Otakuism

I know who I’m voting for.

For those who don’t know, 4chan’s /a/ is holding a tournament, SaiGAR, to find the most GAR man/girl/object in anime. Obviously very similiar to Saimoe, nominations have been going on since November, with the 144 finalists selected this weekend, and voting starting January 2. Here is the official SaiGAR page with the bracket listings, and this page detials how many nomination votes the finalist got. You can also check out /a/ for the SaiGAR sticky thread, though it’s feeled with even more stupidness than usual.

Even though there’s a tournament to find the most GAR person ever, many people still don’t know what GAR is. Many assume it just means something like being gay for another man. In my own opinion, this answer is not entirely correct. Your gay for traps, your gar for those people who are so badass, so awesome, so manly for lack of a better term, that you are just stunned by their mere existence. Of course this sometimes is expressed by people as a wish to be sexually violated by said garness, but still that’s not always the case. Gar is best cited by examples: Archer (the original GARcher), Kenshiro, Char, Shishio Gai (from GaogaiGAR no less), Gartender, Akagi Shigeru, The Count, Kyon/Yuuichi, etc. Anyways, I believe I’ve made my point. I’ll be following very closely starting January, and we’ll remind everyone to vote then.

A slightly late review this week since I went out of town this weekend, but it’s here none the less. Not much this week, besides the highly anticipated (for me) OP to Bartender.

The full Bartender OP is as awesome as I knew it would be. Simply titled ” Bartender “, by Natural High feat. Junpei Shiina, it is a beautiful and powerful duet, with a lot of great piano work by Ootake Kaoruko (I’m assuming this is who is on the piano, as she did the OST). It’s jazzy feel fits Bartender perfectly, and makes it even more highly addicting for me. My only small complaint is that the full version doesn’t have the sound effects of glass shaking and pouring that the anime OP does. A very small omission, but it makes the song sound even more perfect. The ED, Hajimari no Hito, again by Natural High, is a really good slow ballad, naturally with the same great piano work. The woman singer of Natural High (can’t find her actual name) has a very soothing voice that is nice to listen to. A good song, though I’m usually paying more attention to the drink being fixed than the song at the end. I’m glad to say Bartender has met all my expectations, and mark it high on my list of best OP’s of the fall season (only behind FLOW’s COLORS)

Other releases this week (technically last week) are:

Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z ED2 Single - LOOK [HALCALI]
BLEACH MEMORY OF NOBODY OST
BLEACH THE BEST
Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge ED

You can get the Powerpuff and Bartender Singlse at Nipponsei, but the last three aren’t on it’s tracker right now, so it’s probably best to check out Tokyo Toshokan for them. Now it’s time to go catch up on Kanon and Gift.