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September 30, 2004
testing
My categories have disappeared!
:edit: aaaaand now they're back. Stupid template typos.:) magic resumes.
Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 11:58 PM | Posted to Miscellaneous | Comments (0)
We've moved!
Presenting... the new and improved Screaming Into the Vacuum. It took a lot of sweat, tears and bad unuseful dreams to get here, but I made it.
Please bear with me as I stretch my wings. A few things may be knocked over in the process while I get used to this new blog, but I will do my best to keep them small.
Yoroshiku onegai shimasu!
Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 10:09 PM | Posted to Miscellaneous | Comments (0)
Late Night With Detective Conan
Wrestling with Movable Type has been pushing my bedtime further and further back, so I'm actually able to see some of the late night anime now before I go to sleep. And so I've been able to see some of Detective Conan, or as it is known in the Yoo Ess Ay, "Case Closed."
Read more of "Late Night With Detective Conan" [possible spoiler alert!]
Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 01:00 PM | Posted to Anime, American Style | Comments (0)
Finally!!! ADV Manga release updates
I wasn't planning on updating this blog again until I'd moved to Movable Type, but this momentous occasion (and stupid !*@#$!!) template! problems) compelled me to blog. ADV Manga has FINALLY updated their home page with releases, AND more importantly, release DATES, through the end of November.
After a long long LONG 
wait, Chrno - sorry, CHRONO Crusade finally starts coming out at a faster clip (vol 2 on Oct 4, vol 3 Nov 30). Not bad considering the first volume was released in frickin' MAY.
Aria vol 3 comes out November 23. Yay for it coming out at all, at the long wait since vol 2 (released in JULY). No date scheduled for vol 4.
There's more Full Metal Panic!? Oh my poor wallet...
Also of interest on October 4: Sakura Kinoshita's Tactics ... and MATANTEI LOKI RAGNAROK!!! AAAAA!!!!
(on a purely technical note, ADV appears to have dropped the ADVManga.com URL - it automatically redirects to ADVfilms.com/manga.asp. Hmmm.)
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 10:00 AM | Posted to Manga Manga | Comments (1)
September 26, 2004
Samurai 7 Licenced
Well, it was just a matter of time. Funimation announced that they had Samurai 7 at Anime Weekend Atlanta, and all the fansubbers working on it immediately closed up shop.
Funimation is... well... not the worst company that could have picked up Samurai 7. (Although I'm surprised that out of the presumably many moneyed bidders, they could have afforded it. I wonder how many employees' firstborn have been promised to Sony.) I personally would have preferred someone like Geneon or Bandai to pick it up as they seem to have a clue about authenticity, but I'm hoping that Funimation does a Fruits Basket on this one. (I'm getting a tad worried that the only series that I can point out as a Good Example of Funimation Not Screwing Up is Fruits Basket.) I can't see how they can local-ize such a thoroughly Japanese series, though, so I'm guessing they'll play it straight. I hope.
Anyway, 11-12 as good a place to stop, seeing as the 7 samurai have been gathered and are at the village. I really don't see how this could diverge any more from the movie plot. so for all those complaining that Funimation has somehow "deprived" them of their right to fansubs, well.... go rent the movie. Heck, go buy it. It's GOOD.
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 10:08 AM | Posted to Samurai 7 | Comments (0)
September 23, 2004
it's about time he showed up
OK, now I understand what all the screaming was about over at soul_society. Yes, yes, very nice indeed.
(I'm glad I resisted the tempation to look at it while at work.
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 08:23 PM | Posted to Bleach | Comments (0)
Bleachy Goodness!
I've just beeninformed by my secret sources that the Official Bleach site has launched! Booyeah! And the navigation is actually in Eigo! Booyeah squared!
Now I wonder what that un-live "Movie" link is all about... probably clips. must not hope. must not hope.
:update: The ED is in English and Japanese. (the performer is Rie Fu, who's bilingual I believe.) It's... unexpectedly... sweet. I think they need to amp up the bass.
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 09:20 AM | Posted to Bleach | Comments (0)
September 21, 2004
SAMURAI 7 Vol.2 solicitation
CD Japan is taking preorders for SAMURAI 7 Vol.2. Katsushirou is on the cover. The art style is vaguely reminiscent of Yoshitoshi ABe - but fate isn't that nice.
The DVDs appear to be coming out monthly, but at 2 episodes per disc and 5700yen (about $53) a pop - and R2 on top of that - I am going to pass, thanks.
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 09:25 PM | Posted to Samurai 7 | Comments (0)
Chrono Crusade!
I splurged for the box edition (and only now realized that had I waited a couple of months, ADV would probably have released the box for sale separately). Rosette is wearing the correct "starter" uniform on one side of the box (albeit with a nice tasteful long bloomers shot) and the later uniform on the other side. Which triggered a sense of deja vu, upon which I realized it was the cover of the first volume. Lazy, lazy ADV.
Because Suncoast is also running a 25% off deal on all TV DVDs this week, I got the Jonny Quest set. I also picked up a box set of three movies. I think it's called Star Wars or something like that. Gee, I wonder what it's about?
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 01:47 PM | Posted to | Comments (0)
September 19, 2004
Samurai 7 schedule settles down. I think.
Well, based on the SkyPerfect schedule, it looks Samurai 7 is on a more regular biweekly schedule now. (This link good till 10/02.) I wish my Japanese was better so I could read the site and be sure. But anyway, the next 2 episodes (13 & 14) will be aired on Sept 25. wheee.
...I wonder if Japan has the equivalent of sweeps in the US?
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 11:55 PM | Posted to Samurai 7 | Comments (0)
September 18, 2004
Chr[o]no Crusade cover art
FInally got a look at the Chrono Crusade DVD cover for the first volume, coming out Tuesday, cheerfully titled "A Pague of Demons." Um. I like the branding treatment, and it's cool and action packed, but Rosette doesn't have that uniform till much later. I guess the fanboys on the cover design team won out over accuracy. What I've heard of the English dub doesn't cause me to shriek and curl up in a fetal position while my ears bleed like the Saiyuki one does, but there's always a chance that they screwed it up between the trailer and the actual release. (I don't trust ADV very much.)
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 09:25 AM | Posted to | Comments (0)
September 17, 2004
UNLIMITED single release
Ask and ye shall receive.... The UNLIMITED[Aikawa Nanase Official Website] single will be released 9/29 along with the Samurai 7 image album. There's something very Zen about the cute little bunny rabbit on the cover.:)
On another note, despite the Samurai 7 site being all Flash, I like the background music, especially the drums.
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 06:46 PM | Posted to Samurai 7 | Comments (0)
September 15, 2004
Kenshin goes monthly
According to a press release from Viz, Rurouni Kenshin will be released monthly beginning in October.
I wonder what this will do to the release schedule of their other books?
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 04:27 PM | Posted to Manga Manga | Comments (0)
Samurai 7 11 & 12
Poor Katsushirou. Didn't anybody tell him when he first took up the sword what it was actually for?
But I am ahead of myself. So. The gang finally arrive at Kanna to a less than cheery welcome. As in the movie, certain of the villagers have convinced the others that the samurai are just as bad as the Nobuseri (and the addition of a visit from the Nobuseri didn't help any). Kikuchiyo cheerfully flushes them out, along with - Uh oh. Shino. Frankly I didn't expect her to show up in this, but... well... gwah. And just when things were finally getting cozy between Katsushirou and Kirara, too. 
I also wasn't expecting Heihachi to be quite so ...vengeful (and I hope that what I think I saw isn't actually what I thought I saw). And it's nice - I think - to see that time and space hasn't changed Manzou. He's a lot uglier than I remember, though.
Episode 12 picks up directly from where episode 11 leaves off, which is a first. Katsushirou has drawn first blood, and he's not real happy about it. For the first time, Kanbei shows a glimmer of the fatherly warmth that Takeshi Shimada brought to the movie Kanbei, both to Katsushirou and to Kikuchiyo - and then proceeds to unite the village as! An! ARMY! Of! ...A LOT!!! (Hmmm. maybe that's why Kanbei is hard for me to like... he does the whole declarations and orders thing in an arrogant kind of way, whereas movie Kanbei's orders were more like suggestions that you darn well better follow if you want to stay alive.)
I'm really quite enjoying how, with more time to devote to character development, each samurai's personality has been upped a couple of notches. In the movie, only Kanbei and Katsushirou (and Kikuchiyo, of course) had any real personality. The others were one-notes - Gorobee was the cheery one, Heihachi was the good-humored one (it was sometimes difficult to tell them apart), Shichiroji was Kanbei's right hand man, and Kyuuzou was the badass. Here, Gorobee is a street entertainer/adrenaline junkie, Heihachi is a happy-go-lucky engineering marvel with a steel-cold soul, Shichiroji has built a happy civilian life, and Kyuuzou is... a badass with style. At the same time, I'm trying really hard not to get too attached to anybody, because I have no idea how this will turn out. From this point on, the body count will start to rise... and even a samurai is not immune to death.
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 11:08 AM | Posted to Samurai 7 | Comments (0)
Ai-yi-yi
I think this is the first time I've ever seen a manga review in the Washington Post Book World (although something in my foggy memory tells me that they reviewed Osamu Tezuka's Buddha series previously).
However, it's for Princess Ai. And apparently the only reason it's there is because of the Courtney Love connection. Oh well. Any publicity is good publicity.
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 11:02 AM | Posted to Manga Manga | Comments (0)
September 14, 2004
oh those sneaky sneaky media megacorporations
So I went on CDJapan to see if I could preorder the SAMURAI 7 Image Album. And it turns out that it's a copy-protected CD. So even if I pay legal tender to legally own a legal copy of the legal CD, I can't copy the tracks to my MP3 player to avoid having to lug around my CD player.
So I guess I'm not buying it after all.
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 04:59 PM | Posted to Samurai 7 | Comments (0)
toy story
I was amused to see a commercial for the new "Tokyo-A-Go-Go" line of the Bratz skanky plastic moneyspinners fashion dolls the other day. How far we have come from a few years ago, when Mattel launched a new Barbie line (the "high school Barbie") and one of the dolls had a manga as an accessory. But it wasn't Barbie, oh my no. Can't have our all-American blondie associated with that foreign stuff, now can we?
It's funny to see toy manufacturers blindly leap onto the trend bandwagons without really understanding the trends. I remember seeing (during the Harry Potter explosion) a line of "teen witch" Barbies (of which Barbie was one) wearing frothy gothy velvets and complete with cauldrons, wands, and spellbooks. (Ah, here's a link from SFGate....Secret Spells Barbie. Funny stuff. PG-13.) I wonder how those went down in Peoria.... more than that, though, I am seriously curious about how Wiccans reacted.
:edit: oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho... it's not just Secret Spells Barbie, it's Secret Spells Barbie and the Charm Girls. Mm yup. This was a real product line.
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 01:15 PM | Posted to Miscellaneous | Comments (0)
September 13, 2004
different strokes for different folks
Woohoo! My favorite group finished ep 12 of Samurai 7!!! Now I can download it. I know that other group's had 12 out for a day now, but honestly, I like my favorite group (I'll call 'em group L) better.
Last weekend my anime club started showing the other group's (I'll call them group K) subs, and.... while their translation is decent enough, it just didn't have the personality that group L has. For one thing, group L takes care to keep speech patterns as close as possible to the original. If a character speaks broken Japanese, the subtitles are broken English. If someone speaks formally, then the subs are poshed up. More importantly group L seems to have native fluency in both Japanese and English, so their translations flow naturally without sounding stilted or, well, "translated."
I bring this up due to some people's complaints that group L were incompetent because they hadn't been proofreading some of their subs - namely the Kanna farmers' dialogue. This had made me ROTFL because, if anything, it proves that L is doing a good job. If the English were not deliberately broken, it wouldn't be as properly spelled as it is. And if Samurai 7 were licenced, this is what I would want - expect - the professional company to do. Of course there are the occasional typos, but group L's consistent competence makes me more forgiving.
In any case, I don't mind waiting a little longer and being a little bit behind the folks watching group K's subs, because in the long run, I get the better experience. And I also wouldn't ask the anime club to change the subs they're showing because, well, I have the good ones at home.
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 11:18 PM | Posted to Samurai 7 | Comments (0)
Samurai 7 9 & 10
Was gonna do another 4-pack but my favorite subbers ran into a little hitch. So it's just 9 & 10.
Read more of "Samurai 7 9 & 10" [possible spoiler alert!]
Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 08:16 PM | Posted to Samurai 7 | Comments (0)
various awards
Miyazaki's "Howl's Moving Castle" took the Osella d'Oro at the Venice Film Festival last weekend. From what I can tell it's one of the top awards for technical achievement. (HMC missed out on the top festival award, the Golden Lion, which went to a live-action film. Cretin judges.) Also appearing at the Venice Film Festival was Steamboy and something from the Final Fantasy franchise.
And at the Creative Arts/Technical Emmys the other night, Cartoon Network took the animation top honors with "Samurai Jack: The Birth of Evil," (For Programming Less Than One Hour), and "Star Wars: Clone Wars," perplexingly in the category of Programming One Hour or More - I guess they must have submitted all 20+ mini-episodes as a single block.
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 03:48 PM | Posted to Anime/Manga | Comments (0)
Cosplay THIS!
It may be just me, but all my current favorite anime/manga series seem to be direct challenges from the manga-ka to cosplay. Aria's form-fitting outfits are lovely but a tailoring nightmare. Bleach... well, OK, that's manageable, but I'm having a HELL of a time with the hakama. I don't even want to think of how to cosplay anyone from Samurai 7 (although it would be niftycool to see a whole group of all 10 Kirara-ikkou).
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 01:29 PM | Posted to | Comments (0)
September 10, 2004
Yomiko Readman, meet Flynn Carsen
USA Today reports of "The Librarian, an "action-adventure hero" named Flynn Carsen, whose job involves "protecting mythological items, including Excalibur and the Ark of the Covenant, in a repository beneath the New York Public Library." Carsen is played by Noah Wyle, who surely doesn't mean to offend geeks everywhere when he says "Instead of having the protagonist be a cool, dashing, heroic type, he's more of a brainiac."
What, you can't be a brainiac AND be cool, dashing and heroic?
Also, this reeks-of-failed-pilot-TV-movie smacks far too familiarly (is that a word?) of R.O.D.'s premise. Let's hope Carsen doesn't unexpectedly develop the powers of paper manipulation besides his apparently supernatural mastery of the Dewey decimal system (the way they hype this up it's like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of library organization. Folks, it's not that hard. Unless of course you've never even been in a library.)
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 01:09 PM | Posted to Miscellaneous | Comments (0)
September 09, 2004
Nov 9 debut for anime Puffy
Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi Hi starts on Cartoon Network November 9, according to various reports. It's a weird hybrid of live action and anime, which would probably remind most merkin youngsters of that fluffy Disney Channel teendramedythingy star vehicle for Hilary Duff (or is it Lindsey Lohan? Can't tell them apart).
Anyway, worth checking out if only to see what happens when j-pop idoru fall into the icky hands of megalithic American media conglomerates.
...not that, you perverts.
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 10:47 AM | Posted to Anime, American Style | Comments (0)
September 08, 2004
duuuude
Piro posted a preview of his finalized ALA poster (MT link)
I am SO asking Kevin to ask his wife to keep an eye out for this so I don't have to swipe it from the library.:)
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 10:33 AM | Posted to Manga Manga | Comments (0)
Samurai 7 11 & 12 this weekend
...according to the SkyPerfect site. It looks like they changed the airtime though. This is kind of unusual, since the last 2 episodes were 2 weeks ago and the previous 2 were 2 weeks before that.
Not that I'm complaining.
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 01:11 AM | Posted to Samurai 7 | Comments (0)
September 07, 2004
More stuff found late at night
Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is apparently animated completely in Flash, according to one of the animators.
OK, but it still doesn't make me a fan of the stuff on the Web.
I've had the opportunity to see a couple more episodes of Foster's, and it's holding up well. It's good that there's such a large cast because one could very easily get tired of Bloo (silly me) a.k.a. pure Id. He borders on the annoying, Coco is just weird, and I'm frankly surprised that Maurice Sendak's lawyers aren't up in arms over Eduardo. But I am just crazy about Wilt. He and Frankie are quite possibly the most interesting character (the concept of such a nice but visually flawed imaginary friend makes me wonder what kind of person Wilt's child was, and I like how Frankie shows how one can be responsible and funky). Mr Herriman gets short shrift but remains lovable all the same. Mac and Madame Foster do not get enough screentime. The only thing is that I don't get home in time to watch it most Fridays, and I can never quite remember what time it repeats over the weekend, so I've been catching it mostly by luck. (I don't dare look at the Cartoon Network site's TV schedule... I swear they change their navigation every week just to confuse me.)
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 11:38 PM | Posted to Anime, American Style | Comments (0)
funny what you find
...when you check your e-mail late at night.
More Sakura Wars 5 info has been posted on Sega's site. The most hilarious thing is the logo of the New York Kagekidan, which is apparently Sam the Eagle preparing to peel an apple with his feet.
(Seriously... an apple and a butcher knife?) The other graphics look kinda nice, the CGI kobu especially. They're getting better at making CGI look like 2D animation, which makes one wonder why they even bother. Maybe it saves money or time or something at some point.
In other news, there's a rumor floating around that Tokyopop has commissioned a Star Trek manga. Ummmm.... yup.
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 11:13 PM | Posted to Anime/Manga | Comments (0)
September 06, 2004
Japan in 2007 or BUST!
The votes are in! Tokyo will be the site of the 65th World SF convention!
Time to start saving...
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 10:45 AM | Posted to | Comments (0)
September 04, 2004
bleach stings!
Well, I finally caught up on the most recent chapters of Bleach thanks to grubbing in the recesses of memory for IRC download protocol, the soul-society LJ (hi Airy!) and the Toriyama World forum. Can't remember the last time I expended this much energy on a series. Aaahhh, makes me feel young again.
IN ANY CASE... since volume 7 the plot appears to have degraded into one long DBZ-style fightfest interspersed with training, healing from injuries, and repeated variations on the theme of "I MUST GET STRONGER!!!" and "He's gotten stronger!!!" (I actually skipped a couple chapters by mistake without noticing, only to find that the characters hadn't moved from where they were for those chapters anyway.
) The opponents are all interesting personalities, though, so it's not that monotonous. Kubo Tite is an equal-opportunity manga-ka, seeding the cast with several different types of people so, really, anyone can cosplay Bleach...OMG! HE'S SECRETLY PLANNING BLEACH COSPLAY DOMINATION!!!
There are hints of a conspiracy afoot, so GOOD. I like when a manga-ka knows where he's going, and I'm getting sick of all the fighting. The art style has improved significantly too. I think drawing all those fight scenes has helped. Still... Rukia's been locked in jail, and in a white tower (geez, can this get ANY more shounen) and hasn't had much to do aside from look pensive ) and swoon. Bah.
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at 10:38 AM | Posted to Bleach | Comments (0)
