Nothing to See Here Except a Loser Hanging On Another Year

Does it count if this blog shut down just shy of three years but I’m still plugging away elsewhere? Maybe we should say I am like one of those Death Row inmates with an eternal stay of execution.

Today is my three-year anniversary doing this nonsense. I would make this announcement at The Cart Driver, except I don’t have anything particularly interesting to go along with it. I’d rather not subject The Readers to me jerking myself off about silly milestones. Why do that when I can subject them to me jerking myself off with stupid anime metafiction? Clearly that is far superior.

So here I am! It’s been fun. Honestly, I’m thankful to Scamp for bringing me aboard his Code Geass worship site (that is secretly loaded with LelouchxSuzaku fanart; you just gotta look in the right places). It takes a peculiar kind of person to keep plugging away all alone for a few years with such small expectations. I mean, let’s face it — Scamp has a big site compared to anime blogs, but compared to actual Big Sites on the Internet? It’s still relatively tiny. So what does that make this joint? I’ll leave that question hanging. Suffice to say, if I kept at it on my own, I probably would have burned out or become indecipherable eventually. Maybe both.

But, yes, it does feel nice working with other people in both Japanimation-related things I do on the good ol’ Interwebs. It’s especially nice when I’m trusted to do whatever and it’s cool. How many people would let their colleague debut with this? It doesn’t really tell the reader anything except that I like to fuck around at their expense. This is what happens when you give me any semblance of power.

Anyway, uh, I guess I’ll still keep going since it’s still fun and all. I don’t have any particularly big plans except that I want to hit multiple conventions this year. I was pretty jealous reading about all the good fun time fun people had at Otakon. Don’t know if I’ll make it there, especially since it’s so close to Anime Expo, but I do want to go through with the Sakura Con plans that I had to abort earlier this year. So if you live in the Seattle area, then you might see me next year! Don’t let that scare you away from the convention, please. Maybe I’ll hit up other places, too. All depends on how well I can juggle my vacation days. I think I get a bump since this is my third year at the ol’ place of work. Fingers crossed!

That’s about it. This is the last post here until I have some other stupid announcement to make. See you jerks later.

Man, Remember Rio? Shit Was Awesome

Later.

12 (Nice) Moments of Anime 2011 No. 1 – With a Little Help from My Friends

Plenty of folks have sucked the SCCSAV’s cock already; I’m just adding one more mouth to the orgy.

It’s a simple but fun and grand idea that has added quite a bit of color to my anime viewing this year. Let’s face it: If all we did was pontificate on our stupid blogs, this community would become quickly sterile. A lot of us (myself included) spew a bunch of bullshit atop our soap boxes, but we need an outlet to really bullshit, you know? I never really liked forums — they feel static to me, and you have to pour so much time into keeping track of dumb conversations, which is increasingly difficult for me. So fuck forums.

Twitter is like the ideal forum for me. It’s quick, real-time and direct. It’s easy to keep track of all your retarded conversations, and it’s easy to jump in and out of convoluted conversation threads. You can immediately spaz out about whatever nonsense you’re watching. Maybe constant media exposure has destroyed my brain, and I can’t function without some shiny tweet gracing my eyes every few seconds, but WHATEVER, MAN.

However, Twitter is, of course, limited, and that’s where the SCCSAV steps in. The beauty of the group is its simplicity. It all boils down to these two sentences:

“HEY, YOU GUYS WANNA WATCH SOME ANIME TOGETHER?”

“FUCK YEAH!”

There are people from all over the world in the group itself, and on Twitter, so it’s almost a guarantee that you’ll find someone who wants to watch something. And then it’s a hop, skip and a jump to Skype (or Teamspeak or whatever), and boom, tough actin’ Tinactin you’re interacting with people in an impromptu anime club showing. It’s simple, spontaneous and flexible, and that’s what makes the proceedings so much fun.

I’ve watched plenty of great and not-so-great anime with my brethren this year, and every meeting has been awesome. No matter how pretentious or intellectual or holier-than-thou any of us acts, at heart we’re all a bunch of goofballs who want to have fun watching silly Japanese cartoons. I can sincerely say that my sessions with the Terribad group, the classic anime group, the shipping group, the Macross group, and on and on and on have affected my life for the better. It’s easy to forget when we are in abundance on the Interwebs, but anime is niche as shit, and I personally know maybe five or six people who watch anime, and certainly none of them with the frequency that I do.

So, yes, I am grateful for all you chucklefucks who join me in watching my ultraviolent porno cartoons every week. To another year!

The Philosophy of 1

One of the more loathsome things I’ve ever seen . . .

I was watching California Crisis with some fine folks who enjoy anime of the terribad variety (by the way, California Crisis is an awesome terribad show; highly recommended by me!). Afterward, we started talking a bit about our general experiences watching the various terribad anime we/they have watched during these weekly meetings, and it was brought up that even though I’ve watched everything they have watched (whether in the group or on my own), I have not given a single anime I’ve seen a score of “1” despite viewing some truly awful, putrid shit. It got me thinking a bit about how I approach anime.

Nihon Reviewing

So I’m now one of two new staffers at The Nihon Review, along with Eternal of Memories of Eternity. (By the way, he’s coming to Los Angeles for Anime Expo during Fourth of July weekend for anyone who needs more incentive to attend! As if meeting me weren’t already a transcendent experience.) I’m definitely looking forward to spamming the site by giving 10s to everything I review! Just kidding, Sorrow-kun, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal.

I’m mainly looking to contribute to the anime reviews section and occasionally to the live action section (I need to watch more Japanese flicks). Whenever I come up with ideas that are better suited for shorter posts than my long-winded rambling here, then I’ll pop up on Behind the Nihon Review as well (and, obviously, I’ll be on the staff-wide posts). My main hope is to review series that don’t get as much attention as the more popular stuff, and to one day pick up the torch as the resident mecha dork on staff. Too bad Kavik Ryx already reviewed a lot of what I have seen! My dopey Macross and G Gundam references on my profile will have to suffice for now. 😦

Anyway, for the curious, my activity there will not affect my posting habits here. I wouldn’t have accepted the position if I didn’t think I could also continue posting regularly here. UNMEI KAIHEN ain’t going anywhere.

By the way, my first review is up at the site. I felt sort of weird being like, “THIS IS A 10, DAMN IT” my first time out, but fuck it, Rose of Versailles is just that damn good.

A super cool, groovy project.

Ever since Ogiue Maniax made this post, I’ve wondered whether anyone had ever documented fake brands in anime — speficially, brands animation studios concoct as parodies of real brands so that viewers are reminded of a certain company/product without the real brand owners having cause to sue the ever loving fuck out of the animation studios. A bit of research I did uncovered several forum threads dedicated to this premise, along with the occasional website/blog post, but never a single site whose sole purpose was cataloguing parody brands.

So after a while of waffling, I’ve started to fill that void with a Tumblr blog: IT’S A SOMY

I’m just one guy, however; I fully intend for this to be a collaborative project. Submission is easy: Just take a screenshot of a parody brand, take note of the information (anime title + scene context, if you think it’s needed) and upload it somewhere I can get to it (any image hosting site is fine — Imageshack, Photobucket, Twitpic, etc.). I give full credit to anyone who makes a contribution. I can be contacted in numerous places — comments on this site, my MAL account, Twitter, my e-mail address (listed in the About section) and so on. Feel free to bombard me with screenshots. I’m also keeping a list of every parody brand handy so that there won’t be any duplicates; however, if multiple studios come up with the same brand, then that is free game.

Let’s make this site big enough so that eventually any anime fan can browse through it for hours and have a few chuckles at silly consumerism!

EDIT: Tumblr users can now directly submit posts for approval. Just follow the listed guidelines, and you’ll be cool.

One Year Down …

. . . who knows how many more to go?

Anime Expo 2010: Circle Jerk City

A warning beforehand: Don’t expect anything of substance from this post. My aim going to Anime Expo was to have fun; I did that and nothing beyond that, and I hope this post reflects that purpose. ANN has good coverage of everything of worth that went down at the convention, and Anime Diet has some cool interviews and videos that you won’t get elsewhere. (Plus, the Anime Diet crew are a bunch of cool dudes, so you should visit their site out of principle.) Basically I’m just some geek who went to an anime con and thinks people care about his opinion of what he saw at the event. Good times!

(Also, I want to get this over with so that I can go back to writing about, you know, anime, so I’ll cram everything into this post. I’ll try and cut down on the extraneous blabber as much as possible, but no promises. I think by now my readers know what they’re getting into when I post. :X)