This week, Akira and I talk about slice-of-life, realism in mahjong anime, Vividred Operation, parents in anime, and much more. Anime On the Clock is a new concept show that I got involved with in late 2012. Head over to Anime Audiolog and have a listen!

As I’ve announced weeks earlier, I will be attending Anime Expo this year. Since I’m flying in all the way from Minnesota, I definitely want to make the best our of my experience. I was planning to mostly wing it, but I want at least some kind of structure in my trip there, so I want to take my time and meet as many of you as I humanly can. I will be staying at the Marriot with Canon, eternal, and various other peeps.

My schedule as of now is pretty open. My flight lands at LAX around noon on Friday, July 1. I hope I’ll have my stuff dropped off, grab my press pass, and be in the convention center early in the afternoon. After that I’ll probably be killing time or just attaching myself to people. At 9:30PM, I plan on being at Name that Anime Tune, because that sounds pretty cool.

On Day 2, I’ll mostly go to random events and hang out until the Kalafina concert at 5:00PM. After the concert (~6:30PM), I’ll be at Shinmaru’s Blogger Meetup, wherever they decide to have it. There, I hope to meet more cool anime bloggers, be super surprised at how everyone looks in real life, and increase my party size. At 8:30PM, I will be at Not the Miku Concert, so more aimless wandering!

Day 3 I’ll be at my friend zzeroparticle‘s Yuki Kajiura panel (which is also another blogger meetup) at 10:30AM. Nothing else particularly on my mind the rest of the day yet, except I plan to catch Summer Wars at 5:00PM.

My flight leaves back to Minneapolis around 3:00PM on Day 4 (July 4th), so I won’t have much time to do anything that day. I’m kind of bummed I’ll miss the art auction, but I hope to snag lots of merchandise the other days I’m there. As you can see, I have lots of open time. If you are going to AX and want to meet up, which would be super cool, definitely let me know and we can get in touch. Besides that, I will see all of you there.

Ok, I usually don’t follow this stuff. I personally consider myself an expert in anime and I don’t really go out and research developments like this. So when I was randomly watching G4 (I know, sorry. I was watching Cops, ok?) this trailer came up…

So the mind-blowing engrish and cheesiness in the whole trailer aside, live action anime. I always look at live action anime with a very tilted eyebrow. Because everyone knows how much crap Dragonball: Evolution turned out to be. At least the fighting and casting in Blood looks decently cool. For those who are not familiar with the source material, Blood: the Last Vampire is a 2000 anime film produced by Production I.G., of Ghost in the Shell fame.

Let me say something here. If they ever make a Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann live action movie, let alone if Hollywood does it (thank god, the studio doing Blood is at least a French studio) I will proceed to gouge my eyes out with my keyboard. I have never seen an anime live action movie (yeah. never) that was not suicidal. So the better the anime the movie is adapting is, the more orz I get. But apparently they keep trying. But hey, Cowboy Bebop with Keanu Reeves might work!

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So there ends the most hyped show in the preseason.

Nothing special. K-ON! really seemed to limp into the finishing gate. From how great K-ON started, it really seemed to run everything that made it enjoyable into the ground. The series literally ran out of gas and stuttered. The ending was pretty uneventful, if not anticlimactic. Regardless, this “bonus episode” was pretty decent. K-ON would have been more successful if more episodes were just paced like this instead of trying to moe overload us to death. It’s not like a peerless distinguished figure, but it’s an improvement from the end of the show. Overall, K-ON! needed some more… music and less stupid crap.

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On another note, I’ve pretty much gotten the full hang of Japanese mahjong now. It’s really similar to the kind I’ve been playing all my life, with just some different strats. Tenhou is the name of the client/site I use. It’s simple because you don’t need an account or anything. The hardest part of it to use is that it’s completely in Japanese, but remembering a few kana isn’t going to kill me.
Now excuse me as I patiently wait for Saki 12.

Around 11 hours from the time this post is completed, Eden of the East concludes (at 11 episodes instead of the usual 12 or 13). This officially starts the cascade of shows ending, signaling the bloody and fiery death of the season and immaculate rebirth into a new season. At least that’s how I imagine it.

So how does the new season look? Here’s a snapshot at what I’m looking at for the next season. Before any whining starts, no I have not seen Spice and Wolf. Stop asking. (more…)

You would think that Japan, being the land of milk and panties, would get all the anime merchandise in the world, would get the earliest releases of albums and DVDs and everything. Sometimes they are the only people who get it. I mean, they had a Pokemon Green! Stateside, we had to wait like three extra months to suffer from Phantom Hourglass (hehe just playing, PH was pretty fun). To me, this is kind of weird, I mean, you know that we get Paul Blart: Mall Cop on DVD before Europe and Asia. Fuck volumes of the Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei manga, or the Aria the Origination box set. We get to watch Kevin James on a segway.

But why Hong Kong of all places? Does being a special administrative district of The People’s Republic of China entitle it to the Hayate No Gotoku!! ED 1 three days before it’s released in Japan? I bet Geneon thought that an anime CD would sell well in the metropolitan area that has the most skyscrapers in the world. Of course, I’m just reading off the Wikipedia page. Too bad it doesn’t matter, because the internet and bittorent has no boundaries. So lemme give a shoutout to all my Hong Kong brethern for supplying me with crap days in advance. Because waiting until it’s released somewhere I can buy would imply that I’m going to… buy it. I haven’t paid for music since Now 5 xD.

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You want to watch anime to have fun. Unless the ending theme happens to feature Katsura Hinagiku, no matter what you don’t want to watch an episode of anime only to pine for it to end. But recently that’s what I’ve been feeling the past few episodes of Basquash!. But this will not be a post ripping this anime, instead, let’s talk about this anime in general.

For an anime about giant mechs playing basketball, this anime isn’t getting too much talk or popularity. This surprises me, but I was the same person who expected something out of a certain anime last season involving soda cans, so my thought process concerning anime premises are probably not normal. I expected an anime about real streetball style basketball, with you know… a hoop and awesome basketball moves that happen to involve mechs. I basically expected a sports anime. Wrong. Basquash! is mecha first, basketball second. That is, if you can even call it basketball. Most of the “basketball” in the first few episodes of Basquach is simply defined as “having a basketball in the scene”. If you were expecting awesome ballin’ moves straight away like I was, I’m afraid you will be disappointed, yo!

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Now that I finally have a blog to write down what I have to say about anime, I was very excited to get my hands dirty and give this thing a whirl. It was only then that I realized how not caught up I am with this season’s anime, which is a shame, because this season rules. I guess that now that I actaully am compelled to talk about anime, I have to watch anime. kevo’ has been a very bad boy and has missed some pretty important shows this spring, and I’m behind on some others. I can’t just have an anime blog and just goof off all day instead? Shit, in that case, I’d rather just have one of those cool cell phones.

Of course, I’m talking about Eden of the East, which I picked up midseason and have absolutely devoured since. Eden is a unique, eyecatching action anime with an intresting premise and really neat deeper meanings and symbolism. The anime centers around a girl named Morimi Saki, who has an unexpected meeting with a mysterious boy named Takizawa Akira.

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And here it begins.

Right now the clock says 2:43 AM and I have been trying for the last few minutes something witty or cool to say in the first post of this blog. I’d first like to thank Randall Fitzgerald (digiwombat) for graciously providing me with a domain, as well as CCY for refering me and helping me get started.

I’ve been writing about anime for about two years now, but I felt that I was missing some structure in my work. Sure I review some stuff here or there and kept a casual blog on MyAnimeList, but I didn’t feel that my writing was being tested or held to much of a higher standard. I have been planning this blog for about four months now, and here I am finally cutting the ribbon. This is rather anti-climactic, as I’m just alone in my study and just about falling asleep, no fireworks or anything. Shucks, next time I wait four months for something, I’m going to have some sparklers ready.

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