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K-ON! seems to be the current series du jour among the cool kids these days. And indeed it’s actually quite enjoyable – fun and lighthearted with your traditional cast of quirky characters and even some good music to boot. (And yes, an actual review will be coming in a soon-to-be-recorded episode of Otaku no Podcast) It may not have the depth of other music-related anime or manga out there, but it’s still a very well done series. Unfortunately it hasn’t yet been licensed for a Stateside release, but I have a feeling that it’s only a matter of time. (In fact I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already, at least on Crunchyroll or a similar streaming site.) (Update 2010-07-07: : Bandai has finally seen the light of reason and announced at Anime Expo 2010 that they have licensed K-ON!. No hint of a release date yet tho. 🙁 )
Anyway, if you want to catch it right now, you can do so via the fansubs. Several fansub groups have released episodes in lower-resolution (480p and 720p) versions, and indeed the entire series (including specials) are available for viewing this way. But two fansub groups in particular – Chihiro and CoalGuys – have upped the ante, and have started releasing fansubs based on the recently-released K-ON! Blu-ray disks. These releases, available in both 720p and 1080p, including full uncompressed sound, look and sound truly awesome. If you have the computing muscle to watch ’em – any computer made in the last two years or so ought to work – then they are definitely worth a look.
The Japanese Blu-Ray releases are coming every few months, with 2 episodes per disk, so these will take a while to trickle in. So if you’re the impatient sort, go watch the SD version. But if you can possibly curb your enthusiasm, definitely hold out for the Blu-ray releases. They are worth the wait.
Anyway, if you want to catch it right now, you’ll have to wait for Bandai’s forthcoming DVD or Blu-ray release. (Again, no hint of a release date. And no clue as to whether they’ll be doing DVD, Blu-ray, or both. Here’s hoping that they do indeed go with a Blu-ray release, and that it matches the quality of the Japanese Blu-rays.) Bandai only licensed Season 1, so Season 2 (confusingly enough titled “K-ON!!” — note the extra exclamation point) is still out there for the viewing. (Since it’s slice of life, you aren’t really missing much story-wise.)
Psst – do you live in or near San Francisco? Are you a manga fan? If so, then you might want to visit the New People J-Pop Complex in San Francisco’s Japantown TOMORROW! Manga artist Junko Mizuno will be signing copies of her latest work, “Fluffy Little Gigolo PELU,” at the New People center starting TOMORROW – August 22nd – at 2:00 PM.
If you’re unfamiliar with Ms. Mizuno’s works, she is known for her unusual blending of childish cutesy sweetness and – blood and terror!!! This style, known as “Gothic kawaii” or “kawaii noir” can be seen in her works, including “Hell Babies, “Cinderella-chan,” and “Pure Trance.” She also draws the eyecatch art for the BBC program “Japanorama.” Her latest work, “Fluffy Little Gigolo PELU,” chronicles the story of PELU, a cute alien, as he searches for a bride on Earth.
The New People complex is located at 1746 Post St, in San Franisco’s Japantown.
I know, International Talk Like a Pirate Day isn’t for another few weeks, but I’m sure that once you read the good news contained herein, you’ll forgive me this slight lapse into piratical dialogue.
Avast, ye salty sea dogs! I be bringin’ good news fer all ye One Piece fans out there! FUNimation has jus’ announced that, startin’ August 29th at 9pm CST, they will resume streamin’ One Piece episodes, startin’ wi’ episode 415. Streams will go live one hour after th’ episode airs in Japan. Shiver me timbers!
In order t’ catch up on missed episodes due t’ th’ stream`s downtime, FUNimation has also announced that ‘t begin streamin’ from episode 391, th’ start o’ th’ Amazon Lily Saga, startin’ on August 21. FUNimation will add three episodes daily startin’ at 9:00 pm CDT on th’ 21st, up until th’ simulcast o’ 415 on th’ 29th. Y’ hear that, y’ landlubbers??!
Fans of the RPG video game Tales of Symphonia rejoice! Your favorite gaming franchise will soon be returning to the small screen. Tales of Symphonia the Animation: Tethe’alla-hen (that’s a mouthful!) is set to air on Japanese TV in Spring of 2010. This story continues from where the previous OVA series which covered the Sylvarant story arc. The staff and cast of this new series has yet to be announced; however a promo video is streaming right now on the anime’s home page.
Recently I was going through my hard drive and found a folder full of AMVs that I had forgotten I had. Watching these brought back a flood of memories of AMV contests from years past, and I saw quite a few of my favorites in the mix. One video, in particular, absolutely floored me when I first saw it years ago, and still evokes an emotional response to this day. This video, “Silent Lucidity,” pairs two seemingly disparate sources – the anime Card Captor Sakura, and the song Silent Lucidity by the progressive metal band Queensrÿche. But it works. Oh, baby, it works.
Besides being a truly excellent AMV, this also serves as yet another example of that old adage “never judge a book by its cover.” On first blush, Card Captor Sakura looks like a kids’ show, and indeed it has its cutesy kid elements, with the cute characters, bright colors, etc.; however, when you strip all that away, what you find at its core is really a very deep, dramatic, exciting, and enjoyable story. The takeaway from all this is that it’s nice to step out of your comfort zone every now and then and try something new, a new title in a genre different than what you usually get. It’s something I’ve started to do lately. Now, admittedly doing this was a lot harder to justify several years ago, back when you actually had to pay fairly big bucks for an anime DVD; but in today’s world of low(er)-cost “classics” releases and discount “thin pak” box sets available at discount retailers such as Amazon and Right Stuf, “all-you-can-eat” video rental services such as Netflix or RentAnime and online streaming sites such as Crunchyroll, it’s not only possible, but easy and cost-effective to do so.
Anyway, back to the video. Here it is, in all its glory and awesomeness. Mad props go to Otaku Outpost for creating this wonderful video. If you want to download the higher quality version, or read more about the methods and methodology behind the creation of this video, head on over to the AMV.
(PS: if this instilled in you a great desire to see Card Captor Sakura, beware – there is a similar sounding title “Card Captors” that was in fact an early English dub – but a horrendously butcherized ones. Entire episodes were left out, large parts of the remaining episodes were chopped out, and the lines were rewritten to focus more on action. Avoid it at all costs! Fortunately they wised up and released the unedited episodes, with the original Japanese audio and English subtitles, under the “Card Captor Sakura” title. Unfortunately it’s out of print now; however you might still be able to find it at some of the DVD rental houses or perhaps online. Trust me. It’s worth it.)
If you’re a long time listener of Otaku no Podcast, I’m sure you’ve heard certain of our panelists complaining about the large crowds at certain of the more high-profile anime/comic conventions. Indeed, when you look at the attendance figures for two recent events, Anime Expo (reportedly 44,000) and San Diego Comic-Con (reported by Wikipedia as “[n]early 140,000, at least 125,000” but suspected to be much higher, perhaps as high as 250,000), you can’t help but be impressed by those numbers. Comic-Con attendance, in particular, has eclipsed the population figures of most small to mid-sized towns here in the USA.
But even that pales in comparison with the news I received today that, according to early estimates, Japan’s Comic Market (“Comiket”) welcomed a record 560,000 attendees at its Summer Comiket event this past weekend (August 14-16, 2009). Comiket’s organizing body reports that the high attendance figures also indicate a spike in new attendees, which should come as good news to the manga industry.
Think about that, people. FIVE HUNDRED SIXTY THOUSAND. Holy crap, that’s a lot of people! Sure makes our grousing and complaining sound petty and immature, doesn’t it? 😉
Comiket, as it’s called by the cool kids, isn’t the same as your typical western Anime convention. For one thing, it’s frakkin’ HUGE. It dominates the entire Tokyo Big Sight, a massively huge (one might even say “Xbox huge”) convention center with a total floor space of 230,873 m². It’s almost exclusively devoted to manga, specifically doujinshi, essentially self-published manga. Most doujinshi “circles” (the groups who sell their doujinshi at Comiket) are unknown fans, though many well-known manga artists choose to publish doujinshi in order to publish outside of their usual publisher relationships. And they sell a TON of this stuff at Comiket – perhaps as many 20 acres (81,000 m2 according to one source). It’s also known for its epic and legendary cosplay. There is plenty of photographic evidence to back this claim. Search for yourself. (I would post links, but there are really too many to post here, and I don’t want to make this article over 9,000 pages long!)
On our last episode I expressed my doubts as to whether my stamina would hold me through a Comic-Con. Well, after reading this, I don’t think I’ll be attempting Comiket anytime soon… perhaps ever. sweatdrop
Unfortunately, Otaku no Podcast has been hit with a rash of spambot attacks. Fortunately the wonderful Akismet plugin has caught most of the spam comments, but the site has been hit with a rash of new account creations that appear to be spammers. In an attempt to prevent future problems, I have implemented captchas – those little graphics phrases that you have to type – for all new account creations and anonymous posts.
I’m using the reCAPTCHA system to handle these. This system, run by the folks at Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science, has the added benefit of helping develop OCR (optical character recognition) technology. It’s really cool, and they have a great page on their website that explains how it works. (It’s also accessible to the disabled – if you are unable to read the captcha, an audio captcha is presented; and in this case, you are actually helping to improve computer-based recognition of speech, by listening to snippets from old-time radio shows and identifying the words that were spoken. Again, really cool stuff.)
Sorry for the (IMHO minor) inconvenience this may cause to you, but I am doing this to keep the site spam-free, which I am sure you will agree is a worthwhile goal.
Sekirei is a fun series – nothing special, but fun to watch… and it has plenty of “eye candy,” if you catch my drift. If you’re interested, you can watch for yourself thanks to the fansubs.
The only problem was that its ending left… umm… much to be desired. Like most series derived from manga, it ended in the middle of the manga’s story arc (which is still running actually).
There is good news however. Recently it was announced that production on a second season of Sekirei was green-lit. Presumably this second season will finish up the manga’s story arc. Much of the cast and crew from the first Sekirei anime are returning, including director Keizou Kusakawa, writer Takao Yoshioka, character designer Shinpei Tomooka, musical composer Hiroaki Sano, and the Seven Arcs anime studio that animated it. Returning voice actors include Shinnosuke Tachibana (who voiced Minato), Saori Hayami (Musubi), Marina Inoue (Tsukiumi), and Kana Hanazawa (Kusano). No firm date (other than a rather vague “winter of 2009”) has been given for the release of this second series.
Here is the video announcing the new series. Translation of the on-screen text: (credit goes to I Eat Anime for the translation)
“Sekirei Project – Restart”
“Commentaries on a beautiful war starts again”
“Miraculous love story”
“Old memory will be revealed”
“Each others feelings that mingle”
“Pledged bond with the loved one”
“it has been decided to be produce as a new anime series on TV!”
I’m a total fan of Crunchyroll… and to think, I only heard about it a few months ago! And I still am amazed at the thought that generally well-subbed anime hits the Crunchyroll feeds just 1 day after they are aired in Japan – it’s just too cool, I can’t hardly get my brain wrapped around the concept. And when I discovered that Crunchyroll also has forums… and groups… and how you could actually create your own groups… well, that was it. (I can tell you’ve figured out where this is going) Yes, I’ve created a fan group on Crunchyroll. Join it today! Your mighty overlord commands it!
BUT WAIT – THERE’S MORE!! (I’ve always wanted to say that.) If you too are an anime/manga podcaster, rejoice, for I have also created a group for anime podcasters! (Actually, I was honestly quite surprised that one didn’t exist already, which is why I created it.)
This year marks the 5 year anniversary of our trip to Japan on the AX Tokyo tour. (And I STILL haven’t edited together our trip video! Yeah, feel free to beat me with whatever blunt objects happen to be within easy reach.) I was interested in Asian and Japanese culture long before becoming an anime fan, so this trip for me was doubly exciting. And totally worth it. To this very day, I am haunted by many of the events and scenes I saw while traveling around Japan, as well as the general “sugoi”-ness of it all. My hope above all hopes is to be able to return for a second visit sometime before the global economy collapses, air travel becomes impossible (or only for the hyper-rich, and we are forced to hunt for our food using only sharp pointy sticks and wear their skins as clothing. (Me? Bitter? What gives you that idea?)
One of the ways I console my aching soul (well, besides watching anime that is) is to listen to podcasts about travel in Japan. And just the other day, the fine folks at TJX: The Japan Xperience put up a new episode once again detailing one of their adventures traveling through Japan. In this episode, your fearless leaders DJ City and DJ Gladiator talk about their travels in and around Nara prefecture (which we never got to in our tour). Among the subjects they talk about include the rather friendly deer in Nara Park that come right up to you (but sometimes bite you, so be careful!), the Daibutsu (or Great Buddha of Nara), arguably the world’s largest buddha, and… well… lots of other cool stuff.
Listen to it here. Or – better yet – subscribe to their podcast – they’re cool guys and their talk of Japan travel and music (plus plenty of friendly jabs at each other) is always entertaining and interesting.
Now please excuse me while I go sigh dramatically and pine away… (and hand me that cheese over there, it’ll go great with my whine…)
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