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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If you like the idea of high quality “all you can eat” streaming anime that you can enjoy anytime, anyplace, then in our humble opinion, you can’t beat a Crunchyroll membership. They have a truly awe-inspiring selection of titles, and they actively go after the latest and greatest from Japan. Many series that they feature are actually still running in Japan, and you can watch a fully English subtitled version of an episode literally hours after it has been broadcast in Japan. They also have an extensive back catalog of older/classic titles. And if you’re a fan of live-action J-dramas/K-dramas, they’ve got those too.
The nice thing (well, one of the nice things) about Crunchyroll is that not only can you watch it on your computer (Mac or PC), but you can also watch on a variety of other devices as well, including the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad (we’ve written aboutthese previously). You can also watch Crunchyroll on several Internet-connected TVs and set top boxes, including the Boxee Box.
Well, if you own an Android-powered smartphone or tablet, rejoice, for now you can enjoy Crunchyroll on your device, thanks to the shiny new Crunchyroll app. With this fine piece of software, you can stream any of Crunchyroll’s titles, both current and older, on either your phone’s 3G mobile data connection, or over WiFi, and naturally includes subtitle support. In my testing the app has performed beautifully.
Unfortunately this app will only work for you if you have a Crunchyroll [premium membership][9] – but at only $6.95/month, you really should have one anyway. You just can’t beat this price, and you get the warm fuzzy feeling of supporting the legitimate anime industry. Win!
The app will run on any Android device running Android 2.1 (Eclair) or later, and is available for free in the Android Marketplace. Go download it today! Or, if you have one of those newfangled barcode scanning apps on your Android phone, scan the QR code below.
I don’t know about you, but being an anime-loving computer geek, I’m always looking for new things to set as my desktop wallpaper. (Because there is nothing more boring than a plain unadorned computer desktop.) Of course you can take freeze-frames of scenes/characters from your favorite anime and use those as desktop wallpapers. And some of them even look decent, especially if you’re taking them from high-def sources like Blu-ray. But the vast majority of anime out there is in DVD resolution, or even worse, web streaming, and screen grabs from those look pretty craptacular, especially on today’s mega-HD resolution monitors. Besides, even if you manage to get a reasonably good-looking screen grab, it’s probably of a scene you’ve seen over 9000 times before. Wouldn’t you like your desktop to show something new — something original?
The good news is that the Internets are here to help. There are tons of sites out there full of awesome anime and manga related imagery. One in particular that I found one day while randomly web surfing and/or Google searching is Konachan.com. This site is geared specifically towards anime themed wallpapers, meaning that the images there are in the commonly found monitor resolutions. When you visit the site you’re presented with a search box which you can use to start searching for your favorite characters or series or whatever. Or you can just hit “browse” and take a drink from the firehose. While browsing you can filter by tags, safety level (explicit or not), see the most popular images of the last day/week/month, view a history of what others have been doing on the site (posting, tagging, etc.), and even view a random image (Are you feeling lucky, punk?). Their advanced search page offers even more options: you can search by tags (including support for wildcards); search by image size (great if you want to avoid pictures that’ll look nasty and pixelated on your Xbox Huge monitor); and by rating (safe, explicit, or somewhere in between). You can even perform cross-site image searches, which lets you search several other popular image board sites, including Sankaku Complex, Danbooru, and others. Plus the site is named after my favorite Lucky Star character. What’s not to like about this site??!
Some (most?) of the images here are probably reposts from other places like deviantART or pixiv. But some of it isn’t. And besides, having it all there in one place means you don’t have to search through all four corners of the Internets to find what you’re looking for.
I’m sure that Konachan isn’t alone in this space and that there are plenty of other anime/manga themed wallpaper sites out there. Got any particular favorites? Let us know about ’em!
Yes, I’m taking another break from audio podcasting. Today I show you how to make a classic Japanese dish that you’ve probably had many times before, Yakitori.
First things first: if you attended either of our workshops (podcasting and photography) and are looking for the notes pages for these, here they are: Photography notes, Podcasting notes.
Day 3 – the final day – of Anime LA was pretty low key. In fact I didn’t even make it to any panels. Most of the morning was spent getting much-needed rest, then frantically packing because we got up late and the hotel wasn’t granting late checkout, despite what one hotel person said to me last night when I asked. Then we waited for an hour or so before someone could come help us with our bags. I gather they had an Xbox Huge flood of people checking out at noon. Next time might I suggest that they do grant some late checkouts to some people; that way they can stagger the checkouts and not put too much load on the hotel staff.
Sunday was the most low-key day of them all, but there were still a fair number of people there. Every year, Anime LA has a special “theme day” on Sunday to try and lure people to the con who might otherwise leave after Saturday. This year’s theme was Japanese New Year. There were a few panels and workshops on various things related to Japanese New Years, which looked pretty cool.
I finally had a chance to make it to the dealer’s room. It was about the same size-wise as last year’s dealer’s room. Perhaps this is one way that the Anime LA staff manage the growth of the con. Lots of tables selling manga (whole walls of the stuff), along with character goods, plushies, a few weapons dealers, and figures (Figma, etc.). Seemed to me that there were more figures (and especially Figma type figures) this year than in years past. Maybe this is a precursor to dolls and doll parts/accessories starting to show up. (We think it’s only a matter of time.) One thing I did note however is that the guy who had a whole wall of DVD’s last year wasn’t there this year (at least I couldn’t find him). In fact I don’t recall seeing any DVDs for sale (if there were people selling DVDs, their displays were so small so as to blend in with the rest of the items for sale). Maybe this is another manifestation of the industry’s trend away from physical media. Which would be sad, because I for one still enjoy buying and watching DVDs and Blu-rays. Don’t get me wrong; streaming still has its place (and I do enjoy my Crunchyroll membership) but physical media shouldn’t be abandoned.
Artist’s Alley looked quite lively. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to do anything other than quickly glance through the door. Pity, as I wanted to meet up with Cosplay in America again.
Overall Sunday as a whole definitely felt like a “relax-a-con.” Lots of people relaxing and socializing. More so than other days I thought. And a nice, relaxing end to yet another really nice Anime LA.
It’s amazing to me that, even at a smaller con like this, there was still way too much to see and do. Gaming, karaoke, fighting/martial arts/weapons demos, panels/workshops, concerts… I am also amazed, and glad, to see that, even in times of economic hardship such as we are in now, people (a lot of people, in fact) are still able to come to events like this and enjoy themselves — and that the organizers are able to successfully put on a large scale event such as this.
Of course we’ll be getting together soon to record our thoughts on Anime LA 2011. Expect that episode to hit the podcast feed within the next week or 2.
I’ve talked and blogged about Japanese food before, as have our friends over at TJX. In fact I’ve even made a videoorthree on the subject. (In all fairness, the TJX crew did this as well.) But there’s something missing from our videos, something that would give them that extra “bam!” — a cute toy poodle, perhaps?
Meet Francis, the aforementioned toy poodle. In his series of videos, he (with the help of his unnamed human sous chef) shows you how to make a wide variety of traditional Japanese dishes — the traditional fruity sponge cake served during the holidays in Japan, to fried shrimp, nikuman (those steamed pork buns that the TJX crew have gone on about), mapo tofu (favorite dish of Tenshi!), and many more.
You’ll definitely want to have a large supply of snacks handy while you watch these.
In the video (below the cut), Francis shows you how to make the classic Japanese bento (complete with those cute octopus sausages that you see all the time in anime). Be sure and check out their YouTube channel to learn how to make even more traditional Japanese dishes.
(thanks to our cohost Danny Barer for this cool find!)
Well, Day 2 of Anime Los Angeles has ended. There were definitely more people here today than yesterday. I still could not begin to hazard a guess as to how many. Last year’s Anime LA was capped at 3200 and I’d say that there were at least that many people here today. Perhaps more.
The day started out on kind of a sour note for me. It seems that there were some mix-ups regarding some of the cosplay gatherings. At least I couldn’t find them at the times and places they were supposed to occur at. There were two in particular that I was really looking forward to, the Angel Beats! and K-ON! gatherings. According to Condroyd (which got its data from the cosplay.com forums) there was supposed to be an Angel Beats! gathering at 10:30 AM, and a K-ON! gathering at 2:30 PM, both on the pool deck. But I was there at both times, and saw neither hide nor hair of them. Very sad. At least at the K-ON! gathering, K-ON! Violinist Dude showed up and serenaded us with renditions of “Don’t Say ‘lazy'” and other songs from the series. So at least K-ON! was representin’. Sort of.
Day 1 of Anime Los Angeles has drawn to a close. Unfortunately, as luck (and Murphy) would have it, we spent most of the morning and mid afternoon on the road. We barely got here in time for our first of two panels (but fortunately, we made it – barely). The panel went well, and although attendance wasn’t quite up to our previous benchmark, there were still a respectable number of people present. Unfortunately the only time slot available was a 1-hour one, and our workshop was originally written to run 1-1/2 hours, so some judicious editing needed to be done on my part. Even with the editing, it still ran kind of long, and I had to rush things a bit at the end. But I think people still got a lot out of it. The notes from the first version of our workshop are up; I’ll update them within the next day or 2 with the new and/or updated material (which isn’t very much).
We didn’t really get to see much else of the convention, as right after giving our workshop, we needed to take a breather. (rushing around late into the night last night getting ready for con means we didn’t get enough sleep last night). But we did make it to the AMV contest, and while wandering around, a few other things occurred to us to comment on.
![[Play Now!]](http://media.otakunopodcast.com/images/PlayNow.jpg)
![[View our eBay Auctions]](http://bayfeeds.com/images/Right_Now_108x45.gif)
If you like the idea of high quality “all you can eat” streaming anime that you can enjoy anytime, anyplace, then in our humble opinion, you can’t beat a Crunchyroll membership. They have a truly awe-inspiring selection of titles, and they actively go after the latest and greatest from Japan. Many series that they feature are actually still running in Japan, and you can watch a fully English subtitled version of an episode literally hours after it has been broadcast in Japan. They also have an extensive back catalog of older/classic titles. And if you’re a fan of live-action J-dramas/K-dramas, they’ve got those too.
