Reviews and Anime Stuff01 Jun 2007 06:43 pm

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Yano: “I wish I could erase my past, to stop you from crying. If I could, I would, but I can’t. That’s impossible. So we’ll just have to make my past pale in comparison to the present.”
Nana: “How do we do that?”
Yaho: “Like this… with you, in the reality of present with me.”

With the complete lack of shoujo anime series this season, I started searching for past season to satisfy my shoujo hunger. Bokura ga Ita happens to be the one I chose.

In the beginning of the first year of high school, the cute, innocent and clumsy Nanami Takahashi falls in love with the popular and cool Yano. She confesses to him, and he replies to her feelings at the school festival. The two starts dating. However, Yano has a deep secret: he has a past, an ex-girlfriend that he is still in love with, whom he cannot forget, Though, she no longer exists, she was killed in a car accident a year ago. Spending lots of time with Takahashi, Yano knows he loves her, but he cannot forget his past, a past that hurts and bothers her so much that he hopes never existed.

An unusual slow pace shoujo series about the couple working out issues and opening their hearts to each other, the entire series is filled with touching and quotable dialogues like the one above. You wouldn’t find the typical shoujo plot, where the story ends when the couple becomes a couple and holds hands; the story is filled with realistic problems and circumstances. I would compare this to Kare kano (minus the comedy). So yes, go watch it, I recommend it!

Manga Stuff01 Jun 2007 06:42 am

Last link of Nymphet Ever. Hopefully. Simon Jones points us to Ikimashou.net. (There you go, all the frustration and angst I’ve been hearing in the last few days summerized in one place!)

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Kiddy Porn or Not?

Just because the “lolicons” won’t openly admit to anything unless they are labeled as “anonymous” on the ~chan sites doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Look through my first post of Kojikan, how many people actually think the series is “fapworthy”. It is definitely true that some of those people will be buying Nymphet, but it’s not like they will ever openly tell the world that. The majority of people would simply find this series halirious, and those are the people who speak out about the book. Maybe Seven Seas is being a bit too careful, but they are a running business, they don’t do things just to make fans happy. Though, I’m sure doing both will be the best, since happy fans=buying fans.

Anyhow, more pointless chat. ¬.¬
(…and sure, I’ll be the first to openly admit that I found Kojikan arousing, if my opinion counts, as a female… )

~*~
[12:36am] Jiji: and when kojikan is animated, then I can show them that.
[12:36am] Jiji: oh wai–
[12:37am] Floating_Sakura: kojikan! <3
[12:44am] milki: kojikan sounds like lolicon
[12:45am] Firedog: it isn't
[12:45am] Floating_Sakura: (so 7 seas would argue)
[12:45am] Firedog: it's a parody of it if anything
[12:46am] Floating_Sakura: eh?
[12:46am] Floating_Sakura: no
[12:46am] Floating_Sakura: there are enough loli fanservice
[12:46am] Floating_Sakura: >.><.<
[12:46am] Firedog: there would have to be for it to work
[12:46am] Floating_Sakura: am i the only one who found that manga quite arousing… in a very loli-way
[12:46am] Floating_Sakura: ^^;;
[12:47am] • Firedog sighs
[12:47am] • Firedog pats novey on the head
[12:47am] Floating_Sakura: what? ^^;;;
[12:47am] Jiji: only time I got aroused with that one was the female teacher
[12:47am] Floating_Sakura: prove that you’re a fake lolicon
[12:48am] Floating_Sakura: kojikan was hot… ^^;;;
[12:49am] [aa]fiz: well there’s no mystery why floatie liked it.
[12:49am] Firedog: aparently
[12:50am] Floating_Sakura: it’s not what you think!
[12:50am] [aa]fiz: sure, sure.

Manga Stuff31 May 2007 11:09 am

Manga Blog points us to Jason DeAngelis’ explanation on Nymphet’s cancellation.

I’m not going to comment on it, I am grateful that Seven Seas bothered to explain themselves. If you are complaining still, then I may point out that it is a privlidge to complain! How many times over the years have you heard titles being licensed and then never released? In particular, I am still waiting for Haou Airen, by Shinjo Mayu, licensed by Viz to come out from 3+ years ago. What? They’re going to let a few (dozens) underaged rape scenes keep them from releasing! Blah! (Note: sarcasm.)

Seriously, Seven Seas do not have to do this, if they wanted to cancel it, they could have just do so without announcing, and you would never hear about this title again, nor see it in store, leave alone have anything to complain about! You’ll just be wondering what happened to it, but no one will ever tell you! That’s the typical way to “hide the evidence” of “bad licenses” in most companies. So yup, I am grateful that Seven Seas care about what the fans think and spent the time to even explain to us the decision.

As a bonus, I have included the questionable pages. I even took one hour of my breakfast time to scanlate them, including p. 128, the page before to how the scene led up to the scenerio! (Personally, I couldn’t understand why he pinpoint these pages in particular, I think the entire series are filled with scenerios like these, I’m not even going to go into the omake publishd in Comic Seed for Kojikan where the principal tried to seduced Rin into having underaged sex with him. Though, I don’t think those two chapters of omake would get published into tankoubon. ) Anyhow, enjoy!

[Edit: Images link fixed. (_ _;)]

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Manga Stuff30 May 2007 08:57 pm

First apologies for abandoning blog. A lot is going on with my life, plus I’m quite sick in the last couple weeks. *sigh* Anyhow, on with today’s topic.

If you haven’t heard, Seven Seas has dropped Kodomo no Jikan. I just felt that I have to blog about this because people expect me to say something about it. All day long people have been walking into me on IRC trying to provoke a conversation from me on Kojikan. To be honest, I haven’t had time nor energy to keep up with ANY of the online debates about it, except for people who intentionally walk up to me to attempt to speak their point-of-view to me. Obviously, those are the people who whine about Nymphet being cancelled and how Seven Seas “lack balls”.

What do I have to say about this? Not too much, really. Disappointed? Yes, very. But that’s the fangirl-side of me speaking. Logically, I understand Seven Seas’ decisions. The title has caught my eyes before it was even scanlated by Akatsuki. In fact, it caught my eyes, as a manga with a cute cover that made #1 on amazon.jp (it was still on pre-order at the time too!). I just knew I had to get the book and check it out! Since then, I’ve been a faithful follower of the series, and I’ve gotten the first two volumes in Japanese.

Those who has read the series know exactly what I am talking about. The series is so enjoyable because the scenerios are so taboo, the plot is so funny because the situations are so awkward; of course, the fanservice is the icing on the cake — an-8-year-old-underaged fanservice, nonetheless. The above description just seems too obscure for the typical Americans to accept — typical American being those who think a nipple in a manga should be censored in order to protect the children. That’s why it puzzeled me so much when Seven Seas licensed the title. It seemed like a huge risk for a company who was just starting out. Nonetheless, I was excited to see it happened, while not expecting much from the outcome. (Seriously, I was expecting Seven Seas to bail out since they announced the title a year ago. I just never thought it would took this long.)

Seven Seas made many mistakes, I think. The biggest one, however, would be that they didn’t step up to address the controversies until recently, when the book should be hitting stores (and I’m guessing it’s retail stores that are giving them problems?). Why couldn’t Jason DeAngelis had made the public statement, the reasons why Seven Seas believes Kojikan shoudl be published, sooner? Of course, it would not have avoided the controversies and heated debates, but as of how things are right now, it definitely made it very difficult for the fan to understand Seven Seas’ cancelling the title, especially since two days ago, they have made such a public statement and a strong stand that they have good reasons to publish it. I supposed there were an overwhelming lack of retailers support, considering the letter seemed to have been addressed to retailers themselves (this is purely my own hypothesis, there may be a huge combination of reasons).

Now, what’s done is done. What are their other options if they were to publish it and avoided controversies as these? Obviously to censor the book! Would you be happy to get a censored copy of Nymphet? To be honest, I would prefer to not have it at all in that case (I am sure many of you are with me here). So that’s exactly what Seven Seas is doing, they took the book out, since they lack retailers support and they don’t want to censor. We, the fans, are all disappointed, but Seven Seas has made a decision that they believed to be the best. There’s really nothing you can do about it (well, aside from flooding their mailbox with complaints, which I don’t suggest anyways). If you really wish to read the series, I suggest you go order yourself a copy from yesasia and I’ll see about posting text translation in the summer if enough people bug me about it (and no scanlators pick the title back up again).

Oh, Oh, OHHH! I just have to mention this, go read the freshly released Otaku no Musume-san, translated by me. I proposed this title (and another one that will be coming soon), as Kojikan replacement projects to Akatsuki-Manga earlier this year. It took a bit longer than I expeted to come out, but it’s mostly my fault. I just haven’t had energy to do much in the last while. More releases should come soon. It’s not exactly like Kojikan at all, but it is about an awkward situation of a new-found daughter that a 25 year hardcore otaku just found out he has and must live together alone with her. It’s much more heartwarming than Kojikan, and the comedy is slightly different, but still very enjoyable. ^_^

[Edit: Hmmm, I missed this yesterday. It seems like Mangablog has a roundabout on all the Nymphet’s commenting. Go read if you’re interested. ^_^]

Manga Stuff and Anime Stuff and Scanlation20 Apr 2007 09:36 am

I just got the news that Kaori Saki’s new series, Smash!, serializes in Weekly Shounen Magazine will be turn into an LA movie!

Those of you perv who bug me 180 days a year to translate Taiyou ga Ochite Kuru faster, and those of you who pester me the other 180 days the year to translate Haru yo, Koi faster probably already know that Kaori Saki has her talent in creating ecchi series. Why then, has none of us heard of this awesome new series serializes in one of the most popular manga magazine?

Allow me to explain. After Haru yo, Koi, Saki-sensei started doing this badminton manga, 5 volumes (cant recall the title). I don’t know about you, but sports-theme anything is an automatic turn-off for me. So my brain automatically refuses to accept it, thinking it’s a one-time mistake of sensei. After two year of long wait for her to finish the badminton series, however, she started another badminton series last year, that is Smash!. The fact that the series is about badminton, again, has turned me away from even giving this one a try. Hmm, the series seems to have proven popular enough to be having attention to be animated. Maybe someone should look into it…

Anyhow, the one minor interesting bit about this movie: the voice-acting will be done by real female badminton stars in Japan, Kumiko Ogura and Reiko Shiota. (Hmmm… Can athletes really voiceact? ><”)

Hmm… I’m old and tire of scanlating, need to retire from it and need to find someone to get married to, so I won’t be scanlating this one (okay, all the above are true except for the last one… I’m not that desperate, yet). Not to mention, my violent distaste for sports genre does not fall under my major hatred for mecha, so you guys (I’m guessing mostly guys) will have to find someone else to translate your ecchi badminton manga (I’m guessing this is the badminton version of PoT but with tons of bishoujo aiming at male? and guessing from Saki-sensei… it will be a bit… ecchi?)

me15 Apr 2007 05:10 pm

I think blogging is a phrase. It certainly requires time and energy to keep up (that I don’t really have now). I have enough trouble keeping up with the manga-related news alone. >_<~ Hence I am updating MJ more frequently (if that makes sense). The logic behind that is if I do them in small chunk, I don't have any backlogs to go through. From my perspective, it drives a bit more motivation(I think?). From a reader's perspective, I think I'd prefer longer posts. Yeah, minus my constant typos (doesn't help that I usually do the news at MJ at 4 or 5am too, which is usaully when I have stayed up the whole night, or have just woke up... I need to add spellcheck to my news template that I'm scripting... ~.~)

This is sort of irrelevant. I don't even know if I have a point in this post. Pic of me just woke up.

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[4:10pm] • Seiji looks at floatie’s cheek
[4:10pm] • Seiji coughs
[4:10pm] Seiji: someone’s gained weight >_>;;
Meep~ >_<~ A bit, I guess... I should start exercising.... T_T

[4:39pm] • gmike never will make a joke about floatie in the am again, she looks mean
That too. ~.~ Though, usually I’m just really whinny in the morning… ^^;

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