I produce this show out of my own pocket, primarily because of my love of all things anime and Japan. Unfortunately in this down economy, I need as much help as I can get. If you feel so inclined, a small donation to help offset my costs (server, bandwidth, equipment, etc.) would be much appreciated. Either make a purchase through one of our affiliates, bid on our eBay auctions, buy me something on my wish list, or use the handy donation button below.
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First of all, yes, I am well aware that there are no Anime Expo Day 2-4 updates. I’m sorry, but I just wasn’t able to get them done. By the time we got back to our hotel room each night, it was too late and we were way too tired to write anything even remotely coherent. Besides, bandwidth was pretty much crap, so even if I did write something, it would be next to impossible to post it. This weekend we’re planning on getting together to record our Anime Expo review/recap episode of doom, panel-style as usual, so that will serve as our final AX update of doom.
But the AX coverage doesn’t stop there! Besides recapping the veritable cornucopia of new anime licenses, releases and other news to come out of AX, we will also be posting, over the next few weeks, audio, photos, and videos that we took while at Anime Expo. The first such fruits of our convention-going labor are now up on our YouTube channel. We were able to sit down and chat with MegaTokyo webcomic creator Fred “Piro” Gallagher and voice actor, director, script adapter, former child actor, and all-around multitalented guy Taliesin Jaffe about their various projects and other sundry topics.
Anime Expo 2011 Day 1 has drawn to a close. Actually we’ve been here since Thursday, aka Day 0. So at long last here is our writeup!
Day 0 was spent mostly getting here, followed by press interviews. We had the great honor of interviewing Fred Gallagher of MegaTokyo fame, as well as the multi-talented Taliesin Jaffe. Those should be hitting the podcast feeds along with our inevitable panel discussion recap episode of doom.
By now you all know that, for many years, we have been a happy member of the Amazon Affiliates program – that is what powered our wonderful AnimeFinder(TM) search box, as well as the product links in the various podcasts and other articles here (such as when we review an anime, or choose one as one of our Picks, etc.). This has been (IMHO) a great relationship for both you the audience and us the podcasters: you get to acquire anime (and other products) at a decent price (their selection is pretty good and their prices are not too shabby), and we get a little “something” for your business. And, while small, these little “something”s really do add up. (Example: our most recent affiliate payment helped me put together a cheap, but pretty sweet mobile studio rig for the interviews we’ll be doing at Anime Expo.)
Sadly, as the man said, all good things must come to an end. Recently my home state of California signed a new budget, one of the more controversial parts of which institutes a sales tax on all online purchases, even if the business in question doesn’t maintain facilities in California. As a result, Amazon has decided to terminate all California-based associates’ contracts. (Apparently, at least according to Amazon, Governor Brown has signed this new legislation, though I can’t find any news articles confirming this.) It’s thought by many that Amazon is doing this just so that they can raise a ruckus, make a statement, whatever. Still, this is bad news for us, as we are now left without a small, but reasonably steady income stream.
Fortunately, however, not all affiliates programs are “wussing out” or grandstanding like Amazon is, and so I am pleased to announce that we are now an affiliate of The Right Stuf. The Right Stuf, aside from being an anime distributor in their own right, runs a truly awesome store that sells a huge variety of anime, manga and related goods (and not only titles that they own the rights to either). They regularly have some pretty amazing sales, and of course there’s always the by-now-infamous [Shawne’s Deal of the Day][10]. They’ve been in the business of feeding the otaku need for many years, and are second to none when it comes to customer service. They’re good people.
In the meantime, we ask that you please don’t make any purchases through any of the links in our past postings until I’ve had a chance to go through and update them to point to Right Stuf. Seeing as how I’m busy with Anime Expo this weekend, that probably won’t happen for another 2 weeks or so. We’ll update this article, as well as post announcements to Twitter and Facebook when that has been completed.
Remember, too, that we are a Friend of J-List, and we will get a small “something” thanks to any purchases you make from their simply awe-inspiring collection of anime figures, t-shirts, calendars, snack foods, traditional Japanese culture items, and ahem “those” kind of products too (this does not cost you anything extra). Check out all that J-List (includes some NSFW products) and J-Box (100% work-safe) have to offer, and be amazed. Also, remember that clicking on our Google ads helps as well. 😉
[10]: http://www.rightstuf.com/1-800-338-6827/catalogmgr/xjwS4D-6kXPNqEC-9Q/browse/category/4/6112/0 “Shawne’s Deal of the Day”
Yes, it’s that time again, time for another Anime Expo. This time we’re actually going to try and bring you some actual coverage. To that end we have set up our new [liveblog][11], which, after hours of experimentation, I have determined to be much easier (and much less vomit-inducing) than live video streaming.
And this is your opportunity to ask a question of one of the Guests of Honor. We’ll be in one-on-one interviews with Fred Gallagher of MegaTokyo and Taliesin Jaffe, who’s been involved in one way or another with more anime projects than I can count; and we’re gonna try to get interviews with Danny Choo and Hiroyuki Itoh and Wataru Sasaki of Crypton Future Media (yes, the Vocaloid people). However there may be other opportunities to ask questions of the other Guests of Honor too.
So, got anything you want us to ask? Then post them in the comments here. We make no promises, but will do our best to get your questions answered.
As you may (or may not) know, for a while we have been experimenting with livestreaming video from various anime conventions. And after hours of experimentation, I have come to one inescapable conclusion:
Livestreaming video is hard.
For one thing, it’s almost impossible to hold a cameraphone steady, which is painfully evident if you’ve managed to sit through any of our livestream trials. (Contrary to what it may seem, it is not our intention to induce nausea and vomiting in our audience.) I suppose I could put together some sort of eXtreme steadicam type rig, but (A) I don’t have the money to do so, and (B) I’m lazy. There’s also the fact that all cameraphones have really crappy sound. Which means that, most of the time, it’s almost impossible to understand what the speaker/panelist/GoH/whatever is saying; it usually ends up sounding something like this: “Mmfffrrf mrrrfff mrr mfff mff mrrrrfff.” And, of course, unless you happen to travel with a backpack-mounted studio lighting kit (which I don’t), the only thing you have to work with lighting-wise is the (often lousy) lighting found in most convention center rooms; so even if I could manage to get a rock-steady shot, the video would most likely be of inferior quality as well.
So, yeah, livestreaming video is hard. So how am I to achieve my goal of bringing you live on-the-spot convention coverage? One word: Liveblogging.
Yes, the very same technique that many tech bloggers have successfully employed to bring coverage of tech conference keynotes and so forth will now be put to use to bring you the latest and greatest anime news from whatever con we happen to be attending. This is being brought to you thanks to the excellent free liveblogging service CoverItLive. If you head to our livestream page you will now see a lovely new “Liveblog of Doom!” widget. When we are at an event and are liveblogging it, you will see our pearls of wisdom scroll by just as fast as my fingers can type them. And there’s no need to obsessively hit your browser’s “reload” button either; the CoverItLive widget does all of that hard work for you, so all you have to do is sit back and watch. Unfortunately the service is ad-supported, so you’ll have to sit through the occasional advertisement video. But in general I’ve found the service to work pretty well.
How will you know when we are liveblogging an event? For one thing, you can take a look at our con calendar. This will list the events that we are interested in. However that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll be at each and every event listed here (the usual disclaimer about the fickle nature of convention scheduling, plus my unpredictable stamina level at any given moment applies). However when we do decide to livestream, we will of course update our Twitter.
We hope you enjoy this new method of convention coverage. If you have any comments, or are having trouble getting the CoverItLive widget to work for you, please [drop us a line][9].
This is sort of a half-Cool Find, half-review type article.
For the last few years I have been on a quest — a quest to free my anime from the confines of my computer screen.
Many others out there have shared this quest, I’m sure. After all, although watching anime on your computer is nice (especially with the mega-HD resolution monitors of today), it’s still nice to get away from the computer every now and then. Maybe we want to consume our anime while out and about; fortunately there are devices and software that make it relatively easy to do so, such as iPods, iPhones, iPads, Android smartphones/tablets and the Archos 5, and software such as Meridian, Air Video, and Crunchyroll for iPhone or Android.
But what if we want to enjoy anime on the big screen, using your home theater system?
As Murphy’s Law would have it, mere hours after we released our latest episode, the fine folks at Anime Expo go and release their preliminary schedule. Would’ve loved to talk about it on the podcast, but what can you do? shrug Anyway, go forth and peruse the schedules for Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. (You’ll need the free Acrobat Reader, as these are PDF files. Or Mac and iOS users can use their device’s built-in PDF support.)
Speaking of iOS devices, the AX staff are planning on releasing an updated app for the iPhone, and are also working on an app for Android devices as well. Keep an eye on the Anime Expo website as well as their [Twitter][10] for an announcement when those are ready.
We here at Otaku no Podcast have begun going through the schedules and have started filling out our convention schedule with events we are interested in. You can look at our convention schedule on the brand-new Con Calendar page.
We are pleased to announce a brand new service in the Otaku no Podcast universe: [Otaku News Central!][1]
You’ve no doubt heard of social news sites such as Digg or Reddit. These sites allow users to submit news stories, and people can vote them up (digg them) or down (bury them). This “social curation” lets the really interesting, timely and/or cool news items bubble up to the top, while the less interesting or boring stuff sinks to the bottom.
Well, since (to my knowledge) there is no such site dedicated specifically to topics that we otaku would find interesting (i.e. anime, manga, Japan, etc.), I decided to take it upon myself to start one! (OK, actually it was just an excuse to play with a new bit of server software.)
The site is still a bit bare right now; that’s because, well, we need people to submit stuff!! So go ahead and register yourself an account and submit a story or three, and vote up/down other peoples’ submissions already!
Editor’s note: Unfortunately, I was not able to complete my daily reports while at-con due to a very nasty hard drive crash on my laptop. The good news is that no data was lost. The bad news is that this has delayed my reports until I could come home and fix things. I’ll post the final Day 3 report (sadly we didn’t make it to Day 4) shortly, and we will of course be getting together, probably this weekend, to record a FanimeCon recap and review podcast episode.
Day 2 of FanimeCon got off to a bit of a shaky start as I didn’t make it on site until early afternoon. However it got busier from there.
Unfortunately it also started on a bit of a sour note, as once again the SJCC was being heckled to death by a group of fundamentalist Christians. This year they were equipped with a megaphone and, to be brutally honest, were really annoying. The crowd was putting them in their place though: if, for example, they would proclaim that we would all burn in Hell, the crowd would shout in unison “YEAH!! PARTY TIME!!!” or something like that. Apparently they are standing just beyond the edge of convention center property and so are avoiding legal prosecution. Or something like that. Personally, my instinct is to go up there and argue with them, but then I realize that that is exactly what they want. I think what would really get these guys is if we completely and utterly ignored them. Don’t answer them, don’t look at them, just pretend that they just don’t exist.
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First of all, yes, I am well aware that there are no Anime Expo Day 2-4 updates. I’m sorry, but I just wasn’t able to get them done. By the time we got back to our hotel room each night, it was too late and we were way too tired to write anything even remotely coherent. Besides, bandwidth was pretty much crap, so even if I did write something, it would be next to impossible to post it. This weekend we’re planning on getting together to record our Anime Expo review/recap episode of doom, panel-style as usual, so that will serve as our final AX update of doom.
Anime Expo 2011 Day 1 has drawn to a close. Actually we’ve been here since Thursday, aka Day 0. So at long last here is our writeup!![[The Otaku no Podcast Anime Store of Doom! Powered by Right Stuf]](http://media.otakunopodcast.com/images/rightstuf.gif)
Yes, it’s that time again, time for another 
As you may (or may not) know, for a while we have been 
This is sort of a half-Cool Find, half-review type article.
As Murphy’s Law would have it, mere hours after we released our 
We are pleased to announce a brand new service in the Otaku no Podcast universe: [Otaku News Central!][1]
Editor’s note: Unfortunately, I was not able to complete my daily reports while at-con due to a very nasty hard drive crash on my laptop. The good news is that no data was lost. The bad news is that this has delayed my reports until I could come home and fix things. I’ll post the final Day 3 report (sadly we didn’t make it to Day 4) shortly, and we will of course be getting together, probably this weekend, to record a FanimeCon recap and review podcast episode.
