New Toyota Doraemon themed ad, starring Jean Reno

I found this hilarious and just plain wrong. Ah well.

anime

Mangakas gave middle finger to pirates / "fans"

Few days ago, an irate mangaka of Black Butler / 黒執事 (Yana Taboso) posted a scathing entry on her blog when she literally pissed off by smug pirates / "fans" who wrote to her on how good her work is but paid zero for it. Her entry is pretty dramatic, along lines of "It is not okay to starve me to death while you enjoy my manga for free!". She literally blew her top, I guess she must have a bad day.

Recently, Rei Horie who is famous for his love of gun toting babes and outlandish action wishes a certain someone who posted Black Lagoon manga chapters in single zip to have some kinda form of cancer on his Twitter which followed on by another famous mangaka Kouta Hirano (Hellsing); he wishes it will be more than just "normal cancer", he wishes a disease so rare that the uploader will be inflicted by it so can be recorded in medical posterity.

All these are signs of creators are fed up and if situation did not improve anytime soon, they might just give up doing it one day. That time, it is lose-lose for everyone. Sometimes I wonder what kinda idiot "fans" who wrote to this mangakas and rub it into their face that they are not paying for their work. If you pirating the works, the last thing you want to do is inform the creators about it, right? Anyway, I do not condone the piracy but the ballsy "fans" truly amazes me with their blatant rudeness.

I believed the solution is adopt the medium on how this mangas to be distributed to the fans; by using Internet more pro-actively. So far the big guns of the manga industry seems to be leery to adapt it. The publishing companies were making fat profits by adding cost and royalty on the product, make it impossible for average fan to buy the originals in sustainable exchange. Perhaps traditional book bound manga is not way to go? Afterall with advent of I-pad, Kindle or e-readers nowadays, they should really seriously look on it to make the hobby affordable in long run for fans.

Fans too have to play a part by buy the originals so the mangakas will be continue their work instead of zero sum game which currently prevailing right now. Mangas took time and effort to be made, a financial compensation is rightly theirs to take. To be continuously take their work and not paying it is a tantamount of stealing no matter how you dress it, the bottomline is still the same.

Things don't have to end up like this, it can be better for fans and creators.

Cheers.

anime

Bakemonogatari / 化物語 receipe of success?

According to sources, Bakemonogatari, the relatively unknown and under-the-radar series when it started took the fandom by storm as the DVD and Blu Ray sales of 1st volume shown. 56,000 is a very good figure, beating even moelicious, overhyped K-On! by wide margin.

For Japanese anime industry standard it is a fantastic figure given it is not very hyped up like K-On! or have illustrious predecessors like Macross Frontier. What more, Shaft is often running short of animators (they still advertising for qualified animators) so a lot scenes were minimized or replaced with stock footage, turning it into glorified drama radio. I even read rumors of Shaft Studio often racing against deadline all the time due to lack of manpower.

The series also use a lot of fast cuts to minimize action and some episodes have more talking heads than anything else. What worked for them is judicious use of all anime female trope they can muster and one straight talker in Hitagi Senjougahara who seens to be antithesis of what is considered as standard moe label. She is easily the most popular female character after Mio from K-On!. Not to mention, Akiyuki Shinbo, master of minimalist and creative camera angles is helming the series. If anyone looked into his filmography, one will struck by how many unusual anime series he made like Starship Yamamoto Yoko or Soul Eater. However sometimes he can overboard like looping jokes of nose bleed seen in Mariaholic. I often remarked on how well he seems to be doing with minimal approach, he often let the audience to fill in the blanks instead of telling the audience the entirety of the story he presented. And it worked beautifully in some series like Bakemonogatari.

With all these stacked up against the success, they managed to strike gold. Remarkable.

Haruhi Suzumiya the Movie?

Oh man this is rich. After massive fan backlash and expectant poor anime sales due to "Endless Eight" arc of 2nd season of their best milk cow franchise, Kyoto Animation decided to repent by announcing Haruhi the Movie.

It seem like they animating the "Disappearence" arc where Kyon met alternative long hair Haruhi and non-alien Nagato. Other than this, no more information is available so far.

I do not hold my breath for it.

Hayao Miyazaki interview in USA (1997)

Good interview of most bankable anime director. Enjoy.

Lucky Star/ らき☆すた boxer

No, simply no.

Sino-Japanese soft power war part 2

Recently, Premier Wu Jiabao complained about lack of quality Chinese anime and kid series to counter the pervasive and odious influence from Land of Rising Sun. Apparently he was watching tv with his grandkid and much to his patriotic dismay, there is no quality Chinese cartoon or anime to entertain, instead he has to settle to watch Japanese tainted Ultraman. After the complaint, citizens of China rise up and in chorus agreed with him. They start online campaigning (same method on how Moot was chosen as Time's Most Influential Person) with fiery slogans like "Destroy Japanese Anime!" or other appropriate socialist inspired Chinese battlecry.

Chinese may outproduced Japan in terms of quantity (duh) but even the citizens of Motherland has to settle with foreigner goods for consumption as there is a lot of room for improvement for Chinese produced shows. Ironically, the premier wondered where does all talented Chinese go when this is the country that regularly suppressed free expression at the same time. Go figure.



Another irony is, Taro Aso trying to use anime as bridging tool for diplomacy at the same time.

History of Hatsune Miku development.

With English subtitles (turn on the caption by clicking off annotations at bottom right of the video). Earlier entry. What an amazing technology.

Cheers.

Ami Kawashima/ 川嶋 亜美: ToraDora! voice actress

Voice actress Eri Kitamura wearing the school uniform that Ami wore in ToraDora!, promoting her character. She cosplaying here technically, also...she is promoting merchandises that is related to her characters.

Yes, yes I am a slowpoke. Blow me.