Now on iTunes and Zune Marketplace! Check us out.

We have two guests: lvlln (Metanorn) and Draginite (Draginite’s Tumblr). You can catch both on Twitter too.

This week on FAPcast: Draginite shows off his awesome VA skills, lvlln gives us the low-down on Otakon, kevo dreams of Squid Girl rape, and I forget my name. Like always, we talk about the same f***ing shows our favorite shows of the season. In addition, we celebrate the Olympics by talking about our favorite sports anime.

(more…)

Behind the scenes of every anime, there are hundreds of people at work. Artists, musicians, writers, voice actors, animators… all these people make the magic of anime happen. As talented professionals, these individuals take pride in their craft — everyone likes to be proud of their accomplishments. However, not everyone can say they would brag about everything they ever worked on. Few in the industry have the privilege of choosing what projects they work on, and some of the most recognizable names in the industry have had less glamorous days as a rookie. Today, we will go over a few of these accomplished staffers and the items they might be leaving off their resumes.

Sagisu Shiro Composing for Garzey’s Wing

Sagisu Shiro is one of the most accomplished composers in anime. His musical scores include anime such as Neon Genesis Evangelion; Bleach; Kimagure Orange Road; and Nadia, the Secret of Blue Water. He is a timeless and diverse composer whose works span three decades. Listen to how pensive and heavy this track from Nadia is, and how distinctively 80′s this track from Kimagure Orange Road sounds. Here’s something a bit more contemporary from Evangelion 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance: a riveting and emotional anthem similar in style to something from Iwasaki Taku or Kajiura Yuki.

So what is someone of Sagisu’s caliber doing on the staff of Garzey’s Wing, an anime that I am surprised has a staff at all. Garzey’s Wing is somewhat of a cult classic “bad” anime due to its nonsensical plot, incredibly shallow characters, and hilarious English dub. In fact, I’m not even sure if I remember the music at all, I was too busy laughing at this:

I can only assume the producers spent all their money for the rights to put his name in the credits and just had volunteers from the street do the rest of the work.

Mars of Destruction: Starring Chihaya Minori

Mars of Destruction is notable for being the lowest rated anime on MyAnimeList, with a measly 2.7/10 average score. The pacing is brutally awful, the action scenes look bad, none of the characters make any sense, and they use public domain classical music as the soundtrack because they can’t afford to have one composed. That being said, everyone should watch this anime — it’s only 20 minutes long and it’s absolutely hilarious. A girl’s head gets blown off in the first five minutes in the most absolutely unconvincing battle sequence known to man.

Great moments in anime history

Somewhere in all this, they had the money to hire Chihara Minori, one of the most well-known seiyuu today. I think she’s the main girl (with the red ribbons) because she talked the most and it would seem like a waste otherwise. Less than a year later, Chihara would go and star in some anime called The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. You’ve probably never heard of it. (more…)

I can’t believe that spring is almost here! Really, it just snowed again this week over here. Spring 2011 gives us lots of look forward to, especially after a rather weak winter season. Check it.

I was originally going to try doing this is a podcast format, you know, “trying out new things”. I think the reason anime podcasts are a relative rarity on the blogosphere is the fact that people can’t stand their own voice. I sure cringed when I heard myself saying those Japanese anime names. So that idea is scrapped for another boring day. Let’s get started. Everyone knows we just watch anime based on which preview pic has the cute girls anyway.

Many of these shows have been delayed by the earthquake in Japan, Moshidora being the first batch of shows that have been pushed back. It was supposed to air this week. It looks pretty promising because the lead is cute and it’s about baseball. More specifically, it’s about management. As a business student, I have to pick this up. Expect informative academic posts as this anime airs Hikasa Youko (Mio from K-ON!) is really reeling in the lead roles. Hanazawa Kana is in this, too. (more…)

Aya Hirano, well known for her performances as the Lucky Star‘s Konata, Death Note‘s Misa, and the titular character in  The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, went on a talk show recently and discussed her love life, from past relationships to boys in general. Cool, good for her. In this world where famous people are judged for everything, it’s good for them to go on talk shows once in a while and talk about this stuff. It humanizes them — like Taylor Swift going on Ellen DeGenres to talk about her love life. I’m sure her fans are happy to see her on TV.

Of course, that’s in a world when rabid fans make sense. Instead…

Fans became enraged in front of their TVs and took to 2ch, where they wrote abusive messages towards Hirano and, allegedly, even began planning her death. As Hirano herself had never said in front of her fans that she’d been in a relationship until now, amongst her core zealous fanbase, the majority seemed certain that she’d never had a boyfriend. Therefore, the appearance on this program was the very first time Hirano had ever spoken of any such romance like those she described, and the fans’ rage in response to having watched the program was uncontrollable.

Even though it was merely the ordinary girl’s talk commonly seen on and expected from Gout Temps Nouveau, Hirano’s fans, who had truly believed in her supposed lack of a boyfriend, were full of tearful, anguished comments. Not stopping at just those, however, their outrage spiraled out of control as some users began planning for the assassination of their former idol, one comment reading, “I’m glad I didn’t record [the program]; I’m going to kill Hirano Aya.” Even on the seiyuu’s Wikipedia page, a string of characters reading “die” was written approximately 67,000 times (as of now, the article has been restored to its original form). Meanwhile, in a slightly less extreme reaction, fans in possession of her CDs and posters have been destroying them and uploading pictures of the ruined merchandise to the Internet. This upset towards Hirano seems like it won’t die down for a very long while.

Retrieved from livedoor via arama

(more…)

On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Three liquid kisses
Two mahjong tiles
and Mio saying ‘moe moe kyun’

Twelve Moments in Anime 2009 #10: Water-bottle-Gate

On July 13th, 2009, a blogger named Setsuna-san posted about his trip to Daicon 2009 (in Malaysia). T’was a run of the mill, normal post about a normal trip to a convention, except for the fact that Chihara Minori performed there. And in situations like these, my friends, great men take advantage of great opportunities to make history.

(more…)

Hey everyone. I just thought I’d catch up real quick on a Sunday night, though it will be Monday morning where I live when this post goes live. If you notice, I now employ the 20th century invention of more tags, meaning you can click “read more” to read the rest of the post. This way the main page isn’t 25,000 pixels long full of my thousand word tl;dr about random stuff when you just want to read latest posts. Desu ex Machina: always on the cutting edge.

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun is one of my favorite shows this season. Especially considering how awesome episode 10 was. The development of a plot that you can really get behind, with the mystery of the level upper, was rather unexpected but I’m a huge fan.

(more…)

If nothing else, animation studios know one thing: fans of a franchise will buy anything you throw at them. So when a studio strikes gold, silver, or moderately shiny rocks, many are quick to offer a heaping plethora of anime-related merchandise to the masses. This can include soundtracks, figurines, drama CDs, artbooks, and of course, the character album. For those of you who watch anime from underneath a rock without going on the internet, character songs are songs sung by an anime character’s voice actor that is supposed to embody the personality of a character. Viewers can enjoy first-class seiyuu-pop while also learning more about a character, understanding deeper aspects of the character through the power of music. Or, at least that’s how it’s supposed to work most of the time. Oftentimes, some character albums start to reveal that a studio is starting to just milk its franchise for money, much like how Star Wars has 87,224 video games, a spinoff animated series thingy, and countless other media floating around outside of books and movies. Other times the songs are tailored to odd choices of characters and downright strange. And sometimes they just downright suck. Today let’s explore some examples of the most baffling character songs I could find in the short time I compiled and researched for this post.

Make a Miracle! –Mitsuki Shina (Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka)

As a rule of thumb, if the lyrics in your character song outnumbers the number of words of dialogue you have in the whole series, something might be wrong. I know I may be beating a dead horse here but Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka sucks so much it’s laughable. I actually like this song quite a lot. Tanaka Rie’s high-pitched schoolgirl voice is generic as hell but pretty cute (in my opinion; most people actually hate it). Shina is also my favorite character in the anime.

(more…)

The first streaming episode of Bakemonogatari, perhaps the strongest title of a marquee of solid shows the past two seasons, was released recently. It is really great to see that after the TV airing concluded, Bakemonogatari doesn’t miss a single beat and continues its sublime, distinctive storytelling style at and at the high quality of art and animation that we have come to expect for 12 episodes previous. Arararagi (sorry, I stuttered) is also one of the coolest male leads in anime. His subtle character change and outward attitude both keep him honest and make watching the show fun. If Araragi were different, Bakemonogatari‘s dialogue driven structure could easily have collapsed. Oh and he also molests Mayoi-chan at the start of the episode, which is also plus points.

Now remember, this episode was a STREAM. so excuse the 360p or whatever. DVD will be out in like 2010

When I first saw the announcement for Kampfer and what it was going to be like, I knew there was a precise 1.64% chance of it actually being good. Why is this show one of my most anticipated series? Well, besides the fact that fall season looks so much like total garbage that this is relatively decent, because of it’s loaded cast and its main character is a guy that transforms into a girl. Go ahead and judge me, but you know you want to watch this too.

(more…)

It’s September 11th today so that means it’s my birthday. It’s quite uneventful. My friends and I are going out to dinner tonight but besides that I don’t have anything slated. So ronrey…

But whatever. It’s not like this is a cool birthday like 18 or 21 where I can do something cool and new. I guess the best thing about today is that I’m going out to eat. Oh yeah! No ramen tonight!

(more…)