Kanu Unchou Maid Ver. - By GoodSmile

Hello all! I know it's been a LONG time since the past post, which was my first music post, but I swear I have a good excuse! Actually, I have a few. After classes ended last semester I was planning to make more posts here, but little did I know that I had less than a couple of weeks worth of vacation, and life off the internet took priority there. Christmas time came, and I got the new Nikon D40 that I asked for, so I have been doing a little experimenting with it, trying to get used to it. It's rather difficult for someone who has never used an SLR before, digital or not. Anyway, down to business. I recently purchased the maid version Kanu Unchou off of a Dannychoo.com member, drakanity, so I thought I would go ahead and do my first formal figure review on her, especially since I have a DSLR to take some nice pics with now. ^^




This Kanu figure isn't a brand new release or anything, but she is quite lovely. She's listed as a "Wani Books" figure, but she was actually sculpted by Good Smile Company, and I have as of yet to be disappointed with Good Smile.



Her skirt is castoff-able (pics at the end of the article ^^), but it's too bad that her top isn't. :p



I read multiple reviews on her before I decided to purchase, something I suggest everyone do before making a figure purchase, even if they are sure that they will like the figure. One review I read mentioned her boots, which happen to be somewhat of a vibrant, semi-dark color blue, which, of course, does not seem to match her outfit at all. This would be the only complaint I have -- as they look more fitting of Ryomou than Kanu, but it's most definitely not that significant of an error in my mind.



I love her maid outfit, it gives her sort of a more girlish, cute look, while retaining her strength and elegance.



In quite a few of these pictures you can see the way Good Smile sculpted her hair, which is quite amazing. Very detailed, lots of work went into her hair, and the entire figure at that.



If anyone were considering buying this figure, I would wholeheartedly recommend it. It's an excellent sculpt, paint job, and general figure design. Definitely worth the money.

Also, not much, but at least a little yoko-pai (side of the "eyes," if you do not know what I mean by "eyes" then you may want to visit dannychoo.com and do a little research) is exposed, always nice to see. ^^



Also, these are the first pictures I have watermarked. I'm not very experienced when it comes to digital photography, whether it be actually taking pictures, or working with them in a photo editor, but I tried my best to make a good looking watermark. I ended up watermarking each photo by hand, individually, for two reasons. One, I don't have a batch watermarker (anyone know of any for windows? ^^.) Two, I had finally found a good looking design/color combo for my watermark text, but it didn't contrast enough with the white snow, so I had to tweak certain images by hand to get the contrast right.





Well, I'll stop babbling on and finish this article off with the remainder of the photos. Any and all feedback on my photo taking/editing skills is welcome, as I am trying to improve however I can. Also, just a little heads up. Here start the cast off photos, not too risque though, so shouldn't matter for most. ^^















I had promised more music posts previously, and they most definitely will be coming. For now, posts will be unpredictable, just as my current school schedule is. x.x Also, I am taking a web design class, and my final project is supposed to be a custom designed web page. As such, I am thinking of using that project as an opportunity to improve this blog. I might end up overhauling the entire design of this site, and hosting it on my own in the (somewhat) near future.

I know I don't have very many readers, but what would you like to see on this site?

(Read the rest of this post here.)

Fall 2008 Anime List

The new Fall anime list is out! I would like to thank Denizen over at myanimelist.net for making this list. By the way, click for a much larger image. ^^

Which of these anime are on your to watch list? I have a lot of them on my list, but I'm most looking forward to Rosario + Vampire Capu2, Penguin Musume Heart 2nd Club, Clannad: After Story, Kemeko Deluxe, and Vampire Knight Guilty.

Found via dannychoo.com news items, posted by member, Sie Kensou.

(Read the rest of this post here.)

Opening of Good Smile English site

As you may or may not have heard by now, Good Smile Company has opened an English version of their website. The website is being run on Danny Choo's web platform, Mirai Gaia. Danny was, of course, the first to announce this great achievement. In his post, he also made mention of the fact that he is now part of Good Smile's "International Strategy team", they are aiming to make figures more easily available to people all over the globe. Very good news for all of us not in Japan right now.

With such great a great achievement and, I'm quite sure, many more to come, I do believe we have much to look forward to in the otaku community.

(Read the rest of this post here.)

Fullmetal Alchemist - New TV Series

Awesome news: Fullmetal Alchemist is getting another TV series!

All that's known so far is that it has been confirmed. More detail is available over at Anime News Network, info found via dannychoo.com member news items, posted by member marl0.

(Read the rest of this post here.)

Animation's 100th Anniversary.

Animation had it's 100th anniversary on the 17th of this month.

Sorry this is a little late, have been delayed in things lately.

We owe a thank you of massive proportions to the pioneer of animation: Émile Cohl. 100 years ago it took Cohl from February 1908 to May or June 1908 to create the very first animated film: "Fantasmagorie".



Made up from 700 double-exposed drawings, Fantasmagorie had a running time of almost 2 minutes. The film's title is a reference to the "fantasmograph", a mid-Nineteenth Century variant of the magic lantern that projected ghostly images that floated across the walls.

Émile Cohl


My hat is off to Émile Cohl, along with all the other pioneers of animation, without them we probably would not have such amazing animated shows:

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya


Death Note


Neon Genesis Evangelion


Howl's Moving Castle


Lucky Star


Or sweet 2D girls as these ^^:















Click on any of the pictures for full res versions, I don't have the sources unfortunately. Also, I recently found a ton of Miku pics on Wakachan, is anyone interested in a Miku pic post? :p

(Read the rest of this post here.)

Akihabara Geeks

Otaku Dan has a review up of a movie called Akihabara Geeks over at his blog. More pics available there, too.

I'm trying to get this movie as we speak, seems very interesting. I would really like to see more about the lives of Japanese otaku. Is anyone else interested ins seeing this movie?

(Read the rest of this post here.)

My new Nendoroid and Figma!

Just got these two from Hobby Search, will take more pictures and do full reviews later. Nendoroid Mikuru and Konata Figma, I just HAD to get them both when I saw them at Hobby Seach... I should probably stop browsing that site when I know I should be saving my money. xD

I know I said the same about other figures I got, but I'm having some trouble getting any kind of good pictures out of this camera I'm using. I'm probably going to use my dad's old 35mm SLR and get the pictures on CD, at least till I get my own DSLR.

(Read the rest of this post here.)

Bakuman, from the creators of Death Note

Creators of the hit manga and anime series Death Note, Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata have started on a new series, called Bakuman.

For those who don't know, Death Note is an immensely successful series in both the US and in Japan. If you haven't read it or watched the anime by now I highly, highly suggest you do. Some people say it's just a fad, and others just plain hate it, but it really can't be denied, the art in it is amazing and the story is just so awesome.

Well, this post isn't about Death Note so I won't dwell on that too much. I just finished reading the first chapter of Bakuman, released today in Japan (August 11th), it has been scanned and translated already. It's available for reading over at One Manga.

I'm loving it already, awesome beginning chapter. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so I will just say a few words about it, the story *seems* to be completely different from Death Note, as far as I can tell it's not a melancholic story, neither is it a detective/mystery story. Surprisingly enough, it seems to be a story about becoming manga-ka, a story type that, I'm sure, appeals to many otaku out there. The first chapter really explains a ton and gets you engaged while at the same time leave the entire story completely open, they could do ANYTHING with the story from this point. The art is spot on, as one would expect from Takeshi Obata. I will definitely be following this series closely, most likely will buy it all when it's released here.

Once again, the manga can currently be read online at One Manga. Source for this news is dannychoo.com member, Akari's news item post.

(Read the rest of this post here.)

Lucky Star OVA

I recently found this scan of a flyer for the new Lucky Star OVA. Release date for the OVA is set for September 26th, it will only be one episode though, unfortunately. =/

No matter though, it should be quite awesome. Lucky Star never fails to amaze me, even after seeing it a countless amount of times. Though, it helps that all of the characters are SO cute. xD And the fact that Aya Hirano is Konata, she really is the best seiyuu ever, at least in my opinion.

Who here likes Lucky Star? I know some people think that Lucky Star is, in their words, a "stupid" show. I guess they don't realize that the original manga was in 4-koma style, and so the show basically seems like that too. I've heard some say that they don't like it because it has too many loli characters. Well, I have the opinion that because it's drawn there is nothing wrong with loli characters, they don't hurt a soul.

Also, almost every anime has a loli character, I always hear people preaching about quality of the show, but they then will ignore shows like Lucky Star, which have excellent animation quality, and are just plain funny, fun shows to watch.

If you haven't watched Lucky Star by now then I urge you to do so right away, it's a great witty comedy.

High res version of the picture above can be found at moe.imouto.

(Read the rest of this post here.)

Site design work

This is an edit to my earlier post. The site redesign is done, I added a second widget bar on the left hand side and fixed the layout.

I feel like I really achieved something, because I can't say I know CSS, but I still managed it. xD To be honest though, just doing that gave me a much better understanding of CSS, I will be working on the site continually and once I get enough income from ads and affiliates I'll get a domain name and host the site on my own, that way I have complete control over what the site is like.

And this is a uber moe~ pic of Kona-chan!

(Read the rest of this post here.)

WonFes 08

Unfortunately I live in the US so I wasn't able to attend Wonder Festival this year, but many others were.

Those interested in WonFes coverage can check out Danny's post. He also has links to more coverage on other sites in his post.

Pic is of Nendoroids at WonFes, via dannychoo.com. Original source at Ota-Suke

(Read the rest of this post here.)

Comic-Con 08: part 2

I'll begin with a (somewhat quick) description of all the loot in the first picture:

The things we paid for: a ton of manga, the wallscrolls, the figures, the art books (Tony Taka, lucky star, and Arina Tanemura; sorry, didn't take closer pictures of these, let me know if anyone wants some.), different versions of the Mokona plushies for my sister, Pocky and Black Black, Gundam Seed "Complete Best" cd, Shojo Beat, and the Love Hina Christmas special dvd.

And now the free stuff: about 6 or 7 sampler manga, all the Bleach things (including the game), the Square Enix fan that has the words "I'm a fan." printed on it xD, and other little trinkets, including some very cool pliers from some booth selling a lot of Revoltechs, even though I don't have any Revoltechs just yet the pliers work very well with Figma parts, quite useful when you're trying to be gentle pulling out joints and such.

Sorry about taking so long to make this post, I got kind of busy yesterday and had a hard time finding the time to finish taking the pictures. Finally got them though. Also, I found a program called IrfanView to do batch resizing and renaming of pictures, very helpful.

Now, here is a closer look at the rest of the loot. I didn't take individual pictures of everything, so if someone wants to know about something in particular, let me know. ^^

Here is a close up of the manga, we mostly got volumes to finish off series that we had already started.



My first two figmas: Haruhi.



And Yuki. Finally got them!



Woo, Nendoroids, they're so cute. xD Haruhi.



Yuki.



And L. This one is mostly my sister's. I think it's a cool figure and all, but no where near as cute as Haruhi, Yuki, or Misa Misa, to me.



I gave in to the fan-boy side of me and bought 2 shirts (got a third for free) from the J-List booth. xD I also got to meet Peter Payne, he runs J-List and the J-List side blog.

Miku.



Haruhi, this one supposedly says "I would die for Haruhi". Still learning Japanese, so I can't read many things. I went through a bit of trouble (because it was fun xD) and romanized what's on the shirt: "Haruhi no tame nara shineru". Shi is a kanji so I had to do some googling, as I know no kanji at all.



This is the shirt I got for free, I think it says "looking around, looking around", romaji is "kiyoro kiyoro", I do believe.



Ikkitousen poster I bought. Who else likes Ikkitousen? I always hear both, negative and positive comments about it. Most negative comments are in regards to all the fan service, I never found anything wrong with fan service, as human beings we all have our carnal desires, there is nothing "wrong" or "dirty" about it in my mind, and fan service is, well, a service to that. xD



A cool Haruhi poster I happened upon, just saw it when I was walking by a booth and bought it.



Another one that's mostly for my sister, the guys from Tsubasa Chronicle and xxxHolic, both are CLAMP series.



These next two are actually scans of freebie posters we got, I couldn't manage good pictures of them and they were small enough to scan. I had to scan both the top and bottom, then photoshop them together since they were too long for the scanner.

Haruhi



Soul Eater



Freebie Afro Samurai poster.



Code Geass wallscroll.



xxxHolic wallscroll.



And now, the freebie bags. You can't walk away from Comic-Con without getting at least one or two HUGE bags. First up is the Astro Boy bag, I had to have this one so I ended up standing in line for it.



Bag for the comic book series Watchmen, now being turned into a live action movie. Does anyone read American comics? Personally I only read Japanese manga, something about American comics just doesn't appeal to me.



Bag from the Viz Media booth. Viz is the American distributor of series like Bleach and Death Note.

(Read the rest of this post here.)