I could be recapping today's installment of Tsubasa right now, but that would involve repeatedly slamming my head against my desk, and frankly right now I can't afford any more concussions this week.

I should be writing a review for Sequential Smarts, but my copy of Castle Waiting appears to have been devoured by the fiendish Nagano Prefecture Interlibrary Loan Gnomes. Maybe I'll do Mushishi instead? I have no idea how to place that in an edumacational context, though.

I have a huge folder of Scanspam-to-Upload sitting on my desktop, but mnet's servers are being weird tonight, so whatever.

Oh my God, I haven't updated my Flickr account since December. (*hangs head in shame*) Oh, this is going to be a fun catch-up!

Here's some more info about the NIS release of Sakura Wars V. Minor LOL moment: They used my scan of the soundtrack cover art from the Kosuke Fujishima STV artbook that I uploaded to animepaper.net in that article. I can recognize it because it's been my "featured" scan on animepaper for a while now. Yay, my scans get around!

Due to budget restraints and not wanting to touch Infernus with a ten-foot pole, I haven't been keeping up with any Marvel comics lately. But I can't wait to read the new New Mutants series. Yes, I know that it's shameless pandering to fans like me who are nostalgic for the 80's. But I don't care, it's still my favorite group of X-Men characters, and I've heard good things about the first issue. Also, check THIS out. Ooooooh, preeeeeetty. I don't care that her facial expression is totally out of character for Ilyana. The colors are soooooooooo preeeeeeetty.

Also, I've been watching Wolverine and the X-Men on Marvel.com, which miraculously does not block foreign IPs. I kind of like it so far. I can't decide if I like it because it's good, or if I like it because I'm just plain awesome'd by seeing te 4th-gen X-Men characters animated for the first time. Meh, I don't care. I can't even hear my own internal criticisms over the sound of how AWESOME Santo is.

Good morning, internet!

I am still on vacation with the lovely meiousei. But while we were in Tokyo, I finally bought a new scanner, as the old one was on its last legs. In order to properly inaugurate said new scanner, here's some high-res scanspam for y'all.

( Behind the cut: Ah! My Goddess, Sakura Wars, Fate/Unlimited Codes, and Soul Eater. )

Aaaaand that's it for this scanspam post. The quadruple-whammy of Animage, Animedia, Newtype, and GanGan are all going to hit the streets in a mere two days, though. I will try to have relevant Soul Eater scans posted in a timely fashion. But no promises, as I am still officially ON VACATION for the next week.

(Thank you, aster_dw, for the title of this post.)

FIRST! Because writing this series of posts has put me in the mood, this weekend I marathoned the fifth Sakura Taisen OAV series just for the heck of it. Then I did some poking around online, and, I am happy to report, the entire series is now available fansubbed, for those of you who want it. (The last time I checked it hadn't been completely fansubbed, but now... It has been!) The translation isn't the greatest, but it works. So, since this is the ONLY Sakura Taisen anime that is still unlicensed for distribution outside of Japan, y'all can check it out for free if you know where to look (*cough*).

And you all - or at least any of you that I've managed to get at least remotely interested in Sakura Taisen - should TOTALLY WATCH THIS OAV. Because it's one of the best introductions to the franchise that there is, and because it is awesome. First of all, because it's a completely self-contained story, and requires little to no knowledge of the game canon to watch. Second, it perfectly captures the COMPLETE AND UTTER INSANITY of Sakura Taisen in a way that no other animated version has yet managed to do. I mean, it's got everything, up to and including a carp-shaped spaceship. Yes, really. Plus, at one point in the series, some dude rips his own heart out - now there's the gore that previous Sakura Taisen anime shyed away from! Oh yeah, and at one point, a character actually shouts "Raise the quantum shields!" even though this anime is supposed to be set in frickin' 1928. Finally, I think it is worth mentioning that Our Hero Shinjiro spends prety much the ENTIRE series in drag, and not only that, is perpetually three seconds away from a makeout session with the manly villain of the series. Let me just say this now: This OAV is the gayest Sakura Taisen OAV ever. Heck, in the final episode, Rica even point-blank asks Shinjiro if he's going to marry the manly manly villain. That's kind of awesome.

But, anyway. The point of this entry is the Sakura Cafe. Yes, that's right. There's a cafe in Tokyo. And aster_dw and I visited it. ( LOL, pictures! )

Anyway, we're almost at the end. Only one post left!

Okay, so. The post that I HAD planned for tonight is clearly not going to happen, due to the fact that megami-sama.net's server is throwing a temper tantrum and refusing to let me upload anything. So I'm going to skip ahead of myself a bit, and throw up one of the posts that I was planning on doing toward the end of the week. Or half-week. Whatever.

Anyway, ladykleo posted this video of Maria and Orihime serenading each other, in the comments of the previous post:

And my first thought when I saw that video was be still, my little femmeslashy heart!

Pairings in the Sakura Taisen fandom are a tricky beast. Because of the choose-your-own-romance nature of the games, it's up to each game player to pair up Shinjiro and Ichiro with one of a dozen possible love interests. However, because the animated adaptations have to pick a side, so to speak, exactly two pairings become canonized in the anime Sakura Taisen universe: Ichiro/Sakura and Shinjiro/Gemini. (Ichiro/Erica is also hinted at in the anime, but ultimately can never be anything more than a platonic love, because SHE'S A NUN.)

But in the anime, there's a lot more going on pairing-wise than just what the two token males are interested in. I mean, I can't have been the only person who was picking up Maria/Kanna and Iris/Reni subtext while watching the anime, right? Not to mention Lobelia/Glycine subtext, which comes across not-so-subtley in the fourth OAV series.

And even without any canonical subtext to support them, Sakura Taisen is rife with potential femmeslash pairings. I mean, the story basically centers around a group of girls enlisted in the military who live and work together... There are plenty of buddy-buddy relationships in the series that it wouldn't require too much of a stretch to see blossoming into something deeper. And there are already all of the requisite pairing fetish dynamics in place for many of the characters: butch/femme, sempai/kohai, commander/subordinate, love-hate rivalries, hurt/comfort, and more.

So, open thread time. What are your favorite Sakura Taisen femmeslash pairings?

I'll get the ball rolling. I vote for:
1. Reni/Iris. They've kind of got that Cardcaptor Sakura Sakura/Tomoyo dynamic going, anyway.
2. Lobelia/anybody. I wouldn't put it past her to seduce any of the other characters just to demonstrate that she could.
3. Subaru/anybody. For the same reasons.
4. Maria/Kanna. I think that they have a great dynamic together, and are the perfect foils for each other. Plus I like the way that a Maria/Kanna pairing would subvert the butch/femme dynamic, since they're both the resident "butches" of their troupe.
5. Kanna/Li. This pairing has no basis in canon whatsoever, but tell me that it wouldn't be cute as heck.

Thoughts?

ETA: I can't believe I forgot this one: Sagitta/Gemini. Oh yeah, baby.

In honor of my and aster_dw's fabulous trip to the Sakura Cafe in Tokyo;
In honor of the fact that the Sakura Cafe is closing forever on March 30th;
In honor of the fact that the franchise just refuses to die;
And in honor of the fact that I just feel nostalgic,

I hereby declare this to be SAKURA TAISEN APPRECIATION HALF-WEEK in my livejournal.

Why is Sakura Taisen (AKA "Sakura Wars" in the English-speaking world) so awesome? Because it features one of the greatest casts of kick-ass women ever featured in a combined video game/anime/manga/novel/stage musical franchise. Because it spread Japanese visions of steampunk to other countries a decade before steampunk really exploded in the English-speaking world. Because it made Hidenori Matsubara a star. Because it proved that an FPS game played almost entirely on horseback could be awesome. Because the theme songs are so damn catchy.

And because it is absolutely, utterly, completely batshit INSANE.

( How insane? I will illustrate WITH VIDEOS. )

Coming up next: You know what would be awesome? So we've got this series of video games, and a bunch of animated adaptations, about a fictional theatrical troupe that's actually a group of psychic-powered giant robot pilots who save the world from demons like, every Tuesday. So you know what would be awesome? If we made a REAL theatrical troupe of REAL women, had them dress up and pretend to be Sakura Taisen characters, and then have them dress up as Sakura Taisen characters dressed up as other fictional characters, and have them perform musicals! Just like in the video games!

For you, ladykleo.

( Hanagumi STAR! )

Yay, it came today!

The artbook comes with an original A3-sized pinup of Sakura, which is the same as the image used on the cover.

The Ah! My Goddess section covers the span of Matsubara's artwork from the first season of the 2005-2007 TV anime, to the movie, to the OAV. Now I was expecting character designs, but got pretty much zilch - there is one page with a few quick sketches of Belldandy, Urd, and Skuld; the rest is full-color illustrative artwork. Quite a lot of it is full-page prints, which is nice. All of the TV anime first season DVD covers are here, and four out of five of them are full-page prints, so yay. Artwork used on the first three DVD boxes, the soundtracks and character singles, and many promotional posters and magazine illustrations are printed here too. Matsubara's movie and OAV artwork is included as well. Thus, disregarding the second season of the TV anime, the book is a comprehensive collection of the Ah! My Goddess artwork *done by Hidenori Matsubara* to date. (Of course a lot of stuff that isn't drawn by Matsubara is not included, duh.) It's all stuff that you've seen before, and honestly some of it (particularly the poster reprints) is available in a larger format elsewhere, but whatever.

The Sakura Taisen section is really the highlight of the book. For you fans out there, you'll know that Sakura Taisen official artwork is spread out thin between about ten different artbooks, so getting such a nice chunk of it in one fell swoop is a real treat. Again, character designs are restricted to a single page of sketches of Sakura, Erica, and Gemini. The rest is all illustrations. Deliciously enough, many of these illustrations were only available on programs and gifts sold at the Sakura Taisen musical shows. Which means that, unless you've actually been to one of these shows in Japan, the Sakura Taisen section of this artbook consists of a lot of gorgeous, full-page, full-color artwork that you've probably never seen before. And trust me when I say that Matsubara's watercolor paintings are to die for.

The Gankutsuou section is large, but also largely meh. If you own the Gankutsuou Complete artbook, then you've seen 90% of this stuff before. All of the magazine illustrations reprinted herein are half-page versions, with a few notable exceptions (like that Newtype pullout poster and the Comickers cover, full-page, yum). There are new reprints of the novel covers and pullout posters, but none of them are full-page versions. There are prints of two original phone cards that I had never seen before, and a reprint of the Albert's Diary book thingy cover that was new to me, as I have not yet seen the book.

Also included: full-to-quarter page galleries from Free Phone Line, Gungrave, Rurouni Kenshin, and Nadia.

Yes, because I am insane, I am going to scan all of the Ah! My Goddess TV artwork to post you know where. I also intend to scan the best of the Sakura Taisen stuff and upload it to animepaper.net.