May 7th, 2008
Okay, so I might have said some controversial things on this blog before. I’ve lashed out against the fansub community, criticized major anime news organizations, and advocated the right to lolicon. But I don’t think I have ever said anything so blasphemous against the otaku community as what I have to get off my chest this week.
Are you ready? Here we go…
(Takes in a deep breath)
Lucky Star is not the second coming of Christ.
It’s not even a particularly good show.
(Ducks for cover)
Okay, still with me? Good.
Read the rest of this entry »
May 4th, 2008
It’s been only four months since the Anime Almanac had it’s relaunch at the beginning of the year, but the result has been phenomenal. The blog has had more readers in the last couple of months than it ever did when I was Blogsome. So in order to ensure the site continues to grow, I figured it was time for a facelift.
The “Old” Look
One of the biggest problems with the site’s old design was that I was using an image of Yuki from “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya” in my header. See, I’m not all that artistic, so I couldn’t possibly create original artwork for the site. So I did the easy thing… find a nice image off of the internet, and copy-paste it onto my site.
But obviously stealing images like that doesn’t look all the professional, and since I’m going to be officially “press” this summer, I better start acting like one. I can’t hand out a business card with a copyrighted Yuki image on it, can I?
Not to mention that those bastards over at ANN also started using the image in their weekly manga review section… So there goes my hopes of making the image my branding.
So I asked the help of my friend Datura to create a completely original image for the site. Dat understands how to push the right buttons to get to the otaku heart, and often exploits them for her own profit. Whenever she needs me to do something for her, she calls me “senpai” and starts talking in the most moé way possible. She’d get me every time with that. So if there was a person I can rely on to appeal to an otaku audience, it would be her. I commissioned her for the new project.
Read the rest of this entry »
May 2nd, 2008
Just a quick note:
The folks over at Japanator invited me to be on their podcast this week. Be sure to check it out to hear me drool over the new Eva film and defend the upcoming Dragonball Z movie.
And for those of you wondering just why people like moé, you’re not going to find it here. It’s a very old post I made years ago, back when the Anime Almanac was on Blogsome. Here’s the link.
April 30th, 2008
I hated the Lucky Star theme song at first. It was anticipated to be, like everything about Lucky Star, the second coming of Haruhi and it’s very popular ending theme song. But it turned out to be nothing like Haruhi at all. After the first episode of the show aired in Japan and someone had posted the opening on Youtube, I was left scratching my head over this strange creature…
click to play in new window
The theme starts off with a spoken-word introduction (aimai san senchi…) and then goes into an entire verse of spoken-word lyrics (Nanka daru, nanka deru, aishiteru…). While this is not quite rapping, it still has enough of the rhythm to it that you can’t quite call it free-verse either. The song then breaks into semi-singable verse (Bon-bon, ooendan..) which builds into a full-blown j-pop chorus (Motte ike, saigo ni waracchau no wa atashi no hazu…). And just before the song is over, it calls back to the spoken-word introduction.
This semi-rap aspect of the song was just too unusual for me, so I thought it was an epic failure of a theme song. But after listening to it a couple of times, I started to like it. Not only did I start to like it, I was loving it. It’s odd style of the spoken word verses made them very memorable. I found myself saying things like “Let’s get, cherry pie” to myself all the time. I became a total fanboy for this theme song!
Originality is rare in the anime business, and the Lucky Star theme shows that taking creative risks can pay off in the long run. But that kind of success can come with a price…
Read the rest of this entry »
April 24th, 2008
Instead of appending this to my ANN editorial last week, I figure this deserves an entire post by itself. I’ve been getting a bunch of good emails regarding this topic. Apparently I’m not the only one dissatisfied with this new direction for ANN.
I was very worried about criticizing the ANN because who am I to judge journalism when all I do is program computers? However, Cameron of In Search of Number Nine actually has a background in journalism, and he’s not happy either:
Read the rest of this entry »
