God bless those folks at IKEA. One of the things I’ve lamented over the years is not having a good spotlight to use on something as small as a 1:8 scale figure. There are a number of overpriced photographic lighting solutions, but that’s not what I want to spend money on. I have been using black poster board to create a shaft of light to cut through the darkness, but I’ve always wanted to create a spotlight for an even tighter light beam. On my last trip to IKEA I found the DIODER.

The DIODER is meant to be a shelf or cabinet light. When I first saw them my brain lit up. The compactness of LED makes it useful for toy photography purposes. The downside is the power output of the lights is pretty low, so not yet ready for main setup purposes.

As a spotlight in an otherwise dark and shadowy set, they’re good enough, as I found while using them in the Narika shoot. They also make great fill in lights. For the Narika shoot I used it a lot as a narrow fill light, providing another fill option to use in conjunction or instead of a reflector.

LEDs generate so little heat, they’re perfect to light up display cases full of PVC figures. When you’re done taking pics, you can mount them in your growing collection of display cases. They are so thin that even mounted under glass shelves (like in a DETOLF) they won’t attract too much attention to themselves with strategic placement.

Okay, now that we’ve got our little disc of light, we need a snoot to make a spotlight. A snoot is simply an obstruction to prevent light from spilling all over the place so that it casts a narrow beam. With the size of the DIODER, constructing a snoot shouldn’t be a problem at all with cardboard. Luckily enough, the box from a bar of soap is just the right size to fit all around. Just pre-form the box a little to make it easy to slide the DIODER in, tear a little slot for the cord, and there you have a spotlight.

You could probably get the same effect with a pocket flashlight and wrap some cardboard around the front to create a snoot for your spotlight. The nice thing about the DIODER is that it’s got a diffuser built into it.

It’s not the greatest thing ever. There’s a ton of actual lighting equipment that will do a better job, but I look for things that can pull double duty or just using things in ways they weren’t meant to be used that work anyway. I was happy to find this for my display cases. At $40 they might be a little too expensive to get just to play around with.

Using the DIODERs gives a little tighter control versus just a desk lamp. The shot below was with the swing-arm desk lamp on for a little ambient lighting to cut the contrast a bit. The basic setup of the shot is above. The lamp isn’t positioned exactly, so you’ll have to play around with it. The DIODER isn’t a strong light, so holding it through the soap box a few inches away wasn’t going to blow out the figure with enough surrounding light to soften the contrast.

The purpose of this “tutorial” isn’t to get you to buy these lights or to show a neat trick, though it’s there. What I’m trying to illustrate is re-purposing things opens avenues, so keep an eye open for those opportunities in all things you do.

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Post tags: lighting

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Yesterday, Tomopop posted an interview with me, where I answered a few questions about taking pictures of toys, what I look for when I use backgrounds, etc. Anyway, thanks to Colette for giving me the opportunity to say hello to Tomopop readers. Go on, click the link.

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Summer is way too slow a time for figure collecting. Given the heat and the low melt point of PVC, there’s probably a good reason why July and August feel like all the figure companies went on vacation. Commerce happens year round, so it probably has nothing to do with that and I’m just linking two coinciding patterns that have nothing to do with one another. Still, this time of year it always feels like I’ve stopped collecting figures. Thank goodness Narika arrived to push the summertime blahs away.

The Narika figure from Alter comes from the eroge Beat Blades Haruka, a game from Alice Soft, who know a thing or two about this type of character design. Obviously, the figure depicts Narika in battle gear. It’s eroge battle gear, so not all that practical for anyone but those looking at Narika.

Narika’s battle suit contrasts elements to frame her slender assets. She’s got a giant snowboard blade thing and ballooned out MC Hammer pants. Color-wise the battle regalia uses highly contrasty red and white to flank her pink hair. These high color and high detail areas create a couple of voids to draw the eye to her face and then to her bikini area, which in case you get lost along the way have a couple of line elements pointing straight to it.

I’m real happy with the figure. Alter’s Narika has invigorated my anticipation for the impending fall figure onslaught. What I like is how the twists of Narika’s slender body contrast with the overlarge battle gear elements, that and there’s a pleasing amount of detail rendered in her costume. The sculptor also managed to create some subtle muscle mass in her arms and torso while still keeping her slender looking. Sometimes these thin pettanko characters lack that nuance and have very basic limbs and torsos to maintain the illusion of slenderness. There’s also a pretty pronounced detail in the bikini area, but Narika comes from an eroge, so that’s fine and expected. I’d only consider that kind of detail a bad thing if the character comes from non-eroge roots. Of course, that’s a detail that some find distasteful regardless.

She’s got an ABS leg that connects to the white diamond-shaped base. It’s a very similar mount to the Haruka figure from last year and that’s held up perfectly. The big blade is mounted via a peg on Narika’s back. The right forearm and hand are made from a very flexible plastic so that you’re able to easily get the blade into position and her hand around the grip.

Narika is a great figure. Kodomut has some pics where she’s all wet, which is a nice effect. It was a fun figure to take pictures of simply because it’s just an awesome figure, plus red and white always make a striking color combination.

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Post tags: 1:8-scale, Alter, battle suit, gloves, Highly-Recommended, pink-hair, thigh highs

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Haven’t done this in a while, even though about three or four figures have come in since the last show and tell time. There was quite a bit of dust on the table where I usually do these things, a lot of dust for two months. Had her out of the box for a while and sitting on my desk. Hopefully, there isn’t too much dust on the figure for the photos. Anyway, here’s a few shots of Akiha Shishido made by the GoodSmile Company. I don’t imagine she was all that popular a figure, but I could be wrong I’ve been out of sphere pretty much since Otakon so I missed any posts about her.

The pose and the costume struck my fancy, what with the skirt being short, the legs being long, the butt being nice, and some things being striped. I like it. Still I know, she’ll likely hit the bargain bin and could have waited, but I’ve never been much to wait on a bargain with figures. I probably should. Every time there’s a big figure sale I can’t buy anything since all that I wanted I already have.

So yeah, summer was good, especially since it wasn’t very hot at all. Now it’s time to brace myself for the onslaught of the fall figure releases!

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Post tags: 1:8-scale, GoodSmile, nice butt, pink-hair, thigh highs

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Lucky for me, Ponyo was playing at a multiplex nearby. Ghibli animation looks great on a theater screen, so I’m happy Disney still sees it fit to put some promotion behind showing Ghibli in US theaters in spite of some pretty weak box office numbers for their previous efforts. Ponyo is different than the more recent string of Ghibli movies. It’s very much a children’s story. As such, I found it beneficial to turn the adult brain off, kick back and enjoy, watching it as if I’ve never seen a fish before.

It’s a cute story about a little fish who one day encounters a boy, Sosuke, who was playing on the shore. As she swims, the fish gets stuck in a jar and the boy frees her, but eventually she finds herself back home under the sea with her father who only wants to protect her from the world. The fish wants to leave home and become human to stay with the boy. It’s like a Ghibli version of The Little Mermaid story. This fish, who gets named Ponyo by Sosuke, wills herself to become a girl so that she can be with Sosuke and that wish results in a tsunami that Ponyo runs on to find him. This is the highlight of the film. It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve seen, the way the waves rushed and swarmed to land and the joy of Ponyo as she runs toward Sosuke.

The way events occur in the movie is very simple without any complications. Even if the tsunami floods the entire town, it works out fine for everyone and nobody gets bent out of shape. The inhabitants just deal with it. Things happen, which leads to change, but nothing interferes with that change really. Life gets out of the way of living and people accept things at face value. My friend is a fish is greeted with as much acceptance and surprise from people as saying I like ham.

The lack of complication leaves not much of a “story” and makes it feel more like a fantastic day in a life — the plot is almost besides the point. Ponyo relies a lot on the characters endearing themselves to you in the magic of simple things over a satisfying resolution of the plot (I think this is my experience with most Miyazaki movies, as I’ve always found the resolution of the actual story in most of his films somewhat unsatisfying, but find myself happy at where all the characters are at in the end). Ponyo and Sosuke have their problem resolved by their mothers. The two kids merely express their wishes and their parents make it so. A bit anti-climactic, but I guess there’s a certain amount of truth to that situation and the way children live, or maybe it’s a suggestion to parents from a grandparent. Anyway, it’s one of the many places where it’s just a good idea to turn that adult brain off, watch and enjoy.

Visually, Ponyo is my favorite of the Ghibli movies. I could have enjoyed the movie for that alone. The depiction of the driving force of the sea during the tsunami is fantastic and the submerged aftermath a total dream of green and blue. There’s a warmth there, a human made this sort of feeling coming from the color and the hand drawing, which carries over into how they depicted the power and fluidity of the tsunami. The drawn animation (vs. using CG) of the scene adds to the wonder, in part because, I think we’ve probably seen CG waves enough to not even notice them all that much, or worse, notice how fake it looks.

Overall, I enjoyed Ponyo for what it was. It’s the type of Ghibli film I tend to enjoy, being closer to My Neighbor Totoro or Whisper of the Heart, than the more ambitious and sweeping works like Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke, so that’s my bias. For the visually oriented, it’s definitely worth seeing. If you require complexity, well maybe you’ve got other things to watch.

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Post tags: art direction, Studio Ghibli

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Just a quick scene between Drossel and Haruhi. Drossel is such an amazing action figure, so expressive, which is funny since it’s a robot character.

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Post tags: Drossel, figma, The-Melancholy-of-Haruhi-Suzumiya

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I enjoy Otakon every year, but I always get the feeling at the end of each one that I’ve had a good run and might skip it from now on. I’ve been saying it for three years now, so I’ll probably be back. This here is my convention report, panels, loot, and jabber at the end. Didn’t take any pictures of cosplay or anything at the convention. I brought my camera, but I left it in my suitcase the entire time.

Panels and Screenings

Panels are still my reason for going to conventions, even though the social aspect of it for me has slowly kept growing. I think these are in the order I attended.

Voice Actor Mary Elizabeth McGlynn

This was the first thing we did after getting our badge. I’d already seen her before the last time she was at Otakon, but I didn’t mind seeing her panel again since she directs (Cowboy Bebop, Wolf’s Rain, Naruto) as well as acts (Motoko Kusunagi) and sings on all of the Silent Hill games. As a panelist, she knows how to keep the crowd who shows up interested in what she has to say, though it helps that she’s got an amazing voice. In all an above average panel, even if it wound up being a pretty standard VA panel — some gushing, line requests, anecdotes, and questions about things that haven’t been announced, which the general lack of knowledge of NDAs amongst fans, even older ones, surprises me.

Aniplex Panels

Aniplex had two panels on Friday that were back-to-back. Unsurprisingly, the first was a Kannagi focus panel. I didn’t get much out of this panel as to whether I want to watch Kannagi or not. I’ve not yet seen the show and it was assumed people in attendance had already seen it. I did like how Yamamoto (director), described some of the character design goals and creating a signature element for the design like the line for Nagi’s thigh.

The second panel was like a previews panel, though most of what they showed had not yet been licensed. Guin Saga, an epic fantasy anime based on a massively long series of books, looks great and I hope they can get a tv channel to bite on it. Seeing as the trailer was dubbed, I’m guessing it’s being shopped around. Didn’t remember much else, except the Kannagi trailer, which by this point I’d seen three times already that day.

Bang Zoom! Dub Workshop

I have no intention of doing any acting at all, but I stayed after the Aniplex panel to check this out because I was curious to see a dubbing process in action. The first half hour or so Tony Oliver (actor, director) basically pitched Bang Zoom!’s voice-over classes in LA. After that it got down to dubbing some scenes with panel attendees playing parts from some anime like Kenshin and Gurren Lagaan, as well as the Magna Carta video game.

In the past I’ve seen some dvd extras which showed the actors in the booth, but I haven’t really seen any that showed the director at work or the engineer for that matter. It was fun to watch the director, Tony Oliver, lead people to be where the character needed to be and the actors adjust to the direction. It was also neat to see the engineer be able to do a rough mix, move dialogue as requested by the director who would tell him how many frames to move the audio track, compress or stretch time, all on the fly (working on a laptop which is a handicap for this).

If you’re like me and are curious about process then check it out. Sure, it’s kind of like how you imagine it would be, but nothing is a substitute for witnessing it, let alone doing it. I was a bit skeptical about this panel before attending and thought I’d leave before it ended, but I thought it was worth staying for the whole thing, though I could have taken a break after the Aniplex panel and come back after the sales pitch was done — there’s nothing cynical about that statement, just that I’m not an aspiring actor and have no interest in investing for voice-over classes.

I Can’t Believe You Haven’t Seen This

This is a noble panel, where fans champion shows that should get more love. I only caught the last ten minutes of it, so didn’t know who else was up there with The Reverse Thieves and only caught the last two anime they featured, but I saw enough to say it was good. Any panel that tries to get more people to watch Kamichu! is worthy. The panel was in a huge room and most of the seats were full, even at the end. Plus, they gave away mad loot, not sure what it was though.

Bandai Industry Panel

Ugg…the Kannagi trailer for a fourth time. This one was pretty predictable, some trailers from already announced shows, and bringing out Yamamoto, or as my sister likes to call him, Mr. Stylish, for some more Kannagi talk (at least, thank goodness that Yamamoto isn’t that stuffy), and Bandai trying to get rid of more of those awful Lucky Star shirts that came in the SE releases which are too lame to even wear at home. They probably have a Rider truck stashed in Area 51 full of these things and will be giving them away as “prizes” for at least another decade, should they be so lucky given the way things are going. Would have liked to hear something less vague about their plans during this correction phase, some acknowledgment that they’re not just crossing their fingers. Bandai appears very slow to adapt.

Really, I didn’t hear anything to quiet down the growing sentiment that Bandai is “doing it wrong” with the marketing of their shows. Their solution appears to be to shrink and retract, rather than to take a step toward the obvious and either follow the customers or lead customers somewhere. Cutting service or the product down usually isn’t a fun strategy. Customers aren’t stupid. It’s true that customers are going elsewhere to get their anime, but making your product less attractive sounds idiotic to me. It might work as a tactic to implement something new, but I don’t see that something new, just the cutting. Short version: I want a dub, boo-hoo.

They really had nothing else and did “confessions for prizes” to kill the rest of the time. Having had all their news (Kannagi) spilled before the convention kind of killed the excitement of the industry panel.

Dub Actors After Dark

This is one of the things we make sure to go to every year. There’s really no point to it other than to laugh. It probably ran about a half hour longer than it should have. The first hour was very funny, but during the last half hour people just started to ask variations of the same question so it became more of a slog than fun at the end. Still there were some exchanges that killed me. It was great that when asked what anime should have never existed, one of the VAs named a show my sister and I like to make fun of all the time as the biggest who green-lit this POS, though it seems most people didn’t catch the show mentioned, as we were like the only people laughing at it. The panel highlight was an epic in character orgasm. Details left vague on purpose to honor the what’s said there stays there.

I’ve been to several of these. It was pretty decent this year, even if it ran out of steam toward the end. Unfortunately, getting into the panel required some effort, since the room was too small for the number of people who want to see it, so it meant waiting in line for over an hour, which can get tiring. Really can’t believe it was in Panel 3 this year, when it filled the larger Panel 4 last year. The line this year was closed half an hour before the panel start time.

Funimation Industry Panel

I’m glad Funimation announced something at the panel that I hear is good, Eden of the East — unlike Bandai, Funimation saved some news for people attending the panel. Other than that, it was a pretty standard Funimation industry panel — trailers and slides. While I can’t tell how well Funimation is doing, from the panel it seems like they’re actively adapting to the market. Really, I’d only start to worry when cutting dubs is something that’s part of Funimation’s standard operating procedure, which would basically signal the end of R1 if Funimation stops dubbing most things.

Even though I knew they’re waiting for another con to push Soul Eater, I was keeping my fingers crossed that they’d announce the cast for the dub, just because the trailer drives me crazy — I can’t tell who voices Soul and I’m pretty good with knowing actors’ voices. Oh well. If you’ve been looking at the loot shots, you’ll see I’ve been getting a bit of Soul Eater gear. I haven’t seen any of it, but I love the art style.

Voice Actor Crispin Freeman

Crispin Freeman (Alucard, Kyon) is what I’d love every voice actor to be at a panel. I attended both of his Q&A panels, and honestly, would have attended a third or fourth if there was one. While a lot of the questions were pretty standard fan questions and line requests, he’s able to field questions about anime (even one’s he’s not been in) that a lot of other actors just don’t seem able to do with such a depth of knowledge, or at least the ability to express that knowledge and tie it together with other things — very well spoken. Some VA’s are actors, and not fans of anime, which there’s nothing wrong with, but Freeman also has the perspective of a long time fan of anime. He gives off the air he knows what he’s talking about. I liked the observations about the different segments of the entertainment industry and just how different they can be, particularly with the apparent lack of cross-pollination.

He’s an insanely popular voice actor (as well as a director and script writer/adapt), so the question line was too long to get any questions I would have asked. It’s kind of disappointing that most of the time was taken up with questions I wasn’t interested in, but who am I to say those who just wanted to speak to Alucard were wrong to take the opportunity? At least, Freeman most of the time was able to add some interesting thoughts behind some of these questions. Being the mythology scholar that he is, I would have liked to hear him talk a bit more about Eureka 7 and the setting, but E7 only came up in one question.

I wish he was able to stay and give one of his mythology in anime lectures at the con, but he was unable to due to his own schedule — he was giving a lecture the next day and had to fly out after his second panel.

Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone

There were technical difficulties during the Saturday screening. The video would go out frequently. I stayed for half an hour while they were trying to fix it and then figured that by the time they fixed it, wouldn’t be enough time to finish the screening, so I left, figuring it would be canceled. Apparently, they finished the screening and pushed back the next event in the room. In retrospect, I wish I stayed. Instead, I got a fat gyro, too big to each with my hands, at the mall near the convention center. Food is good too.

Genshiken Fan Panel

The person running the panel I think just needed a little more confidence to get out what was in her head to go a little further with her presentation of the characters. Still, I love the show to death and watching select clips is always amusing to me. She did ask who everyone’s favorite character is and I’d have to say Saki, just because she’s an enabler and an outsider, which I relate to, the outsider part. Pony Boy.

Review Anime the Right Way

I’ve never felt like my anime reviews were where I want them to be, so I was looking forward to this panel, which featured Mike Toole, Daryl Suryat and Clarissa from Anime World Order, and Bamboo from ANN. While they provided some good information and discussion, the slides seemed to be geared toward someone who is thinking about writing anime reviews, rather than something more intermediate to help those who already write reviews to tune up their process. Stuff for beginners is always good, since I agree that more people should be writing thought out reviews than currently do, but wish maybe the second half looked to aide those who already do it. The discussion amongst the panelists was interesting though.

The Art of Translations with Trish Ledoux

Again, this was another panel I attended due to curiosity, rather than out of vested interest. If you’ve experienced anything Rumiko Takahashi translated into English, then you’ve seen her work. She’s one of those industry people whose been there long before anime blew up in the US, so has some perspective about where we’re at right now. The discussion on translation dilemmas and some of the anecdotes were good to hear.

Fansub and the Industry Panel

This panel didn’t appear on the printed schedule, so a lot of people didn’t know about it, including myself until my sister told me about it. While the panel last year was interesting as sort of a breaking ground for a visible discussion between fansubbers and the industry, this year it proved less interesting. The advent of simulcasts throws a wrench into the discussion, but I think the impact of the simulcast is just too new to really talk about beyond mentioning that they might have an impact — will streams pull some away from fansubs to watching a simulcast that generates revenue for the original creators back in Japan so they can, I don’t know, afford to make more anime?

Too bad Crunchyroll wasn’t there to share their perspective as the big fish in the anime streaming pond.

Loot and the Dealer’s Room

I love the dealer’s room, a massive room filled with all kinds of junk that seem so appealing. My mission this year was to amass as many pins as I could find of characters I like.

Pins are distinct from buttons or can badges (at least in my mind), which are cheaper and likely easier to make. I always suspect a lot of buttons and can badges as illegitimate product, but it’s kind of difficult to verify since many of them are sold absent of any packaging. All this is to say, I put buttons and can badges on a lower tier than pins. I did however buy a number of buttons, mainly for Disgaea and SuperGALS! characters, which being older series are difficult to find in pin form anymore. Seriously, who brings SuperGALS! stuff for sale? Crazy. Anyway, I finally got an Etna button to go on my armored laptop bag, but I’d be surprised if it was a legitimately licensed button.

On the pin front, I’ve acquired a good number to add to my armored laptop bag, both at the con and what I’ve ordered online. So many, that I think I’ll need to plan out pin placement and haven’t gotten around to doing that yet.

I tend to get a lot of items for shows I’ve never seen. This time around the art style of Soul Eater has been in my groove and I got quite a bit of Soul Eater gear: a 10pc pin set and 1 button, an art book, and a t-shirt. It’s about time I replaced some of the ratty t-shirts I wear around the house.

And finally, as if by fate, I had said that the only thing that could tempt me to jump in the Figma pool was Drossel, which I doubted anyone would have as it’s not been distributed to the USA. One vendor who imported it, did, and I snapped up the last one. Also picked up a Figma Haruhi and Kotobukiya’s Yarizakura Hime of Yozakura Quartet. The girl had a lacrosse stick, which I’ve not yet seen on a figure, and since I grew up on Long Island the lacrosse stick carries a bit of nostalgia that’s kind of strange since I never even owned a lacrosse stick when I lived there.

Overall, the selection of goods was decent — also managed to get a Black Rock Shooter mug and another NERV card case. There were vendors here and there that had unique items, so digging for goods pays off. Some years it feels like there are no unique items to be found. My sister went nuts on resins for Gaara and Kakashi from Naruto.

Otakon 2009 Wrap

Technical difficulties aside in Video 1 during Saturday’s Evangelion 1.0 screening, from my experience this year Otakon was well run. Using the conference rooms in the Hilton Hotel definitely helped spread out some of the traffic, particularly in that bottleneck area by Panel 2 and Panel 3. I found myself having to hit that area far less than before. It’s still a congested area, but seemed to be less of a choke point.

I spent very little time watching anything. While you can always watch anime at home, you can’t always get two hundred people in the same room watching the same thing. There are certain shows, comedies usually, which having the company of two hundred adds to the viewing.

Overall, Otakon gave me good times, but I still have a con-hangover. Saturday in Otacafe chilling with Moy, Omo, and VManOfMana was fun. OS stopped by to say hi and TheBigN swooped in for some karaoke. It’s so easy to lose track of time at Otakon that I got to do, see, meetup with less than I had hoped. At least, there’s always next year.

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Post tags: Bandai Entertainment, Conventions, Crispin Freeman, figma, Funimation, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, otakon, Soul Eater

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I can’t usually sleep the night before a trip. My sister and I usually go to Otakon on Friday. The plan is for me to get to her place by 7:30AM so we can get to Baltimore by 10AM, spend a couple hours in line, buy a hot dog from a cranky vendor, and be in around noon. It never actually works out that way, of course, and there’s no real incentive to get there much sooner. I really can’t see spending an extra $150 to sleep over Thursday night and be able to get in on the very first panel. Guess I’m not hardcore enough.

Like every year, I do plan on getting up at 6AM, but this time I kind of want to get in the con by twelve, since we’re both dubbies and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn has a panel at noon. She plays Major Kusanagi and is an ADR director (Wolf’s Rain). I’ve already seen her the last time she was Otakon, but my sister hasn’t and The Major is one of her favorite characters. She’s got a cool voice, particularly in person, and would sit through another panel.

To avoid it being my fault that we’re late, I’ve actually packed ahead of time: two each of shirt, shorts, boxers, pairs of socks, plus a pair of pants; a box of granola bars that are both sweet and salty; a box of Cocoa Puffs cereal bars; mandarin oranges in gel; snak paks of cherry jello and sugar-free chocolate pudding, no refrigeration necessary; one cup of instant noodles; a tooth brush; some toothpaste; a flannel for my face; shave gear; travel pack Immodium and Motrin, both which come with a folded up drink cup — how thoughtful; a hair brush; and twenty-four plastic spoons. Obviously, my priorities lay with not going hungry.

As far as what I plan to do? I don’t really plan ahead. I will likely hit a number of the voice actor panels, especially the “after dark” one which is usually funny and a couple of fan panels. Other than that, hopefully bump into some of the people I met at AnimeNEXT. Plus, it seems like half of the Internet is going. I broke my change jar this morning and it yielded $234.87, so I’ll spend some time in the dealer’s room searching for pins mostly — somebody’s got to have a random Etna pin and maybe, just maybe, get a Figma, but probably not as I don’t imagine Drossel’s been made available to dealers here in the US just yet and that’s the only Figma where I’ve caught myself actually wanting to buy it.

Sadly, this filler post has not made me any more sleepy — too much anticipation. At least it’s good that I’m still excited about going to Otakon after all these years. Might as well watch some Galaxy Express 999, which I’m digging.

(Image by: lunch)

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Post tags: Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, otakon

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On Wednesday my blog was hacked. It wasn’t a big deal, more of an annoyance, but it could have been worse (or it is in fact much worse and I just don’t know it yet). To get back online I deleted and then re-uploaded my Wordpress files via ftp. It was faster than trying to hunt down which files may have been altered. After that I took a look at the MySQL database to see if there were any extra tables and checked to see if any users were added to the users table. All clear, but also used the WordPress Exploit Scanner to take a look and was clear too. Hopefully, that’s the end of the hack.

I’ve been good about keeping my WordPress installation up to date, which is important in keeping your site safe. With WordPress 2.8 there’s really no excuse not to since it’s a one button push operation. Just a minute ago I updated. It took thirty seconds to upgrade to 2.8.1. Unfortunately, I was lazy with changing passwords every so often and had grown lax with scanning my PC for malicious ware — as an uneducated guess, this is how I got hacked. Full deep scans have since been done. Thanks to Gargron for reminding me over Twitter to change the database password as well as the ftp and blog admin passwords.

If anyone knows what else I should do, please let me know.

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Post tags: blogging

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Looks like tj han from Riuva is moving and can’t take all his stuff with him. Check out his figure sale. He’s got a number of things that are out of production, so if you missed something the first time around, you might find it. Seems like prices are negotiable. Someone should snag those Galaxy Angel figs.

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Post tags: help a brudda out

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A space heater that nobody was going to buy anyway was one thing. I could see an old shopkeeper parting with one for no apparent reason other than Haruhi wanting one, but this? Nobody gives away a Fender Twin Reverb. It’s expensive. I don’t know how she does it, but there it is in our club room the re-issue of the ‘65 twin. I feel sorry for the girl who lugged it from the train station. She had these thick eyebrows, that somehow were cute. Anyway, it’s better not to think about how Haruhi gets these things, just be happy she gets them.

Review of Haruhi Gekisou Version from Max Factory

This figure is sweet for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the guitar fan service (note: the Fender Twin Reverb amplifier model does not come with the figure). See what makes this cool is Max Factory’s rendition of the Italia Mondial Deluxe — it has strings, which totally rocks. If the guitar fan service wasn’t enough, well there’s Haruhi and this figure gives her long-legged glory and a costume with details and frill. These things were executed well for a mass produced figure. The macro lens might be a little unkind, showing what looks like a tarnished A-string among a set of clean strings on her Mondial Deluxe, but it’s not that bad.

Kind of wish her face were slightly more refined, but I think it captures Haruhi pretty well. Gekisou Haruhi has really long legs. More normally proportioned and she’d probably look stubby straddling the Fender Twin instead of rocking like she does. About the only thing I’d put on a wish list would be a more sheer looking stocking or shading to make the gray tone less flat, though I’m not actually complaining about how it looks, which looks good as is.

Other Stuff

I’ve passed on the Gekisou Versions of the other characters. To me this one is the best of the bunch, unless you really must have the SG (iirc) that Yuki sports. Mikuri’s dislocated leg just weirds me out. What would be great if Max Factory can do the K-ON! girls with their instruments in the same scale as the Haruhi Gekisou figures, especially with Ritsu on drums, and mix and match for a KyoAni all-star girl band.

Hehe, I have to learn a little self control with pushing the colors and contrast around a little. She’s a bit red here. I like how it looks though, which is why I didn’t bother to fix it. Also added a bunch of noise to the guitar shot. I was going to do it on all of them, but changed my mind. The other ones are a bit more normal.

This figure was reviewed quite a while ago and I’ve seen a number of reviews: foobarbaz, persocom, meronpan, exelica-meteor, and there’s probably more that I can’t remember off the top of my head — she’s a popular figure, so I think a high proportion of figure blogs have her reviewed. Still, I’ll link you up if you point me to your review.

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Post tags: gothic, guitar, K-ON!, Max Factory, The-Melancholy-of-Haruhi-Suzumiya

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On a bleached out courtyard at Sunpu Castle, two men disfigured by a life of perpetual violence face off to bring sweet destruction to the other man. Shigurui: Death Frenzy then takes the viewer back to the beginning of the story in order to explain this moment. It is blood, guts, and brutality.

Shigurui: Death Frenzy is interesting to watch, but not as cool as samurai swords sound in that it isn’t Samurai Champloo or Kenshin. This is an unromantic presentation of swordsman and samurai as scumbags and not as the badass/cool scumbag of Afro Samurai.

Swordsmanship as far as it is presented in Shigurui is very much a means to dealing damage, which the perfection of is a means toward more effective damage dealing. While this is fairly obvious from a logical perspective, it’s something that gets danced around when swordsmanship becomes romanticized as an art form and means toward self perfection as it is in many stories. Shigurui downplays the romance of the swordsman who grows as a result of self-sacrifice and dedication. Instead, Shigurui takes that away. Change and character evolution isn’t the result of internal inertia and dedicated training, but external force. Damage.

Damage is the vehicle of change in Shigurui. Everything that happens is born from damage. Character evolution begins with damage. And nothing good comes from it. Nobody in the story seems to have the internal inertia to overcome and stand up to that external force, which is why, at least to me, none of the characters are particularly engaging. They’re products of external pressure, rather than internal fortitude, which is antithetical for lead characters in fiction. It’s a story without heroes (or anti-heroes).

The absence of a hero makes me wonder about the intentions of the author. Does this serve to ratchet up the violence or is there a cultural critique in here? Not being Japanese, I have no idea, but I guess I’m just hoping there is to have some point to all of it (since if it isn’t entertaining and cool like, it better be something deeper and worth slogging through if it isn’t funny-fun-fun). A person doesn’t have to be intimately aware of Japanese culture to have heard of the internal criticism of the do as you’re told, conform, follow, don’t stand up culture, to create the wonder if there is some of that going on here.

For me, the focus on damage as grotesque art dulls the brutality (or maybe it was Higurashi that numbed me to brutality) of the blood, guts, and sliced through flesh, split eyeballs, and spilled intestines, which seems to be a favorite of the show, having intestines fall out and splatter to the floor — is this a pun on the lack of intestinal fortitude of individual people that allows insanity to win? At times, the gore crosses into gratuitous, while at others it’s descriptive, the damage revealing sensibility. The “Death Frenzy” bit is a little misleading to me as Shigurui is more deliberate than frenzied. It’s a picture of violence begetting violence. Violence bleeding into more violence. Violence birthing further iterations of violence as the path of least resistance. What makes the violence easy for me to observe, surprisingly since I consider myself a little squeamish, is how everyone in that world accepts and expects violence as normal. It’s not a shock to these people. They take and deal it very matter of fact, though with much pleasure.

What really held my interest in Shigurui is the cinematography of it. This atmosphere created by Madhouse and series director, Hirotsugu Hamazaki, is gorgeous (see ghostlightning’s post on Shigurui’s atmosphere). The stifled hideousness of this world grinds to the bone. Even the overworked anime cicada does more than its usual bit to create a heavy oppressive atmosphere. At times it feels like I’m flipping through a photo album, such is the way time gets stopped and a thousand words worth tell during some transition scenes.

In the end, I’m not entirely sure what to make of Shigurui. Is this just trashy ultra-violence dressed up by Madhouse to masquerade as something more than a splatfest? Given the production values and cinematography it’s easy to hand wave the question away. Part of the problem is the story is only half told when the twelve episode series is done. Is there really a point? If not, I could think of a number of anime that are a lot more entertaining to watch. Still, if you like to be provoked, even if it’s a red herring, Shigurui could lull you into believing there’s more to it. The quality of production and direction inspires trust.

English Dub Notes

The Chris Bevins directed dub takes the low key approach. Nobody really stands out, but that seems by design, since the characters themselves seem less important than the setting. There’s a lot of restraint in the performances. The dub track has the advantage of going through Funimation’s sound engineers, which is usually a good thing. Given the atmospheric nature of Shigurui, the sound shaping done adds a lot to the feeling of immersion.

Random Note

One random thing that distracted me was one of the background tracks that plays in a number of scenes. It sounds so close to something in Dead Poet’s Society, that Dead Poet’s Society just kept popping in my head every time this track was played in Shigurui. This specific piece of soundtrack is striking since the end results are the same in both Dead Poet’s Society and Shigurui.

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Post tags: dystopia, English-dub, Funimation, Madhouse, samurai, violence

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I’m the forgotten one. The one lost in the forest. The one who goes to what everyone else wants to do, but always winds up going alone to something that I care about. Maybe I don’t ask well enough, or what interests me nobody else cares about, or I just gave up asking. I’m insulating myself, I know, but at some point I know it will be no or that’s boring or something came up or, most often, they “forget” that there was something I wanted to do. My name is Nanjou Ran. Don’t ask what I want; you don’t mean anything by it.

Review of Nanjou Ran from Kotobukiya

Nanjou Ran comes from the game Sengoku Rance, beyond that I don’t really know. I picked her up on a whim at AnimeNEXT. The curves on her back, arms, and legs, are visually appealing, as is her costume in general. The ahoge make a pair of horns, which is interesting since she’s a caster making me think it’s some sort of pact based magic.

This is a decent figure made by Kotobukiya, not great, not bad. Some of the stuff on the back side is fairly sloppy, but otherwise the front view is good. Sculpt doesn’t feel as accomplished as it should to truly wow. While the curves of her body are appealing of themselves, not sure if it’s a solid description of the motion of flaring out her papers like that. It’s half pose, half motion.

Ran is mounted by screw to a clear purplish triangle, which is pretty weak and detracts from the overall look of the figure.

Other Stuff

It’s been a while since I’ve done a “set” for a figure shoot, which I’ve been getting away from more and more. It’s tough to do, so it’s a little because of the lazy. Plus, more often I find it a distraction, which it is here to some extent. I like the red on the white, it’s usually a striking combo, so I kept it in spite of how distracting, rather than complimentary, it can be.

(View the album on Flickr)

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Post tags: 1:8-scale, ahoge, anime figures, Kotobukiya, thigh highs

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Made it out to AnimeNEXT 2009, mainly to do an anime blogging panel with Omo, Moy, and SDS. I got there around quarter to four on Saturday to do a practice run before the panel on Sunday. The aforementioned, the duo from Reverse Thieves, Brad from Japanator, Kransom from Welcome Datacomp, Scott from Anime Almanac, myself and others, hit a nearby Ruby Tuesday for dinner after the Saturday Funimation panel. Breaking bread (or endless fries) was a good time. After that, some of us hit Bad Anime Bad, which is worthwhile if watching awful anime makes you laugh.

Anyway, on top of the sad time slot for our blogging basics panel on Sunday, AnimeNEXT decided to further deter anyone from attending by changing both time and location of the panel the day of. Whatever. Panel was okay. Good thing it was a mostly friendly audience. It went okay, but I feel like I got more out of it than the handful of people who wandered in.

Other than that, I didn’t do all that much but shuffle through the dealer’s room for an hour or so to kill time. Picked up a random Kotobukiya figure that looked nice and was priced well. I also got KYMG: Yusuke Kozaki Illustrations — the character designer on Speed Grapher. I really dig the style, the neutral tones, the hint of a grotesque edge, the balance of detail and simplification. Also, bought three pins and a keychain for the charms.

My goal is to make the flap of my bag like scalemail armor with anime pins. So far I have like 25 on there (I still haven’t found an Etna pin T.T). I use this bag to lug around my laptop and doubles as my D&D bag to carry the books I’m using. So much for getting a 15.4″ screen to keep the weight reasonable. I imagine those pins are closing in on half a pound by now.

(Image Credit: Rei by Yusuke Kozaki)

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Post tags: Conventions

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Anyone out there planning to go to AnimeNEXT, there’s going to be a panel about anime blogging. Omo, Moy, SDS, and I will be on the panel. It’s Sunday at 2pm in Panel Room 1, yeah, I know – the butt-end, but still it should be good, or that’s the plan. If you’re thinking about blogging, hear us out on why it’s a good idea. Or if you just wanna come along for the laughs, that’s good too.

(Photo credit: v1ctory 1s m1ne)

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© super rats for HappySoda, 2009. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: AnimeNEXT, Conventions

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