Opinion Prone

So I was in Tokyo for the first time, November 27th-December 12th. I was there with something like forty other SCAD students, all Sequential Art and Animation majors. This means I was in Tokyo with forty other nerds. Granted, not all of them were otaku, but come on, it’s a trip to Tokyo with art students. It’s anyone’s guess that most of them were, and even the ones that wouldn’t admit to it had at least a few nostalgic fandoms that originated from Japan. As a college-related trip, we did do class-related things here and there, but really, the majority of it was one glorified tourist trip. And shopping spree.

On our second-to-last day in Tokyo, everyone was instructed to show off all the crazy stuff they’ve purchased during the course of the trip. And if ever I needed confirmation that I was surrounded by a bunch of weeaboo, that was it. It was like a mini-dealer’s room. I was going to save these photos for the end of my eventual series of posts about Tokyo, but I figure, hey, it’s Christmas Eve. Let’s look at all the cool stuff people got in Japan. For all the money that we spent there, we probably aren’t getting any real Christmas presents anyway…

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I actually wasn’t planning to make a big deal out of this anniversary since I’m not big on celebrating anniversaries in general and really haven’t had much in the way of meta posts here anyway. I haven’t accomplished as much as some other bloggers have in that year, and “142 posts” might be misleading since a lot of those posts were just to announce the completion of another review. :P But hey, I still like writing, and this blog is the most successful one I’ve ever run, so here’s to another year?

But oh, hey, I’m on WordPress now! And at the very least, I guess this move from Blogger to WordPress is significant enough to mention. (Update your RSS feeds, guys! Unless you were on my Feedburner feed, in which case, I’ve already updated it for you!)

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A few nights ago, I had a dream. It was hazy, black and white, and I don’t remember much of what happened. But I know the entire thing was in Japanese, and I know there were yellow subtitles floating there too. I woke up with the dialogue still bouncing around in my head. It was kind of disorienting. And kind of sad. I guess.

It’s probably because I watched more anime in December than I ever have in a month. I had the entire month off from school, was stupid and didn’t get a job in that time, and wasn’t particularly motivated to do anything even vaguely relevant to my career. So I watched cartoons. Lots and lots of cartoons. Specifically, I ended up starting and finishing six whole series (Mushishi, Nodame Cantabile, Nodame Cantabile Paris-hen, Gundam 00 S1, Planetes, Ouran High School Host Club) and three movies/OAVs (Ghost in the Shell, 5 Centimeters per Second, GSD C.E. 73: Stargazer), all of which I’ve already reviewed except Host Club. I also started a half dozen other series that I’ve either put on hold or dropped: Ghost Hound (hold@1), Toshokan Sensou (drop@2), Seto no Hanayome (drop@3), Higurashi no Naka Koro ni (hold@7), Infinite Ryvius (hold@4), and Darker than BLACK (hold@5). I reread all of my Gundam Wing manga before I sold it, and I reread all of DOGS and Bullets and Carnage, not to mention keeping up with current episodes/chapters of Soul Eater, Gundam 00 S2, and Bakuman.

It’s probably not impressive as some people’s monthly consumption, but it’s a lot for me, especially compared to the amount I watch when classes are in session or when I’m working in the summers (it took me a month to finish Spice and Wolf, a thirteen episode series, during school; it took me three days to catch up with thirty-five episodes of Gundam 00 during break). I’ve had too much anime on my brain, and that dream probably isn’t the worst of it.

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Here is my review for Gundam Wing: Episode Zero. I meant to do it earlier when I was reviewing all the rest of my GW manga, but Episode Zero must be special since I still own it and I sold everything else. I really want to go rewatch Gundam Wing now, but all I have is some ghetto VHS tape of the final five or six episodes… and there’s no longer a working VCR in the house. I do have Endless Waltz, so I guess I could watch that, but I wanna see the series, man. Then again, maybe I should just go rewatch Gundam SEED (for the fifth or sixth time) instead since I do have access to that, and I’m supposed to be filling in the SEED wiki portions of Anime Vice while this fellow does Wing.

And now it’s time for my rant about Comcast even though I’m sure that there isn’t a single person that would sing praises for them!

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Well, I could fill this meme out, or I can go back to pretending to do something useful and significant. Or I could go finish writing that review for DOGS since I finally got around to rereading it last night (also known as this morning). Despite this being an opinion blog, I don’t think I’ve actually talked about myself all that much on here. Time for some self-indulgence! :3

This picture has no relevance whatsoever to this post. But I want one! D:

• What anime are you watching now?

This is a silly question when these tools are available, but I’ve just started Nodame Cantabile Paris Chapter, and will probably be taking it two episodes a night until I’m caught up. My brother has gotten me to start Seto no Hanayome, and I’ve thus far seen two episodes, but I’m not sure if I’ll continue. Doesn’t really seem like my kind of thing. Last night, we also started Library War and spend the entire first episode making fun of it. I’ll probably check the second episode out, but it doesn’t look like a good verdict. I saw the first episode of Ghost Hound a few days ago; the brother didn’t like it though, so I might finish checking it out on my own later. I’m still undecided on how good it’ll be. Soul Eater I’m following as it airs, and Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is enhancing my ADD, so I’m watching an episode every week or so?

• What is your favourite time to watch?

Evenings, anytime between 10pm and I dunno, 5am is usually when I try to go to sleep nowadays.

• And your favourite place?

A chair in front of my laptop.

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So I made it out of Houston. Am currently in Savannah, though I’ll be leaving for Atlanta tomorrow evening for AWA.

Since classes have started, I’ll continue to be on a slower posting schedule, though my hope is that I’ll be able to post at least once a week, if not twice. My RSS feed has exploded in the last few days while I was busy with con preparations and school, and I now have over 300 unread items… It’s hard to keep up, definitely, but I’ll try. I’ll also hopefully have a review for the Gurren Lagann Parallel Works done soon. And going to a con will always bring things to talk about, yeah?

Anyway, I promise this will be the last of the self-promotion for a while, but here are some of the things I’ll be selling at AWA this weekend:

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Because living in the middle of no where sucks, it seems I won’t be able to see the Dark Knight until tomorrow. Much fail. Growing up with an AMC 24 where opening weekend titles often get eight screens, it bewilders me that I was met with a “sold out” sign, even if I was going into a one screen theatre that was a fifteen minute drive away from the house. Yeah, it isn’t anime anyway, but come on, it’s the goddamn Batman. :(

Anyway, to make myself feel slightly better, I was looking for Gundam Wing episodes to rewatch for the lulz. Veoh seems to be complete fail and YouTube’s not much better, but I did manage to find most of the first two episodes. It occurred to me that I haven’t seen very much of the series subbed, but oh man. First of all, Wing’s age is really starting to show. The animation for the most part really isn’t so bad, but the people are hilarious. I sure as hell didn’t notice this ten years ago, but the G-boys’ proportions are… accurate. They’re fifteen year old kids! It’s awesome! The voices in Japanese are ridiculous different; in Heero’s case, it’s disturbingly… spunkier? Is that the right word? It’s kind of odd when it’s his wannabe badass English voice you remember the best.

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So I have like… four half-finished blog posts I need to get around to completing. My problem is just that there is too much to talk about, and I don’t have nearly enough time to address everything. It also doesn’t help that I’m both a perfectionist and somewhat ADD. I will read through something a thousand times pruning out mistakes and oddly constructed sentences, and then I’ll get bored and not actually change anything. Why do I treat these posts like pseudo-English essays? I don’t know. None of you care. We’re here to discuss things, not win Nobel Prizes in literature.

Unfinished blog topics thus far: writing fanfiction, why some couples are better than others, more on TOKYOPOP and the OEL market, Kodansha’s overseas publishing, why CG R2 is full of crack…

Oh, woe. I also have a review of the disappointing Death Note anime to write. Man, and I wanted to update this thing at least four times a week too. Woeeeee.

You know, I’ve grappled with the idea of writing a proper blog for a good while now. As I do happen to follow a lot of entrepreneur, business, and tech-related blogs, I felt compelled to try and write something that would eventually, perhaps, give back to me in the form of connections, networking, and opportunities. Unfortunately, I’ve never deemed myself particularly knowledgeable at any one topic and thus had absolutely no idea what to write about. Occasionally, I would think about this subject or that, but as my interests remained varied, so did my ideas. Scatteredness is okay now and again, but it would be difficult to garner a proper audience if you don’t know who you’re targeting.

The problem with a lot of subjects is that they only strike my interest once in a while, and once in a while isn’t good enough for maintaining a proper blog. Of all the subcultures I maintain membership in, the anime and manga one is probably the one I’ve been involved with the longest. From a quasi-professional standpoint, those topics aren’t really that valuable for discussion — for the most part, there isn’t really anything deep or profound or life-changing here. It’s a fandom, after all. Still, as an I-really-have-no-idea-what-I’m-doing-when-I-graduate art student whose style is deeply entrenched in this fandom, maybe garnering an audience of one sort or another within it isn’t such a bad idea, even if writing isn’t the primary medium I plan to make a living in.

Ulterior motives aside, I do actually enjoy writing about anime and such quite a bit. Anyone who knows me personally would know that I can be pretty annoying sometimes pushing my opinions and recommendations on people. What can I say — in the end, I’m just a fan, and I get riled and worked up over these silly Japanese cartoons and comics. I love sharing and there’s no greater joy than getting someone else to fall in love with something I’m crazy about, y’know? I wonder if well-articulated rhetoric is enough to give my opinions “credibility” though. Is that enough to make my opinions worth reading? I tend to be a bit too wordy sometimes too, in case you haven’t noticed already.

Oh well. Here’s the beginning of yet another blogging venture. This will be my new venue for fandom-related opinions over a variety of topics, most likely. Recommendations and discussions and controversies and maybe even some state-of-the-industry madness if I am so inclined. To begin with, I have a few things already planned, and I know I’ll have time to write them when I’m sitting around the office this summer. So with any luck, there will be at least two and a half months of content here before I’m inevitably distracted by the likes of school.

Look for a first installment on Monday, guys. Cheers.