Otakuism

Story:

In a Japan that is niether past or present, where folktales are common and everyone wears yukata, there exist Mushi. Mushi are like insects, yet not like insects. More like beings that are the closest to the source of life. Mushi can infect people and cause numerous problems, like making anything you draw come to life or eat away your eyes. This is where Ginko comes in. Ginko is a Mushishi that knows how to get rid of the bad ones and use the good ones. He travels around Japan relieving others of their mushi-induced problems. Volume 1 contains five stories of Ginko’s cases: a boy who can make anything he draw come to life, a boy that grew horns and can hear the noises of the world, a man whose dreams can affect the future, a girl who can see the river of life at the cost of her eyes, and a girl in a swamp that always moves.

Art:

Yuki Urushibara’s art is probably best described as sketchy but incredibly beautiful. It’s not the most detailed art in the world, but instead perfectly conveys the natural scenery and sense of wonder that surrounds the mushi. The art invokes a sense of timelessness, where man and nature live as one and mysteries are everywhere. of course, that timelessness also comes from the reader having no idea what time period Mushishi is set in, with Ginko in modern clothes and everyone else in yukata and living in edo-period mansions. I quite like that, though. Recently I’ve been interested in the” aesthetics of medieval Japan, ” if that makes any sense, that Mushishi seems to embody. I blame touhou. Kudos to Del Rey for it’s excellent production values for the book. A real feast for the eyes I think.

Opinion:

Mushishi to me is a series of supernatural slice-of-life stories, where everyday events are depicted along side the existence of the mushi. Each individual story exists strongly on it’s own, with individual moments of happiness and despair. Each story is different enough from the next to not feel boring or cliche, and the idea of the mushi allows for an infinite amount of interesting tales. The mushi themselves are fascinating in the varied forms they take and their effects. Ginko himself is a suitably cool guy and plenty gar I think. Mushishi is hard to describe as it falls into no other categories. It’s merely a series of beautiful stories about nature and people. You’d would be doing yourself a disfavor not to read this excellent manga. Sadly, volume 2 won’t be out till May. How am I suppose to wait that long for more Mushishi goodness?

I’ve always thought that Nayuki gets the short end of the stick, no matter which Kanon adaption it is. Since her story is so entertwined with Ayu’s, and since clearly Ayu has to be the main heroine, Nayuki will never get her own ending, or even closure, as in the cases of Makoto, Mai and Shiori. I wonder what Nayuki’s ending from the game is like? But at least for one episode the attention can be on just Nayuki and all her cutesy mannerisms. Mainly the sleepy Nayuki thing, since everyone knows that sleepy Nayuki is the most moe thing evar. How cute was it to see her name the cats on her own coat, while sleepy I must add. So I guess I’ve become something of a Nayuki fanboy just because everything she does is so cute, and perhaps not as overly saturated as uguu.

Speaking of uguu, anyone want to place bets on Where in the World is Tsukimiya Ayu? Of course I already know, and when she does come back is probably the greatest moment in Kanon, or has the potential to be. We’re getting a lot of childhood flashbacks now, as Yuuichi seems to be losing that peculiar plot amnesia he’s had. Young Yuuichi really was a bastard to Nayuki. How dare he knock that snow bunny from her hands, and right after Nayuki had confessed her love too! Though I guess the action is forgivable since Yuuichi had just gone through something terrible that hasn’t been explained in the show yet. And finally, omgwtf Akiko’s hit! Poor Akiko gets her clocked cleaned by a runaway SUV. I didn’t really like the car accident scene that much, not the Akiko getting hit part, but the way it was animated. It was one second Akiko was there and the next two cars hit with no sign of Akiko. She could be crushed beneath said SUV, but the whole thing seemed sloppy to me. Kyoani could of shown her body flying through the air to make it a bit more realistic. I wonder how long I could go on talking about car accident physics in a cartoon? Anyways, Kanon only has three episodes left and I bet they’ll all be emotionally heavy. Man, It seems like the Kanon promo came out just yesterday…

Aside: Good as place as any to put this. I’ve joined Visual-Novels.net staff as a freelance reviewer/newshound. So in the future stuff I write over there will probably get posted over here and viceversa. Please check out the site. It’s one of the better Visual Novel sites in english next to VisualNews. Lots of Shuffle stuff also.

…Goddamn that’s hawt. Who needs doujinshi porn when there’s perfectly fine official porn , so to speak. Sunrise really knows their fanbase. On the girls: Millay’s breasts fluctuate to huge again, which is fine by me. Bath Kallen beats Shower Kallen on the hawtness scale while still looking like she’s high whenever her hair is down. Shirley’s drawn kind of weird, reducint the enjoyment. Nina looks kind of cute without her glasses, but the lack of a ribcage is just creepy. I hope we see more specials like this is in the future (knowing Sunrise, we will).

I’ve already watched 18, and I must say it was amazing. I don’t like the new OP footage as much, but Mutant Cyborg Orange-kun looks insanely awesome and the Gawain’s weird design is set off by the massive energy cannons in it’s chest. Schniezel is a bastard, but at least he’s a nice bastard. And obsessive Kallen is obsessive. Would be ironic if she killed Lulu for dating another woman, or women knowing Lulu. Speaking of Lulu, he gets kidnapped way too easy. When Suzaku can take you down you know you have some problems. Ah, I can’t help but love Code Geass. I’ll post more on 18 when the subs come out.

Prelims are over! W00t!

Apparently the Battle of the Manly Chests was a non-battle as Kenshiro beats Armstrong to a bloody pulp, 206 to 107. Completely predictable.

Now that the prelims are over we go to the Quarterfinals. Match-ups are like this:

QUARTER FINAL 1 - 25/02
Guts (Berserk)
—— VS ——
Roy Focker (Macross)

QUARTER FINAL 2 - 26/02
Akagi Shigeru (Akagi)
—— VS ——
Kasumi Kenshiro (Fist Of The North Star)

QUARTER FINAL 3 - 27/02
Onizuka Eikichi (Great Teacher Onizuka)
—— VS ——
Archer (Fate/Stay Night)

QUARTER FINAL 4 - 28/02
Shishio Gai (GaoGaiGar)
—— VS ——
Master Asia (Gundam)

So it’s Roy Focker vs. Guts first. No matter the power of /m/ it is impossible for Guts to lose this match. There’s just too much GAR there. And Gai vs. Master Asia?! How am I supposed to handle that much manliness in one match? The universe will explode due to testoterone!

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1% BECOMES 100% WITH TRUE COURAGE!

Shishio Gai Hikari ni Nare’s Char Aznable into oblivion this round, winning 191 to 161. A truly great victory for gar. Char’s fine and all, but when you need a real man to pilot that mecha, Gai’s the man to call.

Next round: BATTLE OF THE MANLY CHESTS! KENSHIRO VS. ARMSTRONG!! Yeah, Kenshiro’s going to completely own Armstrong. Finally these preliminaries are almost over. I want to get on to some real GAR action.

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Story:

In the best imitation of a John Romero flick Highschool of the Dead begins with the unimaginable numbers of the dead rising out of their graves and eating people for no apparent reason, and now it’s up to our team of sexy teenagers to protect themselves from being eaten alive. There’s Kumoro Takashi, the main guy of the group. A pretty badass guy who prefers using pipes and motorcycles to guns. Also obviously likes Rei. Miyamoto Rei is the first hot girl of the group. Skilled at killing with a pole and looking good doing it. Was going out with Hisashi until he went zombie and Takashi killed him. Obviously the source of some bad blood between Rei and Takashi. Then there’s Busujima Saeko, a kendo master who likes fighting in her thong and a naked apron; Takagi Saya, a bitchy tsundere who’s also a genius and something of a geek; Hirano Kouta, Saya’s friend/slave who’s an extreme gun otaku that can make a nail gun out of paperclips. Needless to say, he’s pretty badass for a fat guy. Finally, there is Marikawa Shizuka-sensei, the students bumbling and extremely buxom teacher. Penchant for getting naked a lot and driving a hummer really well. So far only seven chapters have been released and their all about the students trying to survive the zombie outbreak and get out of the city.

Art:

The art for this series is done by Satou Shouji, better known for his numerous best selling hentai mangas. Actually, I’m pretty sure this is his first non-hentai manga. If you’ve never seen Shouji’s work then there’s only one thing you need to know: his women are hawt. Not moe, but drop dead sexy, which every girl in HotD is, even the zombified chicks. The man just does fanservice well. It turns out he can also draw grisly violence well too. Being a horror series HotD has a ton of zombie killing, with everything from swords, guns, nails, motorcycles, whatever, and all of it looks bloody fine. Satou is the perfect man for this unique fusion of fanservice and zombies. Also wins for putting a Shaun of the Dead reference in.

Opinion:

Everybody loves Zombies and everybody loves fanservice. Put the two together and you get what Highschool of the Dead is, an awesome horror story. I could say that it’s mostly the sexy women and over-the-top violence that make HotD great, and mostly that is it, but there are other aspects as well. HotD goes into great detail to show how the world works in an apoctalyptic state. There’s frightened mobs ready to kill anyone or anything, world governments that are useless, teachers that choose to become dictators over the survivors, knowing who to save and who to let die, and other similiarly tough moral questions. A general sense of panic just pervades the whole story. And if zombies and the world ending aren’t your thing, there’s also the soap-operish qualities between Takashi and the girls. All the girls seem to like Takashi, except Saya who has her own problems with Hirano ie. too proud to admit she likes him. Obviously Takashi is meant to end up with Rei, seeing how their childhood friends and he killed her other boyfriend, but I wouldn’t mind Takashi giving Busujima-sempai some love in that naked apron of hers. Basically HotD is just an incredibly fun read. There’s no random philosophizing, mindless powerups, or moe girls going about their daily life, though there are sexy girls. It’s just people trying to survive in the worst situation possible, which can be plenty entertaining in it’s own right. Highschool of the Dead is currently being scanlated by XLG.

The East continues to burn red.

” Undefeated of the East ” Master Asia beats Maes Hughes, 270 to 204 on this most gar of pancake days. I love how people, mainly on /a/, keeping bitching about how /m/ is ruining everything. It’s not /m/’s fault that mecha anime has a higher amount of gar guys. You have to be manly to be able to pilot a weapon of mass destruction to save the world (let’s just forget about every gundam since 1995). Here’s a hint: if you stop watching shows about moeblobs maybe you’ll see some of these gar men.

Group G is a true /m/ vs /m/ battle as Char Aznable goes mano e mano with Shishio Gai, real robots vs. super robots. Char’s pretty gar and everything, what with the whole ” three times faster than a normal lolicon, ” but my loyalties have to go to Gai. In terms of true garness: determination, strength, belief, HAX powers, and plain grit Gai just wins. I know Char will probably win, but maybe COURAGE can change 1% to 100%.

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