WOULD YOU CARE FOR SOME TEA?

Wednesday, September 27

Anime

Shanatan

Just finished watching Shakugan no Shana.

I do recommend it, though it is a little uneven. Jonathan Tappan has an interesting review of it, but it is rather spoiler-laden, so you might not want to read beyond the opening paragraphs (avoid even the synopsis!) until you've seen at least a couple of episodes.

And now I'm going to take a nap.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:39 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 63 words, total size 1 kb.

Monday, September 25

Anime

Shakugan no Shana

Is pretty darn good.

I think it's licensed by Geneon, but doesn't seem to have been released yet. (A search of their sucky site reveals nothing.)

One thing I particularly like is that it's paced more like the first Slayers series than, say, Bleach. Dramatic rescues take one episode, not fifty. Plot points actually get resolved.

And like Slayers, you have a flame-haired flame-eyed super-powered chibi-chan.

Fear the kawaii!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:56 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 75 words, total size 1 kb.

Sunday, September 24

Anime

AMVs

Thanks to Wonderduck for pointing me to two great new AMVs. Both are from artists previously featured here at Ambient Irony.

First up, Stop Watching Anime and Go Outside! by Doki Doki Productions. Music is There Is Life Outside Your Apartment from Avenue Q; video from Genshiken (which I haven't seen) and other shows, some of which you are sure to recognise. (More details at Doki Doki's site.)


Second, She's Just Oblivious by the very talented Silver Moon. Music is Sharada by Skye Sweetnam; video is the best anime of 2006.


Enjoy!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:05 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 94 words, total size 1 kb.

Anime

Footnote

The first two munu servers were named Mica and Mew.

(Well, technically there was one before that, but since it was the only server it was just called mu.nu or something like that. It was retroactively renamed Pooky when it came time to decommission it.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:48 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 47 words, total size 1 kb.

Friday, September 22

Anime

So... Anything Good?

I haven't watched any anime for a while. The last major things I saw were Haruhi Suzumiya and Renkin San-kyuu Magical? Pokaan (and I still haven't finished watching either one).

Is there anything notable in the current season, now that I have time to watch stuff again? There's the second season of Honey & Clover, but I haven't finished watching the first season of that.

So preferably something that is good, but short.

I poked around in the three squigabytes of fansubs that I've accumulated and came up with Shakugan no Shana, which looks like it will keep me occupied until I can sort out what's what in the new shows. I've always liked shows where the hero gets killed in the first episode.*

* Paging Yakumo Fujii...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:03 AM | Comments (27) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 134 words, total size 1 kb.

Wednesday, September 13

Anime

Ah

This Ugly Yet Beautiful World? Where did that come from? I've never even heard of it.

Google...

Oh, KonoMini. Right. Never mind then. I couldn't even be bothered to watch the fansubs.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:56 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 34 words, total size 1 kb.

Anime

Meh

One cost of living in Australia: With one fifteenth the population of America, and effectively one anime distributor, we don't get sales like this. I could order it from Robert, but by the time I take into account shipping, customs fees, and Australian sales tax, it ain't so cheap any more.

Plus, I already have the Ah! My Goddess movie, Ai Yori Aoshi, Armitage, El Hazard, Lain, all of Mahoromatic, Read or Die, Sol Bianca, Sugar, Tenchi Muyo, Trigun... And two copies of Haibane Renmei.* There's Stellvia - I have the fansub, but haven't watched it - but apart from that the most I'd be doing is replacing VHS tapes (or in some cases laserdiscs) with DVDs.

Now, if it was $5 per DVD from a store here in Sydney I'd be right there.

* I did say I'd spent a lot on anime.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:53 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 146 words, total size 1 kb.

Anime

When Maniax Attack

Pete Zaitcev doesn't like Media Factory. He's not alone there, but I have to disagree with his reasons.

Media Factory was the first, and so far the only, anime studio to take any action against the fansub community. They didn't sue anyone, but they did request that people remove any fansubs or links to fansubs of Media Factory properties. Which is certainly their legal right, but does break with the idea that fansubs are tacitly accepted - as long as the fansubs are withdrawn from distribution once a series is licensed outside Japan. (AnimeSuki in particular is very good about this.)

Now, you can understand why studios might be willing to accept this. Their major market is Japan. A show airs on TV, they get paid, and if it's a success they stand to make the big bucks on DVD sales and plushies. Getting licensed outside Japan is always a bonus, and it helps a lot if there's a fan base outside Japan. The American anime distributors keep an eye on what the fans are talking about when they decide what to license. (Usually. Sometimes they seem to be thinking of something else entirely.)

And fansubs drive that base.

So what happened to change Media Factory's mind? Well, they had something of a hit with a TV series called Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. Which I really really hate, but that's beside the point. They followed it up with a DVD release called Akane Maniax.

And it was on the fansub sites practically the day it hit the stores in Japan. Including "raws" - direct rips of the DVDs.

One might understandably get a little upset at that.

I love my fansubs, and I sometimes don't worry too much if I decide not to buy the DVDs afterwards because I've spent, um, a lot of money on anime over the past decade. (Including at least 15 Media Factory titles, just going from memory.) And I have fansubbed some episodes of the original Dirty Pair series myself*, and might even get back to completing the task one day.

But if the studio asked me not to, I would think no less of them for that.

* From someone else's script. I just edited it and fixed the timing and stuff.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:56 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 384 words, total size 2 kb.

Friday, September 08

Anime

Poit

Oops. My brain just melted.

Little kitties set to music from My Neighbour Totoro:

Really little kitties set to music from Kiki's Delivery Service:

Warning! That second one is dangerously cute.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:08 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 33 words, total size 1 kb.

Tuesday, September 05

Anime

Cute Is As Cute Does

Just unwinding with some Ichigo Mashimaro after a hard day of mmph mph mmmph mph.*

Steven wrote:

The theme song to Ichigo Mashimaro ("Strawberry Marshmallow") begins, "You mustn't call us cute!"
But the fansub I have** has the line as "something like cuteness cannot be expressed in words".

Which I find interesting, because the distinction is subtle but significant. No way is my Japanese good enough to tell which one is more accurate - after all this time I'm still at the pick-up-words-and-occasional-phrases level - so I'll throw this one to the peanut gallery... If I still have a peanut gallery after my enforced absence of late.

kawaii nante sonna koto iccha dame desu says the subtitle.

Well, I can see the "cute" part anyway. And "nante", "sonna", "dame", and of course "desu" are familiar enough. But I looked up "iccha" and it doesn't even seem to be a word.

Update: Strawberry Pocky! Yeah!

* Which is made even more enjoyable by the fact that I am not allowed to talk about it.
** I am years behind in watching my fansubs. I keep right on downloading them, though.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:09 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 197 words, total size 1 kb.

<< Page 1 of 1 >>
85kb generated in CPU 0.0283, elapsed 0.5005 seconds.
58 queries taking 0.4838 seconds, 309 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
Using http / http://ai.mee.nu / 307