Sketch of the Day: Yumi-sama

Posted on October 13, 2011 by AlbinoGrimby

Yumi-sama

Fukuzawa Yumi from Maria-sama ga Miteru. Surprisingly, Maria-sama ga Miteru (a.k.a. Marimite) is one of my favorite animes that I’ve seen in the past couple of years. It’s a little bit over-dramatic at times. Usually the characters are elegant and cordial. The whole cast of girls minus Yumi seem completely unapproachable when we first meet them. They’re head of the student council, they’ve got stuffy french-y titles, seemingly high-and-mighty attitudes, and are looked upon as goddesses by the student body. In their school’s little circle of intrigue, they are the celebrities, but as each episode passes we get to learn a little more about each of the girls and by the end they seem like fairly decent, likable characters. There’s not much of a story or an antagonist to drive conflict, but that’s fine. It’s splice-of-life at it’s finest — soothing and relaxing (with moments of melodrama) — and Yumi is the chief narrator.

If you’re interested the series is done. It’s four seasons long — and I haven’t heard of a fifth season — and started in an age when 4:3 standard def was still the norm for television shows. The DVD sets come in only one flavor: subtitled, which is fine by me since I’ve come to enjoy the Japanese cast’s voice acting. The artwork’s a bit hit or miss. There’s a lot of emphasis placed on drawing eyes. Some of the characters you can tell just by looking at the eyes. Some of the eyes, some of the time, can be pretty freaky looking too, but they’re painted like windows so that you can peer into the depths of their souls.

In the story, Yumi is a student at an all girls school called Lillian Academy. They have a tradition where a junior takes a freshman under her wing to teach her proper values. Yumi ends up the imouto (younger sister) to Sachiko after some hesitation. Some fans seem to dislike Yumi but I don’t. She’s a bit dense at times. She seems to have skills, but they seem to only surround winning the approval of her “older sister,” Sachiko. She’s often needy and clingy, lost in thought, and sometimes passive aggressive or jealous. There’s nothing special about her. She won’t save the world, but she’s there for Sachiko when she needs her. Over the four seasons, she seems to learn and overcome her shortcomings in her own goofy ways to become an older sister herself.

Alter Azusa Nakano Figurine & Friends

Posted on June 26, 2010 by AlbinoGrimby

So the post office re-delivered my other decorative anime figurine today.

Alter’s Azusa Nakano is three of five of my crazy attempt to collect all of Hokago Tea Time from K-ON. Thank God there’s only five. The box:

Below is Azusa Nakano in plastic wrap. She comes with a separate hair piece. You can take her head off and replace her bangs with a set of bangs with cat ears. Yui gave her the nickname “Azu-nyan” after realizing she looked better as a neko-girl. Did I mention K-ON is big on the moe-factor?

Azusa’s the new freshman the light music club picks up in their junior year at school. She’s much more serious about her music. Both of her folks play in a Jazz band so music runs in the family. She plays back up to Yui and considers herself a n00b. She’s amazed at Yui’s musical savant abilities and she’s not so hip to all of the moe-moe antics of her seniors and their daily after school tea parties.

She plays another Gibson Les Paul guitar. When the other girls realize they’ll be graduating leaving Azusa with nobody in the club they buy her a pet turtle.

It’s Tea Time!

I mentioned that she’s got some friends too. By friends I mean, other figures I collected while I was in Akiba. Those three are some of the bigger ones I’ve collected. Most of the other ones I have are smaller gashapon. For instance, Misato Katsuragi from Neon Genesis Evangelion. I recently watched Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone and Evangelion 2.22: You Can(not) Advance. I like what they’ve done with Tokyo-3 and the Evangelions through the use of toon-shaded CGI. It makes me want to go back to Blender and try my hand at modeling cityscapes for backdrops.

I’m also a big fan of Maria-sama ga Miteru. I didn’t think I’d like it because it was introduced to me years ago as a slow-paced slice-of-life drama. It took me years to sit down and watch it but I loved it when I did. What can I say, I love the over-the-top melodrama. I didn’t think I’d like most of the characters, but each episode presents a new facet about one of the girls that makes them interesting.

When I was in Akiba I collected some of the Yujin series of figures for Maria-sama. Recently I collected select figures from the MOVIC series. From left to right: Touko Matsudaira, Sachiko Ogasawara, Shimako Todou, Yumi Fukuzawa, Youko Mizuno, and Eriko Torii.

Sei Sato and Shimako are amongst my favorites. I’m still waiting to get Sei from a Yahoo Japan acution. There also aren’t as many figures for Maria-sama since it’s about 4 years too late for me. Back in March, when I was in Japan K-ON! was the big thing.

So there it is. I’m turning Otaku one figure at a time.

Anime Photoshoot #2

Posted on February 14, 2010 by AlbinoGrimby

I’m by no means any expert at photography, but it’s fun to play with. Shooting small things and toys are cool.

I showed you my lego photo box before. This time I borrowed a macro-lens from a friend. It’s a Minolta lens which fits into the Sony A-mount. It does 28-85mm, but I only cared about the macro mode. There wasn’t any autofocus with the macro, so I just had to focus it myself, but I think the photos came out pretty well. Here’s a look at my setup — it’s the same as last time — a lego frame and then white paper for the sides and backdrop. Something that’s not pictured here is an aluminium foil reflector I created out of a piece of comic book bristol board and crumpled foil. Since I’m incredibly lazy the lamp just shines a top down light onto the toy. Alright it’s not really due to laziness. I played around with the light’s orientation and I didn’t like any of the cast shadows. I wanted the shadows to be right under the toy and if I did that I needed to bounce light back up to illuminate the toy further or there would be some hard shadows. There’s still a lot of post-processing done on my computer to adjust the exposure and the black levels of each photo. I just moved the sliders until I felt happy with it and wham, bam, done.

I wanted it to look overexposed and very white and bright. I like that look a lot.

I’m exercising my Otakuness these days. I’ve got a bunch of new figures I want to purchase and adorn my house with — all of them are K-ON! figures. Alter released these figures of Mio, Yui, and Azusa, and I’ve ordered them. No idea when they’ll come in though since the dates are all further out, but I figure it’ll be like a nice surprise later on.

The setup in picture form:

First up Haruhi. The first image is ‘shopped from three images I took. I’m no expert in photo-manipulation, which puts me on par with everyone else who sucks at photoshopping images.

I recently got the Galaxy Express 999 figures. So here they are again. I tried some different shooting techniques with these figures. The upshot of Maetel and Tetsuro I achieved by laying them down on the “infinite white paper. I then held Tetsuro about level with her and as straight as I could and shot them together. I played with DOF with some of these photos as well and since GE999 is generally pretty (melo)dramatic, I thought it would add a nice touch to the toys.