nenena: (Soul Eater - Have a nice dream!)


(I'll bring you down)
I got on top my flying scythe to take a ride
(I'll bring you down)
Forgot what I was looking for and they arrived
(I'll bring you down)
I'm lucky I'm not on that airship that's going down
(I'll bring you down)

Down from the sky (falling)
Down from the sky (falling)
Down from the sky (falling)
Falling from the sky

apologies for the terrible alt-rock opening )

PS - New Kid and Stein icons for Gangan Mobile users!
nenena: (Devi - Flaming Tara)
Self, why did you think it was a good idea to mainline a big chunk of Tezuka's available work in English in one afternoon at the library. Why did you think that.

Because damn does Tezuka have glaring, horrible issues with women.

I mean, holy shit. When you read MW and Swallowing the Earth and The Book of Human Insects and two volumes of Astro Boy and the two volumes of Princess Knight all at the same time, it is kind of impossible not to notice that Tezuka has some seriously misogynistic, fucked-up ideas about women. And those fucked-up, misogynistic ideas are present in an awful lot of his work.

Yes, even in Princess Knight. In which Sapphire's swashbuckling skills and heroism are repeatedly credited to the fact that she was accidentally given a boy's heart. (*barf*)

I remember reading Phoenix back in high school and being struck by the terrible characterization of Tamami, the heroine in Future: she has no personality traits except being in love with the hero. Her only dialogue consists of her stating repeatedly that she loves the hero. Even up to the point where she gives up her life for his sake: So pure! So selfless! Because she loves him! She's supposed to be the heroine of the story, a woman so compelling that her death drives the hero to madness and obsession, yet literally the only thing that we readers learn about her is that she loves the hero. A lot. That's not a character. That's a plot device. How can I sympathize with the hero's obsession with Tamami when I have no idea what attracted him to her in the first place? Was she funny, was she smart, was she kind, did she have any personality flaws? What did she care about in her life (other than the hero), what were her goals and dreams? What was she passionate about? I don't know any of that about Tamami, because she's not a character: she's a cypher.

To a certain extent I can forgive the fact that some key characters in a work like Phoenix are going to be archetypes rather than developed characters with actual depth. BUT when most volumes of Phoenix deliver complex, psychologically nuanced studies of male characters while repeatedly shoving female characters into those prop-like roles in which they have no personality traits whatsoever, a clear pattern starts to emerge. And it's not a pretty pattern. Also, like I said before: it's fine for some characters in Phoenix to be archetypes, but when the central focus of a particular volume is to make us sympathize with a male character's obsessed attempts to bring back his tragic lost love, we had better be shown something interesting and compelling about that love interest - something that makes us feel for the hero's loss - or else the whole damn story just rings hollow.

Meanwhile, contrasting Tamami and her many sisters in Tezuka's works (much like, sad to say, Uran in Astro Boy) to the selfish and highly sexualized women in MW/Swallowing the Earth/The Book of Human Insects just makes the virgin/whore dichotomy becomes impossible to ignore.

What's even worse is that the villainous women in Tezuka's works claim to be feminists - and indeed, Tezuka presents his stories about these women as if they're supposed to raising questions about sexism that women face in real life. Unfortunately, Tezuka largely fails in this respect because it's hard to take his "feminist critique" seriously when his "feminist" characters are slithering boogeywomen with forked tongues.

So now that I've noticed that ugly pattern in Tezuka's works, I can never unsee it. Ugh.
nenena: (Devi - Flaming Tara)
My copies of the last two volumes of Fate/Complete Material (AKA that gigantic multi-volume Fate/Everything encyclopedia-cum-artbook) arrived today. In the back of the fourth volume there is a section filled with character designs, artwork, and notes for the canceled Fate/Apocrypha online game.

And you know what?

You know what?!

Karna was going to be a playable character. You could play him as either an Archer, Lancer, or Rider.

(*headdesk*)

Goddamit! The Mahabharata and Fate streams were finally going to cross and then the whole project got canceled. Siiiiigh.

For those of you unfamiliar with the whole Fate franchise, the basic premise is this: Every sixty years (or thereabouts - this rule gets broken right away in Fate/Stay Night) seven magicians summon seven Heroic Spirits (who can be either real historical figures or fictional/legendary heroes) and compete in a battle royale to determine who will have a wish granted by the Holy Grail. The last magician/hero pair standing wins the Grail.

The fact that this entire franchise is a thinly-veiled attempt to have fun with questions like "so if King Arthur and Gilgamesh and Alexander the Great got into a three-way brawl, who would win?" is probably what led to the natural progression from visual novels and anime to a genuine multilevel RPG. (And by the way, the aforementioned question forms much of the meat of the story in Fate/Zero. I kid you not.) Unfortunately said online RPG was officially cancelled last year. But if it HAD happened, here's what the roster of playable characters would have looked like:

Saber class: Siegfried and Joan of Arc.

Archer class: Atalanta, Karna, and David (as in the Biblical David).

Lancer class: Karna, Vlad the Impaler, and Benkei.

Rider class: Astolfo (who in this version is a young woman), Saint George, Karna, and Siegfried.

Caster class: William Shakespeare (I shit you not - he actually has an attack that lets him rewrite the outcome of any other character's attack HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!)

Beserker class: Frankenstein's monster (who is female in this game, for fanservice-related reasons), Kintarou, and Spartacus.

Assassin class: Queen Semiramis and Jack the Ripper (who is also a young woman, you know, for fanservice).



WHY IS THIS GAME NEVER GOING TO EXIST. (*sob*)

Even better: Karna actually has a skill called "無冠の武芸" which roughly translates to "Uncrowned Arms Mastership." It would have meant that his stats would appear lower than they actually are to any opponent who challenges him in a duel.

And yes, Karna starts the game with his golden armor and earrings, which provide him with extra protection against attacks. If you level him up enough, however, you could exchange the golden armor and earrings for the Vasavi shakti. Just like Karna did in the Mahabharata.

So, in case you can't tell, I am forever sobbing that this game was cancelled and goddamit I would have played the shit out of this game if it really existed.

To be perfectly honest, thought, I probably would have played as David or Shakespeare instead of as Karna. Because their attacks and special skills are way more hilariously awesome.



ETA: Okay you know what these characters designs and attack names and skill lists were just TOO AWESOME (for certain definitions of "awesome") not to share. Because, you know, Frankenstein's monster as translated into a lolified JRPG character is pretty fucking hilarious. So here you go, scanspam behind the cut: Artbook scans!! )
nenena: (Default)


Top: Fantasy. Bottom: Reality. Fanart by Zen on Pixiv.

For those of you who don't follow the fandom, the top half of this image represents how the female characters are often depicted in fanart and doujinshi, but the bottom half represents how they're depicted within the actual manga. Also, Hajime Isayama himself once very famously gave the middle finger to Kodansha when he was asked to draw Mikasa wearing a bikini for a Bessatsu Shounen cover. Consequently, that particular illustration is still suspiciously absent from Kodansha's otherwise complete online gallery of Shingeki no Kyojin color pages.

Oh, Kodansha.

(BTW I also find it amazing how non-exploitative of its female characters this manga continues to be when the cast includes a canon lesbian and a 45-foot tall naked woman.)
nenena: (Soul Eater - Have a nice dream!)
Photobucket

35 pages, 166 dialogue bubbles, and 143 exclamation points. Yes, I counted.

In short, there is A LOT OF YELLING and virtually no plot progression in this chapter. But anyway, here we go.

Recap is go! )

**********UPDATES!**********

100th Anniversary Tribute Artwork!! High-res scans @ Livejournal | Crappy small scans @ Tumblr


HUGE batch of new color images!!
     » GanGan 2012 August cover scan: Tumblr (resized) | Livejournal (high-res)
     » GanGan 2012 August cover, textless digital rip: Tumblr | Livejournal
     » Chapter 100 color intro page: Livejournal (high-res)
     » Chapter 100 color spread scan: Livejournal (high-res)
     » Chapter 100 color spread textless digital rip: Tumblr | Livejournal
     » Not! Chapter 16 color illustration digital rip: Tumblr (resized) | Livejournal (high-res)
     » Volume 22 cover preview: Tumblr | Livejournal
     » Volume 22 cover scan: Tumblr (resized) | Livejournal (high-res)
     » Volume 22 advertisements: Tumblr (resized) | Livejournal (high-res)
     » Not! Volume 2 cover preview: Tumblr | Livejournal
     » Not! Volume 2 cover scan: Tumblr (resized) | Livejournal (high-res)
     » Not! Volume 2 advertisements: Tumblr (resized) | Livejournal (high-res)
     » Phone Icons from GanGan Mail Magazine:Tumblr | Livejournal
     » Phone Icons from GanGan Mobile: Tumblr | Livejournal
     » 100th Anniversary Lottery Prize: Tumblr


Preliminary character popularity poll results! (Top 19 characters)


More detailed character popularity poll results! (Top 26 characters) Tumblr (resized) | Livejournal (high-res)


New Soul Eater screensaver @ GanGan official website!


Whew, I think that's everything!

ETA July 18th: Hey Bleachh and Tiesto, did you know that I deliberately translated page 28 incorrectly in this post? Apparently you didn't, or you wouldn't have copied my translation instead of reading the actual Japanese text!

Sorry for pulling a Soshul Experiment on you guys, but come on. This is getting ridiculous. Stop taking credit for translations that you didn't do.

ETA July 19th: I can't help but wonder why the scanslators in this fandom keep censoring the instances of misogynistic language when it's used in the manga. I mean, in 100 chapters we've only had misogynistic language show up exactly two times, and both times it was meant to be a repugnant and shockingly horrible thing that was said. And in both instances the scanslators in this fandom omitted or changed the misogynistic insults that were there in the Japanese dialogue. But hey y'all can keep complaining about the non-existent "censorship" in the official translations by Yen Press and Funi instead, I guess.
nenena: (W.I.T.C.H. - Irma rocks)
First of all, allow me to be the umpteen millionth person on the internet to squee about the new Sailor Moon anime that will air in 2013!!!!! For the record, I dragged my ass out of bed at 6:30 this morning to watch the streamed announcement on NicoVideo, because I had a hunch that the promised "special surprise" would be an anime announcement.

BTW, anybody reporting on twitter or elsewhere that the new Sailor Moon anime is "for adults, not for kids" is blatantly wrong. Or they misunderstood what was said during the NicoVideo announcement. The new show is promised to "appeal to adults who grew up with the original," but it will still be a kid's show. So in other words, it will be just like the My Little Pony reboot: clever and layered enough to appeal to adults who grew up with the original series, but still very much intended primarily for little girls.

In other news, the Montreal Fantasia Festival (one of the largest fantasy/sci-fi film festivals in North America) is rechristening its animation prize as the Satoshi Kon Award for Achievement in Animation. That's a pretty awesome way to honor Kon, especially considering that Perfect Blue and Millenium Actress had their world premieres at the Fantasia Festival in 1997 and 2001, respectively.

Speaking of good stuff! I somehow found myself volunteering at a local anime con this afternoon (not my fault, blame my co-worker!) and ended up watching the first four episodes of Hanasaku Iroha. This is a show that some people on my flist were gushing about when it aired last year, but I never got around to checking it out because a) the opening song was so terrible and b) the publicity artwork made it look like the main character was another Honda Tohru clone whose defining personality trait would be relentless cheerfulness in the face of adversity, but without any of the accompanying depth and complexity of Honda Tohru Original Flavor, since most Tohru-type clones end up being annoyingly shallow waifu-type moeblobs. I also knew that the series was based on (ETA: actually, the anime is an original production, the manga was the adaptation - sorry!) a manga that ran in GanGan Joker, a magazine which is defined by moe-moe-blargh manga desperately trying to grasp for a sheen of depth/respectability when really all they want to do is wallow in moe-moe-blarghness. Since the Hanasaku manga was serialized in the same magazine alongside such esteemed (*cough*) peers as Zombie-Bitch Sakina, Inu x Boku SS, and the worst of the Umineko manga adaptations, I didn't expect it to be very good, and I didn't expect the original anime series to be very good either.

Turns out, I shouldn't have judged a book by its cover, or a series by the company that it keeps. Hanasaku Iroha is really, really, really good. Gorgeously animated, genuinely funny, genuinely moving, and with a fantastic cast of characters. Ohana, the heroine, is a completely different character than the type that I thought she would be. And I totally love her. I can't wait to watch the rest of this series.

Hanasaku Iroha is still available streaming on Crunchyroll. So if you're one of those skeptics like me who passed over it last year because it looked too much like the average boring moe-moe-blargh fare, you should definitely check it out. The series is not at all what it looks like (and certainly not at all what it was marketed as). I'm glad that I gave it a second chance.

That first opening song is still irredeemably horrible, though.
nenena: (KKM - She blinded me with science!)
http://papermoon2.tumblr.com/tagged/jello-soul/chrono

There's a lot of truth to that old joke about Tumblr users having LOL NO LIFE SKILLZ, and the 6800 people (and counting!) who reblogged the "jello soul" post are living proof of that.

I can't believe that anybody who looked at that photograph would believe that the candy pictured was actually molded jello.

I can't believe that anybody who read those "instructions" could actually think that it would work.

Then again the Soul Eater fanbase on Tumblr seems to have a majority in the 13-to-16-year-old age range, so maybe they haven't had that much experience in the kitchen or have never made jello before, I dunno. (*shrug*)

Anywhoo, the original "jello soul" post (complete with "instructions" that are made-up and actually QUITE DANGEROUS) has now gone explosively viral. If you can, please reblog plushabilities's post with the correct, SAFE instructions for making soul candy along with a small bit of text along the lines of "reblogging for safer, corrected instructions!" or something. Adding the text will make your reblog stick out amongst the notes (at least for a few minutes) and the extra text will also function as a clickable link (especially important in crappy layouts!) so that more people can see the corrected instructions.

I messaged foreveranimeobsessed with a polite request to edit her original post with a link to plushabilities's instructions, but instead she did this (warning: music autoplays at link) so, argh. Not that editing her post would have helped much anyway since edits don't show up in reblogs (goddammit Tumblr), but it would have helped somewhat. Some people do like to go back to the original source for any cool stuff on their dash that they want to reblog, so there's that at least.

The moral to this story is: Never post "instructions" for something that you haven't actually tried, done, or accomplished. Because your followers might very well have LOL NO LIFE SKILLZ and reblog your post trusting that you know what you're doing. And the next thing you know, your post has gone viral and you're in deep shit.

Somehow I am reminded of the King of the Hill episode in which Peggy wrote a newspaper "home tips and tricks" column, and decided that it would be a good idea to tell her readers to mix bleach and ammonia because THAT WILL MAKE A SUPER-DUPER CLEANING SOLUTION. Whoops. Thankfully, telling Tumblr users to pour jello into glued-together pieces of plastic isn't nearly as high on the scale of Dangerously Bad Ideas To Do In Your Home Kitchen as mixing bleach and ammonia would be. But it's clearly a stupid idea, since not all types of plastic are safe to be used as molds, and it definitely would never result in the lovely candy pictured in [profile] plushabilities's photographs anyway. Anywhoo, the moral of the story is the same: Don't tell people about this totally awesome how-to idea you've had until you've actually tried it yourself. Unless your idea is to mix bleach and ammonia. DON'T TRY THAT.

Or, you know what... I think the moral of this story is even simpler than that. Don't post pictures of other people's food with a bullshit "recipe" that you made up yourself. If you see a picture of something that you want to make, find the recipe used by the person who took that photograph and actually made the food, and post it. Common sense, people. Common sense.

But then again this is Tumblr. I probably shouldn't expect common sense.

ETA: foreveranimeobsessed's post and all resulting reblogs have been bahleeted off Tumblr. I guess somebody must have reported the post for a TOS violation, because that's the only reason I can think of why all of the reblogs would have vanished as well, although I cannot for the life of me figure out what part of Tumblr's famously laissez-faire TOS the post violated. Anyway, Plushabilities now has her own post about the Soul Eater candies that you can reblog here: http://plushabilities.tumblr.com/post/26609277975/recipe-for-gummy-souls-2-pkg-jello-flavor-of
nenena: (Default)

Sailor Avengers by nna. (Click through for full size!)


Hat-tip to [personal profile] shanejayell for that one. Now we just need somebody to make an Avengers/Pretty Cure mashup and my life will be complete. Er, not like I've actually put any thought or planning or detail into an Avengers/Pretty Cure mashup fic that will never be written or anything.

Other Links of Interest:

David Brothers on why DRM is beneficial to exactly nobody.

Al Jean (producer of The Simpsons) and fifty other animation producers protest Community's eligibility in the Emmy animation categories. I'm sorry, I love Community, I really do, but it does not belong in any of the Emmy animation categories. It just. does. not. And Al Jean is absolutely correct to point out that if Community can be considered in the animated Emmy categories, then why can't shows like The Simpsons, Futurama, South Park, and other animated sitcoms be considered in any of the Emmy comedy categories? Because animation ghetto, that's why.

David Brothers (yes, again!) on why Anno Moyoco's Sakuran reveals how sexism in the past still influences how we regard "willful" women today. (Do not read the comments.) Sexist expectations of how women should behave is a common theme in Anno's work - just look at Sugar Sugar Rune, which used magical girls to deconstruct those sexist tropes in really interesting ways - but Sakuran is a decidedly more adult take on the same themes for a decidedly more adult audience.

Meanwhile, Naruto is coming to an end. I don't think that anybody has yet expressed any reaction to this other than "Finally!" And that includes those of us who are actually fans of the series. It's about time we got a decent climax and conclusion! For the record, I felt the same way when Inu-Yasha finally ended. No matter how much fun your manga is, you just can't keep dragging out the same basic conflict without any meaningful conclusion for years and years and years without people getting tired of it.
nenena: (Tink - Cheers!)
I know, I know, a lot of people are reviewing Attack on Titan now, and all of the reviews that I've read so far say the exact same thing: Awesome premise, cool worldbuilding, cool technology, cool monsters, and sadly sub-par artwork, but the rest of it is so much gory fun that who cares? So for this review, rather than regurgitate what much better reviewers than me have already said, I'd rather comment on an aspect of the series that seems to have gotten little attention elsewhere: Awesome Gender-Related Things That Hajime Isayama Does Really, Really Well. But actually, rather than "Awesome" I think it would be more honest to say that this is a list of "REALLY SIMPLE Gender-Related Things That Hajime Isayama Does Really, Really Well." Because the following is a list of things that are really simple, basic things that more science fiction and fantasy authors SHOULD be doing right, but that so depressingly few creators seem to ever think about, notice, or care about.

So how does Titan do it right? Well, in a manga in which all of the main characters are members of a military organization...

1. Women are visible everywhere, especially in the military ranks. And there is almost always an equal number of men and women drawn on most pages. Not just among the named characters, but in background and crowd scenes as well. I'm serious. Every time we're shown a panel of soldiers lined up to march into battle, or the Survey Corps riding out into the wilderness, or even just the soldiers hanging out in a mess hall or tending to their wounds after a fight, there are both men AND women in those scenes. I cannot even count how many sci-fi/fantasy works I've seen or read that just simply forget to include women whenever we're shown a large crowd of soldiers, even if the worldbuilding otherwise gives lip service to the idea that women are supposedly welcome in this world's organization du badassery.

2. Men and women wear identical military uniforms. Hallelujah.

3. There's such a diversity of personality archetypes in the cast of characters, including among the female characters, that the story neatly avoids any sort of gender stereotyping. This is what happens when, you know, you actually have a LOT of female characters in your story rather than just one, two, or three. It's awesome that Titan has a lot of different female characters and gives them all different personality traits. This also neatly avoids the unfortunately common sci-fi/fantasy trope that all women involved in some sort of military organization must be stone-cold badasses (*eyeroll*) or else they're not Strong Female Characters (TM). Titan has its share of stone-cold lady badasses, of course, but it also has female soldiers with upbeat personalities, who like to tell jokes, who have timid personalities, or who struggle with self-confidence issues - to name just a few examples.

4. There isn't any tension-destroying, mood-killing fanservice. Context: this is a violent, gory manga in which an awful lot of panel space is devoted to people getting gruesomely eaten alive by freaky monsters. Amazingly, however, there are no brokeback poses, no jiggling breasts, no "strategic" ripping of clothing, no shower scenes, and - most incredibly of all - absolutely no sexualized/fetishized deaths of female characters. (Which isn't to say that they don't die, since characters of every gender drop like flies in this series, but that when female characters do die, they don't do so in creepily "sexy" ways.) It's sad that I even have to point this out as a positive, and yet it is just SO RARE to read a horror comic book or manga without all of that juvenile fanservice crap killing the dramatic tension every time it rears its ugly head.

In short: Not since Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist have I read a shounen manga that pulls off all four of the above points so beautifully well. And I think this is doubly impressive in Titan's case, considering that it's a gore-drenched horror manga much moreso than it is a traditional adventure yarn (like Fullmetal Alchemist was), and we all know that gore-drenched horror manga tend to usually not do so well in terms of non-facepalm-inducing portrayals of female characters. Titan definitely bucks a lot of the more obnoxious gender-related tropes in shounen horror manga and is ultimately a much better story for it.

Disclaimer: I have only read up through volume 4 of Attack on Titan (volume 1 translated into English by Kodansha and volumes 2-4 in Japanese), so maybe some of this gender stuff changes later, I don't know. But I kind of doubt that it will.

Also, on a totally unrelated note: Goddamit Kodansha, I read through my copy of volume 1 once - exactly ONCE - and the binding glue came undone in two places. And it's not like I handle my books roughly or anything, either. Quality: ur doin it wrong.
nenena: (Default)
The Hero Initiative is seeking donations to cover the cost of Robert L. Washington III's funeral. Please please please help if you can. Washington was a groundbreaking writer who neither got the acclaim nor the financial compensation that he deserved from the comics industry. Without funds to cover the cost of a small, modest funeral his remains will literally be thrown into a ditch on Hart Island, without any ceremony, and without giving his family an opportunity to say goodbye.

Other links of interest:

Chris Claremont, Ann Nocenti, and Louise Simonson re-unite to discuss the original plans for Madelyne Pryor's character in the X-Men comics. Wow. Wooooooooooow.

Justin Sevakis explains the mysterious process by which film properties are licensed and distributed internationally: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Molly McIsaac lists the ten best manga (available in English) for children. Comments argue about whether Dragonball should be on the list because of its sexual humor and whether the list fails for excluding Astro Boy. In response to the former, meh, I'd say there's no hard or fast ruling on that one - it really depends on the age, maturity, and experiences of the kid reading it. As for the latter, well, if I had to pick one kiddie Tezuka manga to put on the list, I would choose Princess Knight over Astro Boy. And I still think it's a shame that Honey Honey will likely never be available in English because it is still one of the greatest kids' manga of all time.

In much less light-hearted fare, Foz Meadows explains some basics of Rape Culture 101 in her two blog posts about rape culture and gaming: One | Two. The comments on the first post are unsurprisingly full of fail, hence the follow-up post. But I agree completely with the way that Meadows lays out the differences in terms of what rape culture looks like in a digital community versus how it manifests in meatspace. Both posts are definitely worth a read, even if you don't exactly need a 101-level explanation of the basic concepts involved.
nenena: (Default)
So this is Sid's new motto and it might as well be Ohkubo's mantra as well. )

ETA again: Oh hi Youni89 I see you reading this. (*waves*) Next time that you're going to copy huge chunks of my translations word-for-word, at least give a little credit where credit is due and don't try to claim that you translated everything yourself, okay? And I can't believe that with all of the copy-and-pasting you did you still managed to screw up two of the best lines in the chapter, too.
nenena: (Soul Eater - Have a nice dream!)
First! Tonight on Tumblr, A Brief Nostalgia Trip: The Best of the Soul Eater Late Show Ending Cards.

Because many people new to the fandom who watched the series on Hulu (and missed out on the original Late Show segments) are clearly being deprived of exposure to such existential masterpieces as Abe Mutsumi's "Butt-Bird" and the surrealist watercolor Soul Eater fanart painted by Atsushi Ohkubo's father.

Second! A very special screencap behind the cut. )

Third! Does anybody know a decent method for taking screencaps of Blu-Ray discs? Neither Arcsoft TMT nor VLC can get past the anti-screencapping encryption on my discs (fuck you so much Blu-Ray why the fuck would you DO THAT I mean come on). I tried installing MPlayer/SMPlayer on my computer, because I heard that it's actually capable of taking screencaps of a BD, but unfortunately I can't get it to actually play any discs. So does anybody know of any other tips/tricks/hacks for taking screenshots of a BD? Help?

I would love to be able to take screencaps of the Late Show ending cards for episodes 12, 49, and 50. The quality and size of a screencap that I could take from my Blu-Ray discs would be ten times better than what I was able to cap from my old TV raws, and even better, the BD episodes don't have that annoying text all over the screen. But alas, Blu-Ray technology seems determined to thwart me.

Seriously, what the hell are you doing, Blu-Ray? You got rid of region encoding but then you started encrypting your discs to prevent screencapping of all things?!

I don't understand. I just don't.
nenena: (Default)
No recap this month because a) I am dealing with a major medical emergency and b) this month's chapter was so painfully unfunny and boring that I can't. I just can't.

But a couple of things to get out of the way right now:

Like Soul, Clay is fully clothed in his weapon form. Dumb sexism at its finest.

I've got no problem with the shower scene because it was actually funny. As in, literally the only truly funny part of the entire chapter. Of course it's creepy that Ohkubo is digging around for excuses to draw 14-year-old girls naked, but as long as Ohkubo is going to keep coming up with excuses to draw 14-year-old girls naked he might as well give those scenes some entertainment value for the rest of us. Kid being Kid and then getting his comeuppance for being Kid was a beautiful moment.

There is no defending the full-page sequence of Kim pulling up her skirt and bouncing around in her panties, though. There's especially no defending the cameltoe that we got right in the middle of that page. It's creepy and disgusting, the same way that the shower fanservice is creepy and disgusting, but without the extra flavor of self-aware humor that makes the shower scene so much easier to swallow. Nope, this is just a fourteen-year-old shaking her ass at the reader because Ohkubo likes to draw fourteen-year-old ass. Nothing more and nothing less. And that's precisely what makes it so eyeroll-inducing.

And I've seen plenty of people attempting to defend the Pantydance Page already, including trotting out the usual bingo square arguments: It's Ohkubo, so this shouldn't be surprising! (I don't think anybody is surprised by this, but we also know that Ohkubo can do better so of course people are going to express disappointment every time that he pulls this crap.) But the manga has always had lots of panty shots! (No, it had a lot of panty shots in the beginning, which is one of the major reasons why a lot of people consider the early parts of the manga to be kind of terrible, and also one of the reasons why those of us who are fans of the manga keep finding ourselves in the position of having to tell new fans put off by the fanservice in the early chapters that "it gets better, no really!" Except for when it doesn't.) It could be worse, at least Ohkubo isn't Ritz Kobayashi! (How do I logic fallacy.) What do have against porn?! (Nothing. But Soul Eater isn't porn.)

And again, Soul Eater being what it is, I'm willing to forgive a lot of its fails with regards to fanservice of underage characters and/or sexism in the story as long as it, you know, provides enough of a measure of awesome in every chapter to balance out the inevitable bits of suck. This chapter didn't have any awesome, though. It just didn't. I'd say this is easily one of the worst chapters we've had since the end of the Salvage arc, and that's saying something. And no, it's not a terrible chapter because of the underage nudity or the underage cameltoe. It's a terrible chapter because it's boring and unfunny and my god even the artwork looks phoned in this month. It's pretty clear to me that this was supposed to be a comic-relief chapter, the same way that chapter 12 (once upon a time and many years ago) was a comic-relief chapter. It's just that this month's chapter failed miserably to deliver on the "comedy" part of "comic-relief" and was flavored with creepy sexualization of teenage girls throughout. Ugh on every level.

Well, here's hoping next month's chapter will be better.

ETA: Translations of new name reveals. Pretty much the only interesting new information in this chapter. Considering that over half of the chapter was spent in the Witch World, that's pretty pathetic.

ETA again: Translation of the Pantydance Page.
nenena: (Default)
I 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.
nenena: (Default)
The Anime/Manga/Manwha/Manhua Drabblefest is still going on! Come drabble with us!

The 2012 Not Prime Time Fic Festival is open for signups.

The Female Character Trope Fest is open for fills, too!

There is also a Transfic Mini Fest, a Podfic Meme, and a Reverse Remix Meme for all of your ficcing needs.

Filed under "Awesome Websites that Time Forgot": The Redwall Kitchen is still online. And there is a recipe for real honest-to-goodness homemade dandelion wine in there. Awesome.

Meanwhile, Atsushi Ohkubo.

Also, your Soul Eater Moment of Zen: Here is the entire Soul Eater cast made of pipe cleaners. Along with many other anime characters.
nenena: (Default)
Come drabble with us!

Man, it's been forever since I last wrote a drabble. I'd forgotten how hard it is to stick to that 100-word limit.
nenena: (Default)
The opportunity to get yourself arrested and thrown in jail just to see if you can break out again, that is.

That's right. Free is back.

And it is beautiful. )

Edited to add: Two things!

1. If you would like to link to this summary, I would appreciate it if you could link to the dreamwidth version, NOT the livejournal version! Thank you!

2. Also, shout-out to all the lazy scanslators reading this! Please don't be as lazy this month as you were last month, mmkay? (Explanation.)
nenena: (Tink - Cheers!)
Hiiro no Kakera is actually really, really enjoyable.

I'd even go so far as to call it, well, kind of good. "Good" might be stretching things a little, but it's pretty close. It's definitely one of the best otome game adaptations I've seen in a long time. And as far as teen girl id-fulfillment fantasies go, it's leagues better than your standard Vampire Knight fare. The set-up is basically the same: Ordinary teen girl, magical powers, Great Destiny to Fulfill, harem of pretty boys fighting by her side.

But cliched thought the setup may be, it's still done damn well: Beautiful animation, fun characters, and an interesting enough story. Plus it has a really wonderful heroine at its center.

And oh my god this opening sequence is so damn beautiful: