2 screenshot limit

Dear Fairy Tail,

Why do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

1. Natsu isn’t as much of a lughead as Naruto or Luffy. His Achilles heel is his aversion to any moving vehicle, and after 2 volumes, that hasn’t stopped being funny. He fights well, but can also use some part of his brain for ends beyond food and cute girls.

2. Speaking of girls, the female characters are all great so far. Is it too early to declare a girlcrush for Erza? Even Lucy, as the Fairy Tail rookie, has powers that aren’t too shabby. Reading this, I feel that everybody has a fair chance to be strong and awesome, regardless of their gender.

3. Happy! oh Happy, the flying cat. Generally, cute animal sidekicks are dumb or fairly useless, but I don’t think that’s the case for Happy. Natsu seems to depend on him a lot, and he’s actually useful whenever a fight breaks out between Gray and Natsu.

I really am enjoying how this series is following the One Piece-model of adventures.  There’s an over-reaching arc/goal set up in the beginning, that is Natsu searching for Igneel — but it’s not continually the end-all and be-all of his life. He continues to embark on adventures (aka story arcs) that move the story forward without continually dwelling on the task that was set out to him in volume 1.

I thoroughly recommend this series. I’m actually now sad that I didn’t get to go to San Diego and hear the creator Mashima talk about this work when he came over this year.

Only showing up Saturday and Sunday, ’cause I have family obligations on Friday.

Saturday

11:15-12:15 Cooking Manga
12:30-1:15 Anime Blogging
4:15-5:15 Comics for the Manga Fan
6:45-7:45 Anime Manga Research Roundtable

Sunday

11:00-12:00 Rie Tanaka

–

Maybe I’ll check out some industry panels when I get the chance, but lately, I’ve been finding fan panels a lot more interesting. Industry panels can be so cut-and-dry sometimes.

It would be totally awesome to meet up with any of you who are going. I already poked Omo and Moy for their mobile info.  I’m sure I’ll see a whole bunch of you at the Anime Blogging panel but if you want to a mobile number to contact me directly, e-mail me! reika at tokyojupiter dot com.

Viz released the DVD for the second NANA movie recently, so into the Netflix queue it went. Got it last week, and was only able to finish it last night, with a lot of internal pep talk.

Considering that I was totally over the moon for the first movie, I myself was surprised how apathetic I was with the second production.  I admit that I was bothered that they changed a vast majority of the cast, not just Nana Komatsu, and the replacement actors weren’t as amusing as their predecessors. Mika Nakashima shined as Nana Osaki, again, but there were even some moments in the movie where it felt like her acting was stilted and forced.

(Possible spoilers below…)

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I discovered Hot Gimmick through the urgings of my friend T. She mentioned that I would like it because I enjoyed shoujo, but she also warned me that it was a different kind of shoujo.  Intrigued, I picked up one volume, got hooked and immediately proceeded to buy the rest of the translated volumes.  At that time, it wasn’t completed yet, so after going through all of the series in English, I then started buying Betsucomi each month to get my fix.

I know all of the negative criticism that’s been heaped on Hot Gimmick (c’mon, what kind of fangirl do you think I am?), yet somehow that has never tainted my enjoyment and eventual love for this manga series and its creator, Miki AIHARA.

It should then be no surprise that I just had to purchase the September 2008 issue of Shojo Beat, which features Aihara’s most recent series, Honey Hunt.  It’s interesting to note how a few things changed, but a lot of things still stayed the same.

The star of Honey Hunt is Yura, the only daughter of a popular actress and her acclaimed classicial musician husband.  Yura’s Shoujo Life Crisis ™ comes about when her parents are caught up in a tabloid scandal, which eventually leads to their divorce.  Yura, predictably, thinks that her life has become hell on earth — to be compounded with additional betrayal when she finds her mother canoodling with her closest childhood friend.

So what does Yura do to get even with her parents ruining her life? She becomes an idol!

Okay, that sounds flippant, but I assure you that that’s the basic premise of the series.  And yes, three cute boys all battling for Yura’s affections, but hey, did I expect anything else from Aihara?

Like Hatsumi, Yura’s a plain jane. She doesn’t stand out, or rather, she stands out for being so unexceptional.  I guess everyone was expecting that as the sole progeny of two distinguished celebrities, that she would at least have some smidgen of talent.  But Yura, as one of Aihara’s heroines, capitalizes on her ordinary nature and turns it around into a positive trait.

I’m looking forward into reading more of Honey Hunt. I cheated and peeked at chapters beyond the one featured in the Shojo Beat issue, so I’m already anticipating the relationship hijinks that will soon ensue between Yura and her suitors.

(…Why yes, I’m catching up on manga reviews, thanks for asking!)

Wild Ones, at first glance, seems to be the prettier cousin of Gokusen.  Sachie WAKAMURA, whose mother has recently passed away, is taken in by a grandfather whom she has never met.  Turns out, the grandfather is the head of a yakuza family, and Sachie, as his precious heir, is assigned a bodyguard in the form of Rakuto, a young member of the ‘family.’

I’m not gonna lie to you — I didn’t like Wild Ones. I think the art style is fairly bland and plain (the pretty covers totally suckered me in!) and even worse, the storyline really has nothing going for it.  Sachie is beautiful and noble and perfect and Rakuto is handsome and strong and protecting… Blah blah.  They’re perfect for each other but there’s always some silly thing that Sachie contrives up to bar their relationship from moving to the next step, even as she walks on him naked in the bath every other day, it seems.

Another thing which irritated me about this series was how the mangaka would recap FOR EVERY SINGLE CHAPTER what’s going on. Um, okay, if I’ve been reading your story for these past how many volumes, you’d think I’d know what was going on.

I wished that I could like this series more, but for the sake of my wallet, I think I’m going to stop reading here.

This was a manga that I discovered, purely by accident, while browsing through the local library.  They had all three volumes that have been released by Dark Horse, but I only picked up the first one since I wasn’t sure if it would be to my liking or not.  Quickly flipping through the pages, I wasn’t necessarily blown away by the art, but hey, no harm in trying.

Translucent is the story of Shizuka SHIROYAMA, a girl who’s afflicted with the translucent syndrome.  Essentially, parts of her body become translucent (hence the title) and eventually transparent, but otherwise, she’s perfectly healthy. It seems that the transparency may become permanent, but for the meantime, Shizuka only becomes totally transparent at a certain time during the month.

This feel and tone of this series reminds me so much of Beck, in that it’s about ‘normal’ people just trying to live their lives. Shizuka is a regular student, with regular parents, and a regular boyfriend in Mamoru. The things that happen in the first volume of the manga, as well, encompass the ordinary goings-on in the life of an average Japanese girl.  There’s your requisite school festival, new transfer student, etc., etc.  Where I think Translucent excels in is being sweet without being too overdramatic about it. The characters are having problems, sure, but the mangaka doesn’t let them brood and ponder their emo state for pages and pages. As much as I hate going into the genre debate again, this is exactly how one can differentiate between a series that’s targeted for men vs. one that’s targeted for women. It’s fairly obvious from the pacing and the action that Translucent, despite being a high-school age drama/romance, didn’t have women as its primary audience.

Nonetheless, this female certainly enjoyed it.  If you like your high-school drama with a heavier pinch of reality, definitely give this series a whirl.

Cosplayers - two versions of Reika from RahXephon.

I think it was predetermined that this year’s Otakon would be great, or at the very least, pleasant.  For the first time in so many years, Baltimore had beautiful, temperate weather.  It was bright and sunny, but not overly hot and/or humid. It was a sign of good things, I tell you.

And good things were aplenty. Got to hang out with Ten a whole bunch, briefly met the anime blogger guys who came to the con (*waves hello to Omo, Moy, Link, Ogiue Maniax, and Os* — I coudn’t remember the other guys at the Otacafe; it was too loud, sorry -_-;;), got to go to both Yamaguchi Kappei panels, and even get an autographed Jo Chen print.

I didn’t get to go to a lot of the industry panels, mostly because I don’t really care about new licenses, to be honest (all of the titles that I really have enjoyed over the past few years are ALREADY licensed), and the panel rooms for those would usually be terribly crowded.  Plus, hey, I’m already dating the ANN events/conventions correspondent who tells me all the stuff that went on at the panel anyway.  There were several fan-run panels that seemed interesting from their descriptions on the book, but really weren’t that interesting in reality.

In any case, despite those little not-so awesome things, I really thought that this Otakon set a new personal bar for me for an anime con. I felt like I was able to see and do enough things, without really feeling overwhelmed and exhausted at the end.

Have been incredibly busy these past couple of weeks.  I’m moving to a new apartment, so the anime-watching and blogging has dwindled to the bare minimum.  I have a few things that I wanted to post, both here and Natsukashii, but that’ll have to wait till I’m done schlepping all of my stuff to the new place.

I’ve lived in my current apartment for about 3 years, all the while collecting various anime/manga paraphernalia of all kinds.  It’s scary to see all of that STUFF now boxed up, and there’s still more of them.  My anime DVDs alone took up 3.5 boxes!  Let’s not talk about the manga, and the doujinshi, and the figures, and the CDs, and the artbooks, and the other knick-knacks that I probably don’t even remember buying.

See, that statement is, in of itself, a sign of the problem.  Many times in the past, when I get excited about a new series, I would immediately go on the web and see what things are available for it.  And since I’m (mildly?) obsessive, I would then try to get as many of those things, as my budget (and sanity, perhaps) would allow.

Now that I’m moving, those various merchandise sit in the boxes, mocking me.  I know the companies try to capitalize on fandom’s OCD-ness for limited editions and the like, but really, did I really like the ferret in Infinite Ryvius enough to buy the set with the plushie?  Not really.  But I bought it, so now I have this scary plush toy that’ll probably just get tossed in a pile somewhere.

Wish me luck, and let’s hope that I actually find enough boxes for my manga.

This week’s blog crush: Subatomic Brainfreeze.  Okay, so maybe I’m only crushing on the blog since it’s mostly write-ups of a bunch of the New York Asian Film Fest movies, but whatever, I’m entitled to crush on whatever I want, ok!

While we’re on the topic of movies, Bateszi writes up his impressions of “Linda, Linda, Linda” and commenters chime in with helpful suggestions of other films that are a good introduction to Japanese cinema that’s beyond anime/manga.

Furu Anime Panikku asks the otakusphere to ‘fess up and admit which shonen series do we actually like to watch, despite all our posturing.  Hey, I’ve never hidden the fact that I love Eyeshield 21 (despite not actually being a big fan of football) as well as One Piece, once upon a time.  I think my problem with shonen anime is how they keep going, and going, and going… That’s probably the best part of the shows, in that you can keep watching it for years and years, but for somebody who doesn’t have the luxury of having infinite time just to watch anime, it sucks.

The link is from a couple of weeks back, but I think I must’ve missed it — Sarah of Nakama Brittanica writes about her love affair with CLAMP and their various works. I think she brings up a lot of good points about CLAMP and why people keep coming back to their works, even after all the disappointments and teasing that they’ve put us all through in these many years.

And even though everybody else is gearing up for the next anime season, I’m still on catch-up mode. I started watching a good number of the spring crop of shows, but AnimeLife gives me lots of good reasons why I really think I should just give up on some of them.

(This is the 2nd week that I’m late on this weekly exercise, but hey, at least I’m still doing it…)