Category Archives: Anime

Discussion about my anime fandom — everything from television shows, conventions, art, and figures.

Anime Figure: Tainaka Ritsu

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Instead of an anime figure this week, I thought I’d take some time and talk about a new drumset I got: a yellow Yamaha Hipgig, Cocktail and Jr. drumset.

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Alright, I’m not kidding anyone. I’m not even sure what a Yamaha Higpig is — it sounds more like an animal than a drumset. I just copy and pasted it from a wiki page about Tainaka Ritsu, who is this week’s anime figure.

I can’t play the drums. Not even Rockband drums. There’s just too many things going on at once and I don’t think I have that level of pre-emptive multitasking going on in my head to make my individual arms strike two different things at two different tempos while hitting a third thing using my foot on a mallet pedal at yet another interval. It seems incomprehensible to me that anyone can possibly do that, but I’m not musically inclined. Also, the drum kit above is at 1/6 scale, but for a musical miniature it’s quite detailed and I don’t think those pictures do it justice. I feel that if I owned a hamster or rat, he might be able to use these drums for some late night jam sessions.

The interesting thing about owning some of these K-ON figures is that you’re getting two models in one — an anime character and an instrument both crafted to the highest standard. If you think the drums are impressive, wait till you see Tsumugi’s Korg. It seems like it should have come with an AC Adapter and MIDI cable.

Ritsu comes with many parts and of the K-ON gals she was the most expensive. In the box you’ll find her yellow drumset, a pair of sticks, a seat with butt-indent so you know how to sit her down, and Ritsu herself. There’s a base plate, but I actually display her without it mainly because it takes up a lot of unnecessary s[ace so I'm glad it's optional. She's seated before her drumset and everything is modular and movable I can nicely squeeze her into the top shelf of my Detolf along with her friends (yes, I have all five of them).

And here's Ritsu herself:

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I don’t have too much to say about the sculpt. It looks like Ritsu in case you were worried that it might not. The wrinkles on the backside of her coat are nicely done (there are photos of that in the gallery). The pose looks silly without her drums in front of her but Rit-chan and her drum kit are meant to be displayed together. I suppose you can display the drums on their own if you just like having models of instruments adorning the shelves in your house, but if you display Rit-chan its with the drums. I found her a bit difficult to photograph. I want to snap her with the drum set but sometimes the cymbals and drums get in the way, but other times they framed her face nicely.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to purchasing the K-ON figures: Do you just get the characters you like, or, if you buy one does that mean you buy the rest of the band? I’m of the latter school of thought. I started out with a pre-order of one of the K-ON figures, Hirasawa Yui, and I was simply pleased that I would get to own a bit of Japanese plastic. The realization dawned on me soon after. There would be four more. In fact the statue for Mio was also in pre-order status and I decided then and there, if I was going to do this, as ridiculous as it sounds, I was going to go all in. That means all five and because of the rarity of anime figures and the popularity of K-ON, I’d have to be there on day one to pre-order each one. It did give me something to chase after, which was for a while fun (for me, not so much for my wallet). Later I picked up the Nendoroids, which are infinitely more fun, and a set of Mobip figures when I hunted through Akiba for something to blow wads of cash on. The moral of this story is: I own a lot of K-ON figures and they are the center piece of my collection.

So, as you can imagine, being a fan, the sculpt quality comes second to the primary point of just owning all five of them. I know there are other figures with the gals in swimsuits, lolita outfits, waitress outfits, and school festival type clothing, but honestly none of those appeal to me. The blue blazer and gray skirt — that’s iconic for K-ON. It’s boring, yes, but I wasn’t ever into the show for the titillation factor, which is what the manga seemed to sell on. On the show, the five girls worked great together as an ensemble and so do the figures. In the coming weeks I’ll be posting pictures of those figures as well.

More images of Ritsu below.

Anime Figure: Diabolus Inclinatus

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Diabolus Inclinatus Closeup

This gallery contains 25 photos.

Even if her bewbs do poke out at you, her sex appeal isn’t so much her ample bust but rather her expression and body language. Her pointed-inward toes suggests she’s embarrassed. Maybe wearing next to nothing wasn’t the best of ideas. Her eyes, based on how you look at her seem to beckon you closer or makes her seem a bit fearful and hesitant. Maybe it’s a ploy. Will she be naughty or nice? You won’t know until you’re within her grasp and then it’ll be too late. Continue reading →

Nendo Comic: Mayuri;Gate

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I like to collection anime figures. Of my favorite types of anime figures to collect are these little guys (rather, gals) called Nendoroids. They’re chibi-fied versions of their 2D screen counterparts. It’s one of the ways in which I can support my favorite shows and return a little bit of love. Also, it’s cool to have representations of my favorite characters and Nendoroids (as you’ll see) come with various expressions and parts so you can create different poses. They’re fun to photograph and I decided to make them into little comics. I’ll start reposing them on Courne Supremacy as time goes along, or you can read them on my Nendoroid Comic DeviantArt page.

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Introducing Mayuri to my Nendoroid CollectionMayuri and Yui Play

Bonus:

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Mayuri and Yui Play

T-Shirt Meats!!

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I made that shirt today. A bunch of us went over to Randy’s house for our first ever T-Shirt meats (hopefully not the last). You can see the rest of the shirts in the gallery below. For my design, I sketched it and turned it into a vector drawing using Inkscape on my Mac. Below is a rasterized version of the vector image I made — the one I used for the shirt is a 300 dpi version. Randy suggested that we come up with designs that use one color since that was the limitation on what we could do. I’ve been doing a lot of high contrast artwork lately, that not really a limitation for me.

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My design is supposed to be done with white ink, after I made it, I had to have it inverted in Photoshop before it could be transferred to the transparency and eventually the silk screen. Randy guided us through the rest of the steps.

T Shirt Making 001 224x300 T Shirt Meats!! T Shirt Meats Soranowoto  I couldn’t take pictures of the actual process for making this silkscreen template since you need to be in a dark room. The first step is to pour a photo emulsion into a trough and then scrape it across the screen — that’s what that vibrant pink stuff is. We let the screens dry for an hour in the darkness and headed off to a FedEx/Kinko’s store to get our art printed out onto transparencies. We developed the silkscreen photo emulsion in a light bed. The idea is to mark off the dark areas so the light hardens the emulsion except for where you want your art to peek through — at least that’s how I understood it. Using a power washer we blew the remainder away and that above is the final result. I believe you have to do the power washing in the dark room too otherwise all of the emulsion will develop and you won’t get your stencil.

As you can see mine was far from perfect. When I was spreading the emulsion over the silkscreen it ended up causing huge drips to slide down the front and set that way, but I’m happy to say that the image actually came through really well once we power washed the excess away. The rivulets of emulsion created another problem for me. We were afraid that when we got to the actual printing, the pink stuff might be ripped off the screen. To counter this I had to mask off the front and back.

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I didn’t get any pictures of me printing my shirt, but here’s Randy printing his R-man shirt (you can see the final product in the gallery below). You lay the ink down on the screen and use the squeegee to give a layer of ink over the design. Place your shirt on a hard surface — we used an ironing board — put the screen over top of that and use the squeegee back and forth — while keeping the silk screen held down tight against the shirt — and you’ll print your design. I’m glossing over details but Randy’s the expert at how to do it correctly. There’s specific ways to hold the sequeegee and on removing the board so the design doesn’t get ruined when you pull it away. My shirt has some paint dabs on the bottom since I dropped a little bit of on there and I also smeared mine a bit, but regardless it turned out pretty well.

I think there’s a final step where you use a heat gun and bake the image into the shirt — that way you can wash the shirt without ruining the design. As for our t-shirts we were only able to make one-color. I’m not sure what’s involved in doing more colors or how much complexity that adds. I know vaguely what chemicals and inks we used — as in they are photo emulsion and white ink — but I don’t know much beyond that (cost, where to buy, etc.). There’s a great deal of waiting involved, but that’s why you put stupid movies on like Kung Fu Dunk. I imagine that movie was supposed to be like Shaolin Soccer but lacking all the charm and humor that Stephen Chow would bring.

As for anime, I’m currently watching Soranowoto on Crunchyroll. My brother tried to introduce me to it…oh, two years ago? I tried watching the first episode a few times, but couldn’t get through it without falling asleep. Finally, while I was making my vector art, I was able to break through that wall. I don’t really recommend it, but I’m compelled enough to finish it. I can’t say that any of the characters are interesting — I think this anime falls under the moe slice-of-life genre if you consider girls in military garb moe, but there are some interesting bits in the backstory that’s keeping me going. Also, if you squint hard enough the girls are reminiscent of  Yui, Mio, Ritsu, Mugi, and Azusa dressed in drab G.I. greens. I don’t think the show was done by KyoAni, but I think its the eyes…it’s all about the eyes. Just look at them.

Anime Watched in August

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Back at the end of 2009, I had a week off in November and I remember spending part of it being engrossed in several anime series. I watched a lot over my break — I’m a bit of a hermit like that. After all was said and done, that is, watched, I wanted to know, just how much did I watch and what did I watch? So I wrote it all down in a text file and did some of the math. The result: I watched a lot of anime. In fact here’s the break down from that November 2008 text file I still have in my possession:

  • Densha Otoko (3 ep) 2.25 hours
  • Sasameki Toko (7 ep) – 2.3 hours
  • Death Note (37 ep 12.3 hours)
  • Kimi ni Todoke (8 ep) – 2.67 hours
  • Doctor Who (special) 1 hour
  • Gunslinger Girl season 1 (13 ep) – 4.3 hours
  • Nana (3 ep) 1 hour
  • Maria-sama ge Miteru (4 hours)

Afterwards, as I watched things, I began to write them down. Mainly because I’m forgetful and if I’m watching a TV show I don’t want to second guess what episode I’m watching next. After doing this for close to three years now, I’ve got a lot of “statistical data” on what I watched. Yes, it’s mostly all anime. You won’t find many American movies or television shows. It’s also all what I call “directed” watching. I used to flip channels a lot when I had cable — talk about a real time waster. I didn’t need to watch random infomercials at 3 am or view Lindsey Lohan’s Most Shocking Moments Caught on Tape for the fourth time, but I love train wrecks and that’s why I had to cancel cable. At least this way I could justify that these shows were ones I wanted to watch/waste my precious time on.

I figure I’d share these lists. It’s a great way for me to introduce to you (and to myself when I’m reading this again decades down the road) the shows that I find interesting. The anime that compelled me to watch all the way to the end. If you don’t watch a lot of anime or if you only know of anime via its stereotypes, I hope my choices will give you some different flavor of anime that exists out there. It’s not all about mecha, harems, or softcore porn. Some shows actually have substance and those are the ones that I generally gravitate towards. Alright, except for maybe K-ON, but it’s a guilty pleasure. Also there are elements of anime that you can’t get away from because it flows in the very veins in that industry.

Since I don’t want to go through a backlog of two years, let’s just begin with August 2011:

  • Natsume Yujincho (ep. 5-8, next is 9) — Crunchyroll
  • Black Butler (ep. 1-7, next is icon cool Anime Watched in August (half watched this) — Hulu
  • Steins;Gate (ep. 17-22, next is 23) — Crunchyroll
  • Hanasaku Iroha (ep. 19-22, next is 23) — Crunchyroll
  • No. 6 (ep. 6-8, next is 9) — Crunchyroll
  • Usagi Drop (ep. 5-8, next is 9) — Crunchyroll
  • Gosick (1-24) – done – really good series — Crunchyroll
  • Hanamaru Kindergarten (ep. 3-12) – done — Crunchyroll
  • Monster ep. 43-74 – done — Hulu
  • Game of Thrones (1-10) — At a friend’s house
  • Exit Through the Gift Shop — Amazon
  • Begin Japanology: Fugu
  • Begin Japanology: Unagi Eel
  • Begin Japanology: Japanophile Dorothy Feibleman
  • Redline
  • Space Battleship Yamato

If you don’t have TV where do you go about watching these shows? I pay for Netflix Instant Watch and Crunchyroll. I was torrenting a great deal of shows from the Spring anime season, but then I learned they were all on Crunchyroll. So I got a subscription. Why not support something I love? It’s the least I could do and maybe in return Crunchyroll will bring more anime this direction. Both those sites have a back catalog of shows that’ll keep you watching for months if not years to come. Don’t want to pay? Hulu actually has a ton of shows. Not Hulu Plus. Hulu. Their anime selection is pretty big and if you dont have Netflix, Hulu seems to be doing a good job of cloning most of the selection you find on Netflix in their library. Also, some of the anime shows like Cross Game are subtitled and other shows like Monster and Spice and Wolf  give you the option of selecting dubbed or subtitled episodes. Yes you have to watch the commercial about sea turtles at every mid-point during the show, but it’s a small, small 30 second price to pay. Just go take a pee or get a snack.

Of the shows I watched in August, I highly recommend Usagi Drop and Monster. They couldn’t be more different from each other. Usagi Drop is a splice of life anime about a 30 year old guy named Daikichi who ends up taking custody of a six-year old girl named Rin. Daikichi, as you can imagine, is a bachelor and salaryman. He works overtime in the sales department and goes out drinking with his buddies after hours, but all of that changes when he becomes Rin’s guardian. The show creates a great hypothetical situation and a lot of interesting questions come up. What if you got custody of a young child? How does that change your life? What sacrifices do you make? Would you have made the same decision Daikichi did? Those heady questions aside, the show is cute and sentimental — which is right up my alley. Don’t expect heavy plotting or lots of story progression. It’s the daily life, the little moments and some big ones that drive this show forward, but if you have a soft spot its worth watching.

Monster is all suspense and plot and the show does a damn good job of it. The series is 74 episodes long so get ready for a long haul. Kenzo Tenma, a brilliant neurosurgeon, saves Johan, a 10 year old boy, after he’s shot in the head by his twin sister Anna. There was good reason why Anna did it: Johan is one evil, sadistic, sunnuvabitch. He kills for the “lulz” because there’s a monster inside of him and it’s ready to explode. He’s the perfect sociopath: mild mannered, eloquent, well versed in all things, and kind. Tenma and Johan cross paths a decade after he pulled the bullet from Johan’s brain and at that point Tenma realizes he must kill the boy and he goes off on a quest to bring justice to the world. Along the way, we rarely get to meet Johan face to face, but his presence is everywhere: the serial murders he commits, the lingering psychopathic tendencies he leaves in people he meets, and messages scrawled on walls and in missives for Tenma. There’s a deep and forbidding backstory to Johan and Anna’s life that’s revealed through the events of Monster, and just when you think Naoki Urasawa’s run out of story, and that things can’t get much more suspenseful than they are, he changes it up. He introduces new characters and a new perspective on Johan and he makes those people in their places just as compelling as Tenma. It’s a story that doesn’t need to center around Tenma alone. It’s much bigger than he is and makes it all the more richer and there was never a point where the events felt contrived. The narrative just works. It’s storytelling at it’s best. Watching the show, I really thought I was getting a great education in how to keep a story suspenseful and to keep it progressing along. BUT, sometimes Monster overdoes it. Sometimes Monster drags things out, but more often than not it’s an engaging and colorful story to watch. I highly recommend it. I blitzed through the show in July and August (that’s just how I am), but if you have time and want a weekly thriller you can’t go wrong with Monster.

There was a time when I would without a doubt recommend Hanasaku Iroha. There’s plenty to love about it. The artwork and animation is drop-dead gorgeous. The problem I have is from episode 14 and on, the show hasn’t been as strong as the first 13 episodes. There were some really great stories in the first half of Hanasaku Iroha including one of my favorite anime episodes, period — I’ll get to that in a moment. The show is primarily about Ohana, a sixteen year old girl moved from the city to the country to work in her grandmother’s Inn, the Kissuiso. She’s bratty and self-centered and you can imagine full of angst. Nako, another young waitress, and Minko, a kitchen hand, don’t quite get along with Ohana and that’s the source of much conflict that drives these characters. The show could easily be consumed entirely by the teenage angst factor and high school dramatics, but it doesn’t. It’s about their lives running the hot spring resort and the tribulations they face episode to episode and in general all of that storytelling is fantastic and you shouldn’t miss it. Because the locale is different than a school or random city street in Tokyo, I feel like I don’t know what will happen next, and that’s the best part about Hanasaku. It’s too bad then that after episode 14 I feel that it fell back on it teen angst love stories and the long arch about Enishi and Takako’s wedding wasn’t so fun. The only outstanding episode was one about Nako’s home life.

My favorite episode is #7. It focuses entirely on the head waitress, Tomoe Wajima. I suppose that’s just her little piece of pie that she’ll get in the 26 episode series, but I enjoyed that episode more than any of the other ones. She was meant to be some bit player — a gossipy, 30 year old, unwed, woman only seeking a rich man for a husband. That episode gave her more dimension, and maybe in a way I feel for her too, since I’m also in my 30s and unwed. Tomoe decides to throw her career at Kissuiso away so she can go home and get an arranged marriage by her family’s wishes, but all of her best laid plans backfire and she realizes she’s where she ought to be.

Gosick I watched in a weekend. If you like Sherlock Holmes and the Japanese Lolita sub-culture, you’ll probably want to check out Gosick. I originally watched a few episodes and was unimpressed with it. The solution to mysteries seemed trite. Victorique, the moe Lolita Sherlock Holmes, just felt like a mish-mash of tropes crafted for Otaku appeal. And maybe she is, but upon watching it again, I ended up really liking the relationship between her and her Watson, a foreign student named Kujo.  Their back and forth bickering and the moments where we get insight beneath Victorique’s hubris make it work for me. The ghost stories and fairytales told throughout the story meld together with the mysteries they solve and the history of the made-up European nation they reside in. At one point towards the end, I found myself smiling, the synthesis between the ghost stories, the characters, setting, and political turmoil that was occurring in the show brought it all together to a nice boil and I thought, “I could watch more of this.” It sadly ends two episodes later and in a rather rushed manner.

Natsume Yuujincho or Natsume’s Book of Friends was a show I started watching a while back. It’s on season three now and this season so far isn’t as good as I remember it. The episodes haven’t been as strong. I suppose the reason why I like Natsume so much is because I like how they handle ghost stories. They’re not just shock and awe type of stories to make you jump. The stories are quiet, sentimental and touching. Natsume can see ghosts, a trait he inherited from his grandmother Reiko. Reiko beat spirits into submission and stole their names to form a Book of Friends, a book that she or anybody could use to call spirits to do their bidding. Natsume inherits the book from his deceased grandmother and he decides to return the names, and season 3 continues much along the same lines as the previous two. I don’t think anything particularly stands out episode-wise, but I like the overall laid-back feeling of it. The OPs and EDs are also pretty good. I still listen to them on my iPhone.

I’ll toss Game of Thrones a few words. I never read the book, but the show was great and couldn’t have ended with a more dramatic and epic event. Still though, I felt much of the show was a cocktease. There’s the constant “winter is coming…” mantra thrown about and also some horrific event that is coming. Season 2, I hope, will illuminate all. I could read the books, but I think it’ll just spoil the show. So I can wait. Tyrion and Ayra are by far my favorite characters. I look forward to great things from those two.

Space Battleship Yamato. I never watched Starblazers or the original Yamato. I know of its fame because I love Leiji Matsumoto’s Galaxy Express 999 in all it’s various incarnations so I’m at least aware of Yamato. The live action movie isn’t great. I wasn’t expecting great. It was like watching a Japanese version of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek right down to the lens flares in some scenes. Also, the show seemed to pinch a great deal of props and scene ideas from the rebooted Battlestar Galactica — I’m 100% sure they beat up and stole those helmets from Galactica’s Viper pilot squadron. But, in the end, I have no problem that they borrow from Galactica as heavily as they did.

Exit Through the Gift Shop I saw on a recommendation. I don’t want to write anything about it. Go see it and answer me this: is it a brilliant hoax or real? Either way it’s awesome satire about the art world.

If you’ve never seen Begin Japanology they’re 22 minute documentaries on aspects of Japanese culture. It’s a great way to learn more about the country if you’re an Otaku like me.

Redline is fun. Awesome animation and art. Ridiculous story. Worth watching once.

Those are all the things that I find worth mentioning from this month’s viewing. I hope it entices you to go and try out some of these shows mentioned and at the end of September I’ll have a whole new list of things that I’ve watched to discuss.