More fun things on the internet.
May. 6th, 2012 05:07 pmI know that I'm three weeks behind the times in finally knowing about this, but OH MY GOD: Hasbro actually ran a wedding notice in the New York Times to promote the My Little Pony season finale. Holy shit. That is fucking awesome. It's also awesome to see an Entertainment Weekly reporter write that "the hour-long [series finale] special is ambitious, absorbing, and thoroughly entertaining, even to those who stopped playing with My Little Ponies back in the mid-’80s. (Or, you know, never played with them at all.)" Quoted for GREAT TRUTH.
The subject of last month's Manga Moveable Feast was the Viz Signature line. I'd definitely recommend checking out some of those titles for anybody reading this interested in moving beyond your typical tweenybopper manga fare. (Not that I don't love and eat up typical tweenybopper manga fare with a spoon, but it's good to have some expanded horizons.) Or just scroll to the bottom of this post for a roundup of links to general overviews of the line and introductions to multiple titles and artists at once.
Meanwhile, in case you missed its extremely limited theatrical release outside of China earlier this year, Dante Lam's 逆戰 (a.k.a. The Viral Factor) is going to be released on Region 1 DVD next month. Not that this particularly matters when there's been a region-free official BluRay disc with multiple language tracks and subtitles available on the market for a while already now, but... At least a Region 1 DVD release means accessibility on Netflix and possibily iTunes, so hooray! (Seriously though, the advent of BluRay has so delightfully antiquated this entire concept of region-locked DVDs that a part of me even wonders why distribution companies even bother any more.) Oh, and David Brothers has an excellent review of the film here in which he nails what exactly it is about the movie that makes it so engrossingly watchable despite being objectively kind of terrible on a lot of levels.
Ryan Estrada teaches you how to read Korean writing in 15 minutes. I absolutely adore Hangul - it's one of the most beautiful and perfect writing systems in the world, ranking right up there with Devanagari and Arabic as one of the most ingenious and perfect writing systems ever developed IMHO - and this cute comic is a really great introduction to it. The comments on the post are worth reading, too.
Wooser's Hand-to-Mouth Life is the best thing on the internet. The best thing.
And, for people reading this who are interested in legal ways to access digital manga in Japanese! Kinokuniya has an app for that. ( Behind the cut: Nitty-gritty details re: how to download and use the app for readers outside of Japan. ) But, there's one more caveat: The selection in the app store is about three to four weeks behind the selection on the BookWebPlus mothership, which means that sometimes new books will be listed on BWP nearly a month before you can hope to buy them through the app. (This is the case for Soul Eater right now: the manga is available on the BWP website but not yet on the app.) However, there are a few exceptions: the newest volumes of Fairy Tail are listed on the app on the very same day that they're published in Japan (!!!!) and quite a few other popular manga titles are getting same-day app releases, too. In terms of selection of manga and light novels, I cannot stress enough how gloriously huge and diversified the app selection already is: Old stuff, new stuff, shounen, shoujo, josei, seinen, megapopular series, indie publishers, IT'S ALL HERE. In terms of digital offerings that I've been hoping and praying for Japanese publishers to SOMEDAY provide for us, this is it: It's finally happening. Kinokuniya, YOU ARE MAKING THIS HAPPEN and it is beautiful.
I still can't believe how far behind Japanese publishers are in terms of digital offerings when compared to North American manga publishers, but that is a rant for another day. Anyway, the Kinokuniya app is a HUGE step in the right direction here.
The subject of last month's Manga Moveable Feast was the Viz Signature line. I'd definitely recommend checking out some of those titles for anybody reading this interested in moving beyond your typical tweenybopper manga fare. (Not that I don't love and eat up typical tweenybopper manga fare with a spoon, but it's good to have some expanded horizons.) Or just scroll to the bottom of this post for a roundup of links to general overviews of the line and introductions to multiple titles and artists at once.
Meanwhile, in case you missed its extremely limited theatrical release outside of China earlier this year, Dante Lam's 逆戰 (a.k.a. The Viral Factor) is going to be released on Region 1 DVD next month. Not that this particularly matters when there's been a region-free official BluRay disc with multiple language tracks and subtitles available on the market for a while already now, but... At least a Region 1 DVD release means accessibility on Netflix and possibily iTunes, so hooray! (Seriously though, the advent of BluRay has so delightfully antiquated this entire concept of region-locked DVDs that a part of me even wonders why distribution companies even bother any more.) Oh, and David Brothers has an excellent review of the film here in which he nails what exactly it is about the movie that makes it so engrossingly watchable despite being objectively kind of terrible on a lot of levels.
Ryan Estrada teaches you how to read Korean writing in 15 minutes. I absolutely adore Hangul - it's one of the most beautiful and perfect writing systems in the world, ranking right up there with Devanagari and Arabic as one of the most ingenious and perfect writing systems ever developed IMHO - and this cute comic is a really great introduction to it. The comments on the post are worth reading, too.
Wooser's Hand-to-Mouth Life is the best thing on the internet. The best thing.
And, for people reading this who are interested in legal ways to access digital manga in Japanese! Kinokuniya has an app for that. ( Behind the cut: Nitty-gritty details re: how to download and use the app for readers outside of Japan. ) But, there's one more caveat: The selection in the app store is about three to four weeks behind the selection on the BookWebPlus mothership, which means that sometimes new books will be listed on BWP nearly a month before you can hope to buy them through the app. (This is the case for Soul Eater right now: the manga is available on the BWP website but not yet on the app.) However, there are a few exceptions: the newest volumes of Fairy Tail are listed on the app on the very same day that they're published in Japan (!!!!) and quite a few other popular manga titles are getting same-day app releases, too. In terms of selection of manga and light novels, I cannot stress enough how gloriously huge and diversified the app selection already is: Old stuff, new stuff, shounen, shoujo, josei, seinen, megapopular series, indie publishers, IT'S ALL HERE. In terms of digital offerings that I've been hoping and praying for Japanese publishers to SOMEDAY provide for us, this is it: It's finally happening. Kinokuniya, YOU ARE MAKING THIS HAPPEN and it is beautiful.
I still can't believe how far behind Japanese publishers are in terms of digital offerings when compared to North American manga publishers, but that is a rant for another day. Anyway, the Kinokuniya app is a HUGE step in the right direction here.
