meetings in dark alleys are involved. Unless you want it that way, of course; I’m sure they’d be willing to oblige you if you did.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go bounce around the room for a bit…

[10]: http://shop.funraniumlabs.com/products/1000ml-bbote.html “1000 mL”

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

Like most geeks, I am a caffeine-based life form. If I don’t have my caffeine dose in the (time of day at which I awaken, unspecified here because it is highly variable) I’m either cranky as all get out and extremely unpleasant to be around, or so out of it that, at least once or twice, I’ve been mistaken for a whacked out drug addict. Or both, which can be truly terrifying. Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll verify this. So yeah, I needs me my caffeine.

Now my usual method of caffeine consumption is the ubiquitous soda drink — Coke being the preferred brand in my case. Which has caused some questioning looks from friends, waitresses and passers-by, especially during those rare moments when I am awake during the morning hours. “Wouldn’t you like a nice cup of coffee?” is what’s probably on their minds, or so I imagine anyway.

I don’t dislike coffee. It’s just not really the first thing I usually ask for. For one thing, the temperature at which it’s typically served (usually a few shades lower than the core temperature of your average nuclear reactor) does not agree with me, which results in me usually having to order a glass of ice along with my coffee on those very few occasions in which I’ve ordered it (which usually leads to puzzled looks and declarations of insanity). Then there’s the nasty bitter taste, which I usually must counter by dumping over 9,000 teaspoons of sugar in it (which results in a beverage my mom sarcastically referred to as “sugar water”). And of course there’s “coffee stain” to consider, that lovely brownish stain that develops on coffee drinkers’ teeth. (And yes, I know, Coke stains teeth in a similar manner as well. My oral hygienists are none too happy about that. Believe me, if Coke came in a non-staining variant that still resembled its stain-inducing counterpart in terms of taste and caffeination level, I’d be all over that.)

So, on second thought, I guess I really do dislike coffee after all.

Even with my dislike of it, however, I will concede that coffee offers a superior caffeination level than soda. I will also concede, even without firsthand experience, that coffee offers a wide variety of flavors. (Of course, your typical mass market supermarket/restaurant/coffee house coffee is pretty low on the flavor scale; and also, by the time I’ve surgically altered it so as to agree with my tastes, I’ve pretty much blown any taste it had out of the water.)

If only there were a way to get the intense flavor and caffeination level of coffee without the nasty bitterness…

Well, Science has come to the rescue, thanks to a lovely concoction created by the mad scientists over at Funranium Labs — The Black Blood of the Earth. In short, The Black Blood of the Earth (or BBotE as I will refer to it from here on out) is a cold vacuum extraction of various single varietals of coffee. Single varietal meaning only one type of bean is used, rather than the usual mishmash of several different bean types you get in commercial coffee. So you get to experience the vastly differing flavors produced by the various growing regions around the planet. And one discovers that coffee has a rather subtle but nice sweetness to it. (Interesting factoid: the creator of BBotE was diagnosed as a Type II diabetic, and he created BBotE so that he could enjoy the flavors of coffee without needing to add sugar or cream to it to make it palatable.) And cold vacuum extraction basically extracts all the flavor out of the bean, while leaving behind most of the nasty acids that cause bitterness and teeth staining. And, guess what, as a nifty side benefit of this extraction process, the caffeine concentration of BBotE is significantly increased compared to regular ol’ coffee. Win!

And by the way folks, when I say “increased caffeine concentration,” I mean it. Funranium cautions that one should not consume more than 100 mL a day. Fortunately this isn’t difficult, as the standard mode of consumption of BBotE is to mix it with other beverages of choice (because it’s concentrated, duh). Common combinations include:

• 4 parts cream to 1 part BBotE makes a rather nice iced latte-style drink.
• 3 parts hot water to 1 part BBotE will get you something akin to your typical morning cup of coffee, only with way, way better flavor. (The fancy-pants name for this is an Americano)
• 3 parts vodka to 1 part BBotE purportedly yields a “strangely sweet, delicious drink.” (I have yet to experience this firsthand, though I plan to soon. Also, I’m sure that it has many other creative uses when it comes to mixing drinks and cocktails. Mixologists will have a field day with this stuff no doubt.)
• You can of course drink it straight. It is recommended that, if you do this, that it be chilled. I tried this, and was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually, truly enjoyed its taste, even without any additions. They’re really onto something here!

Fortunately, rather than keeping BBotE a closely guarded secret available only to a select few, the Funranium Labs crew have seen fit to share it with the world! The cost might seem somewhat high, until you consider that (A) this ain’t your typical Starbucks vente latte here; (B) the guy (Funranium Labs actually consists of one man, a radiation scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Labs) makes it by hand (his production is normally about 1 L per day.); and (C) because of its highly concentrated nature, your standard 750 mL bottle of BBotE equates to about a month’s worth of caffeination by Starbucks standards.

BBotE is available for sale in various sizes. The 375 mL is probably the best starting point for a BBotE neophyte. The 750 mL is probably the most common size. He also offers a [1000 mL][10], as well as multi-packs of all three sizes. And if you are truly insane (or you want to stock up in case World War III/the zombie apocalypse/complete destruction of the world by evil aliens bent on galactic conquest/etc. happens), there’s the 4 L (!!!) Jug of Madness.

BBotE is available in several varietals, including Kona, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malabar, Panama and Sumatra. There are also occasional “special” varietals which change from time to time (basically whatever he can get his hands on at the coffee roasting place). And if you’re the adventurous sort, or just can’t decide on what varietal you want, he offers two Samplers (Sampler I, Sampler II).

You can order all of the above, and much more, from his online Store; or, if you’re lucky, you can obtain your BBotE fix in person from a local “dealer” if you’re lucky enough to live in a city that has one. Fortunately, no secret cash drops or meetings in dark alleys are involved. Unless you want it that way, of course; I’m sure they’d be willing to oblige you if you did.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go bounce around the room for a bit…

[10]: http://shop.funraniumlabs.com/products/1000ml-bbote.html “1000 mL”

PC dating-sim games @ J-List

Fortunately there are now apps for both iOS and Android devices that make it easy to subscribe to and listen to podcasts without the need to sync with your computer. These apps work really well, and are very inexpensive (some are even free).

I’ve put together a short video on how to subscribe to Otaku no Podcast using four of the most popular of these type of apps on the iOS platform (iPhone, iPod touch and iPad). If you’re an Android user, I’m sure there are equivalent programs available for Android; search the marketplace for “podcatcher” or “podcast client” and you’re bound to find a few of them.

Watch the video on YouTube or in the embedded player below the cut.

Update: I’ve created a supplemental video, showing the same four programs I demonstrated, only this time on the iPhone/iPod touch. Watch it on YouTube or in the embedded player below the cut.

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

As I was digging through the muck, however, an idea hit me: I probably have a lot of anime that I don’t really watch any more that I wouldn’t mind getting rid of. (Indeed, when I finally excavated my DVD shelf and started scanning through the titles on it, I came up with quite a few I wouldn’t mind parting with.) Getting rid of these would end up killing two birds with one stone for me: (A) help me de-clutter, and (B) help fund the podcast. Brilliant! So I set up an [account on eBay][1].

Since this is Otaku no Podcast we’re talking about here, you will mostly find old/used anime for sale here. But you’ll occasionally find other stuff, mostly computer/podcasting gear that I no longer have a use for.

Everything I plan on putting up for sale will be in perfect working condition. In the case of anime DVDs/Blu-rays, that means that all discs are included (in the case of box sets), discs are unscratched and perfectly playable, and all DVD boxes/cases/inserts are included, etc. (In the rare occasion when I did mange to lose something, I’ll note it in the auction description. Similarly, if, for example, I am selling a box set in which I didn’t complete the collection, I’ll note that as well.)

All proceeds from these sales will go towards funding the podcast, and are (of course) greatly appreciated. This means:

• buying new podcasting gear (or replacing gear that died)
• paying for bandwidth/server bills
• buying new anime titles for review (unfortunately, we still aren’t “cool” enough for anime companies to start sending us review screeners…)
• helping us pay for anime convention coverage (transportation, hotel, food, any needed equipment rentals, etc.)
• and so on

So why not come on by and [check us out][1]? Nothing up there right now, but I’ll be putting stuff up over the next few days, so check back often!

[1]: http://members.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=otakunopodcast “eBay account”

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

Well you now have one more reason to go grab the app – and a pretty damn good one if you ask me. Apple is running a [contest][2] to see who downloads the 25 billionth app. If you are said lucky winner, you get yourself a $10,000 iTunes App Store gift card. That’ll buy you a hell of a lot of Angry Birds…

At the time I am writing this, the count stands at 24,793,722,846 and is rising VERY quickly. So what are you waiting for? Go grab the app today! (And by the way, did I mention that it’s free?)

(Oh, one more thing: mind rating and/or reviewing the app while you’re at it? Pretty please, with sugar on top?)

[2]: http://www.apple.com/itunes/25-billion-app-countdown/ “App Store Countdown”

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

Review us in iTunes

Every time I look at our podcast page in iTunes, I get rather depressed because of the distinct lack of ratings/reviews. If you could rate the show, that would make me really happy, and would also increase our search rankings in iTunes. You don’t need to write a full-blown review; just a “star” rating is sufficient. (And I’m not even going to ask for a 5-star rating. Please be honest; I respect your honesty.) All you need is a free iTunes account

Remember that we actually have three podcast feeds: the main (combined video and audio) feed, as well as the audio-only and video-only feeds. If you can rate/review all three of them, fantastic! But if you can’t/don’t want to/are too lazy to rate all three feeds, then at the very least, please rate the main feed.

Main feed (combined video and audio)
Audio-only feed
Video-only feed

Review our app

The same applies whenever I look at the page for our app on the App Store. If you could rate and/or review the app, that would be great too, and would increase our search rankings, blah blah blah. You’ll need a free iTunes account, but you also will need to download the app (it’s free) before you can rate it.

Otaku no Podcast app page on the iOS App Store

Link to us from your blog/website

One of the factors that Google takes into account when determining search results is the number of other sites that link to you. So, if you have a blog or website, why not put a link to Otaku no Podcast somewhere on it? Either link to the main site (otakunopodcast.com), or if you have a particular episode or blog post or whatever that’s your favorite, link to that.

Give us some YouTube lovin’

By this, we mean subscribing to our YouTube channel (it’s free) and “liking” and/or commenting on our various videos.

Friend us on Facebook

“Liking” our Otaku no Podcast Facebook page helps as well.

And finally…

Fill out our listener survey

OK, this one isn’t about increasing our search ranking; this one is to help me keep this show afloat financially speaking. Listener surveys such as this are used by ad agencies to help determine where to place their advertising. As you are no doubt aware we have begun to receive sponsorship opportunities, and I am really working on making them as unobtrusive and interesting as possible. One way this helps is if advertisers have accurate information on the types of people who listen to this show; that way we get more relevant ads sent to us.

Note that you will never be tracked or identified individually, only in aggregate (i.e. as a sample group). The survey is being handled by our content distribution service RawVoice. If you are concerned, please read their privacy statement. I think it’s pretty clear cut.

If you are able to help out at all with any of this, you have my deepest and undying thanks. With your help, my evil minions fellow listeners, I shall soon be able to take over the universe!!! increase our visibility on the Internets.

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

Mark your calendars folks – Pray for Japan: The Film will be premiering on March 14, 2011 at 7:00 PM at the following theaters:

You can check showtimes and/or order tickets online. Be sure and get your tickets early before they sell out! All proceeds will go towards the JEN NPO, a relief organization that has been on the ground in the Tohoku area since day 1 providing aid and relief, and in fact are still there to this day.

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

So does this mean we can relax, that we can declare “Mission accomplished” ? Not on your life. The powers of evil behind will not rest until their goals are achieved. There is still so much that can happen between now and January 24, when voting is set to begin on these bills. Bribes can be circulated. Lawmakers can sneak loopholes and other tools in at the 11th hour. And even if SOPA and PIPA go down, you know they’ll be back with something else. And it might even seem reasonable. But, believe you me, it isn’t. ([It’s a trap!][7]). We must remain ever vigilant, and continue to educate and inform our elected officials. Please keep on your Congress critters’ backs — give them something to think about come voting day.

But not right this minute. Take a few minutes and give yourself a hearty pat on the back. Go hoist up an icy cold beer (or any other beverage of choice). You — we — made history today.

I’d like to take this opportunity to personally thank our listeners and website viewers for answering the call and for putting up with a little website downtime. You guys all rock. Seriously.

[7]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dddAi8FF3F4 “It’s a trap!”

Hentai PC dating-sim games at J-List

When I started this blog and podcast several years ago, I really had no idea where this would all be going. And, for the first year or two, our numbers (podcast subscribers as well as web site visitors) were pretty dismal. But lately I have watched those numbers climb ever so slowly as the days, weeks and months flew by, and they’re now at a pretty respectable level. Not quite OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAAND, but getting there. So, yeah, we’re movie’ on up in the world. Unfortunately these larger numbers have begun to strain our resources, namely server capacity, as can be evidenced by the increasingly slow and sluggish Otaku no Podcast website. Clearly it’s high time to make some changes around here.

Actually, the first of these changes happened several weeks ago. As some of you may know, we’ve had our domain name registered through Go Daddy. I was reasonably happy with their service, and was willing to give them a “pass” on some of their more controversial aspects (their “sexy” advertising, etc.). But all that changed when it came to light that they supported the destructive legislation known as SOPA, a very disturbing piece of legislation that, if passed, could pave the way to loss of Internet freedoms and privacy. They have since backed down (somewhat – their language is still very wishy-washy); however this has eroded their credibility in my eyes to the point where I wanted to stop giving them my business. As of several weeks ago, all Otaku no Podcast-related domains are now off of Go Daddy and are registered through Hover.com, an excellent registrar who opposes SOPA. Over the next few weeks I will be moving my other domains (those used for personal means as well as other projects I’m involved in) to Hover. (Note: the Otaku no Podcast website has been hosted for quite some time at 1and1, who are on the record as opposing SOPA.)

Anyway, the real change will be coming over the next week or two, in that we’ll be moving the website onto a new server with significantly larger capacity (but still hosted at 1and1 – I’m quite pleased with their service so have no inclination to switch). At the same time, I’ll be doing some “behind the scenes” work, restructuring the code that runs everything, to make it run smoother and better (things that I’ve been meaning to do for a while now).

So, over the next week or so, as I migrate the site’s code and data over to the new server, you may start to see some strange things happen around here: silly “test” posts, missing pages, missing audio/video files, or perhaps even the dreaded “404 Not Found.” I’ll try and keep this to a minimum, but, in a move as large-scale as this, there are a thousand and one ways that things could go horribly wrong; so let this serve as fair warning.

(Of course, I’ve managed to say in 1,000 words what really only needed about 10. Such is the way with me. Oh well.)

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

5855 W. Century Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90045
1-800-228-9290

Guests include Chris Carson, Stan Sakai, Dave Merrilll, Kyle Hebert, Jon Allen, Lauren Landa, Stephen Weese, Panda Cubed, Jonathan “Jake” Tarbox, Kaiji Tang, Julie Rei Goldstein, Jessica Straus, Danielle McRae, Derek Stephen Prince, Craig Miller, and Mark Allen Jr. And of course there’ll be the usual anime con fare, including a rather nice dealer’s room, artist’s alley, musical guests, cosplay masquerade (and tons of hall cosplay too), dances, gaming (both tabletop and console), and oh so much more.

Pre-reg is sadly closed, so you’ll have to register at the door. Prices are $25 for Friday, $35 for Saturday, or $20 for Sunday. And with their “Parent-in-Tow” program, any attendee 14 years or younger can bring a grown up for free. (It doesn’t have to be a parent; it can be a sibling, other relative, teacher, guardian, etc.)

For more information, you can check out their website; however the latest and greatest information can be found in their awesome downloadable schedule, which you can get using the free Guidebook app (available for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Android, Windows Phone 7, and BlackBerry devices).

Unfortunately, through a strange twist of fate, none of the Otaku no Podcast regulars will be able to make it to con (contrary to what I said in our most recent ChibiCast). I may be able to attend one day (most likely Saturday) but that is still unknown. So con coverage this year may be, erm, somewhat lacking. Gomen nasai.