Mayama put this in the top 100 best things he's seen ever

Thanks to Bob-san for passing this on. It's pretty awesome.

The Next One......featuring Adam Park

At least I get to go to Wisconsin.

This weekend will be No Brand Convention in Eau Claire, WI. I'm mostly going because their biggest guest is a man near and dear to my heart....Mr. Johnny Yong Bosch (AKA Adam Park, the Black Ranger......oh yeah and a lot of voices for insignificant anime characters like Vash the Stampede and Kurosaki Ichigo). Being the fan of Power Rangers that I was in my youth (high school is still youth!), I knew I HAD to be there for this one. And then, I fortuitously managed to get myself a BECK record square signed by ALL the cast except Johnny Yong Bosch (he plays Saku, the drummer)....so now I will ask him to sign it, and the collection will be complete! And it will go back to looking gloriously down at the living room.

No Brand, from what I hear, is kind of a chilled out kinda con. Which will be good after the chaos of Detour, but a little weird in that I'm a bit worried about finding stuff to do. Which I don't think should be the case at an anime convention. At least not if you're someone like me. But we shall see......

Cosplay will be fun though. I'm going as Tezuka "Hot Guy" Kunimitsu (you know him, you love him):and Mayama will be Inui "Rec Specs" Sadaharu (only the non-uniform version. The version where he's helping coach the team):Our newest AMV will debut at No Brand as well, so we'll be able to upload it and post it here as soon as the con is over. Start getting excited now!!!!!


In other news, I've been working on getting some of the things that are on my list (displayed to the right on the main page), but I haven't had time to watch them because I've been getting ready for the con. Hopefully I'll be able to talk about them soon. It's come to my attention that a lot of the things on this list were Geneon titles.....which are now freaking hard to get for less than 60 dollars a pop. We're working on what we can.....Netflix will have to help with the rest. Thus far I've acquired Martian Successor Nadesico (discs 1 and 2), Daphne in the Brilliant Blue (disc 1), and The Legend of Black Heaven (complete). We also picked up the new Makoto Shinkai release 5 Centimeters per Second. I'm a big fan of Beyond the Clouds and Voices of a Distant Star, so I think this will also be good. I'm looking forward to ALL of those things. And to Code Geass starting on AdultSwim next weekend!!! Yay for taping stuff!!!

With that....I shall go to bed. And think about stuff I've forgotten to pack and need to remember tomorrow, and likely some form of a coming apocalypse.....since that's what I seem to do lately.

AnimeDetour has led me to this.....

So, I came out of the convention with a renewed love interest in some series that I hadn't really been involved with for a while, but have a deep love for. Namely, X TV (and the associated manga). The thing with X is.....I really hate CLAMP (the manga circle responsible for X). Or at least, I think I hate CLAMP. I will say that their character design for pretty much everything but X and Tsubasa Chronicle (we'll get to that later) looks HIDEOUS to me. And then they're responsible for such things as Chobits, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Magic Knights Rayearth. Which are fine if they're your thing (I guess), but they certainly aren't mine. I dislike pretty much ALL magic girl, I'm not the biggest fan of mecha, and Chobits.................there aren't even WORDS for Chobits. But X......X is completely different. For starters, it doesn't involve any crazy, messed-up "Clamp world" or characters that you have to have seen their other shows to understand...which makes X much more stand-alone for me, and makes me able to watch it. The other thing is that the characters, while Clamp-y (that's a technical term), are rather nice to look at. One in particular..........In fact, one of the best looking boys in all of anime and manga.......Mr. Fuma Monou. He makes me happy. That and X is interesting......I mean, it's REALLY interesting. Dragons of Heaven vs. Dragons of Earth and the battle for the end of the world. Good stuff. And the main character is a total badass (at first, until he turns into an emo bitch about things). X is good stuff. So I spent some time at the con and after the con watching X and reading the X manga, and then I took a trip to Best Buy to see about getting the last volume of the FMA boxsets.....but..............FMA was $40, and I just didn't want to pay that much for it, so I looked around. And......the absolutely GORGEOUS artbox for Tsubasa Reservoir (I never remember which letters are supposed to be in caps, so I'm ignoring them) Chronicle that I had been admiring for about 9 months now was only 13 dollars. So I bought it......to support my friends in the industry. As I said before....I LOVE the art in Tsubasa. I think it's beautiful. And Kinya did the opening themes, and Yuki Kajiura did the music......I've ALWAYS wanted to watch Tsubasa, even though it IS CLAMP. Mayama kept telling me not to watch it because it was Clamp-y and jumped around between the Clamp worlds and brought in all sorts of characters from their other shows (I mean, the main female is really just a grown-up Cardcaptor Sakura) and I would get confused....so I never watched it. Until last night. And (granted after only one episode) I'm SO glad I bought it. The art, the music, everything is AMAZING........it's an extremely visually appealing show to watch, and I think the storyline has promise. I'm very happy with it right now. At the same time, Mayama bought the first disc of xxxHolic (which has nothing to do with porn). The art is EVER so Clamp-y (WHY WHY WHY WHY does the main character have like a 10 inch waist, a 40 inch inseam, and GIGANTIC feet and hands?), which makes it hard for me to watch, and it has these OBNOXIOUS little girl things that make me think about Chobits and want to hurt people. But the dialogue is funny and the story is a bit intriguing, so I'll keep trying to give it a go.

Bottom line here........I now own 3 things by CLAMP. It's a bit scary, but I'm happy to be expanding my world a bit more. Stay tuned for the official date of CLAMPFEST 2008 , where we will view all of these shows--plus whatever anyone else has by CLAMP--over the course of a weekend. I'm actually starting to get excited.

It's a crazy world

I cross-posted again.....sorry.

A few updates really quickly in the midst of the whirlwind that is the week before a convention. And really.......the week before a convention that starts a long string of me not having weekends to myself, but that's neither here nor there I suppose. This weekend will be the prestigious AnimeDetour in scenic Bloomington, Minnesota......and it will be fun, although long days. And, since I'm on staff, it will require me to sacrifice my Thursday night for the good of the masses, as well, in that immediately following work tomorrow, I will proceed to the Ramada MoA (which is one of my favorite places in the world) for setting up of things. On the bright side, I'll get to meet with our elite guests.........a little perk for having to work my ass off while everyone else has fun. Although, I suppose, that's not necessarily true. I mean, I'm on marketing staff, so really all of my work has been done ever since the programming guide came out. Which means I mostly just get to enjoy myself at this con. And enjoy myself I will. I'm also a panelist yet again.....bringing the masses a bit deeper into the wonderful world of yaoi.....in a much less structured format that will likely include an always entertaining Greg Ayres.

But really, the point here is to introduce you all to the brand new me......the me who looks scarily like Hyde........even more so than before. O-to-san ga suki!!! (for a better finish start with Hyde) At any rate, it's for my costume for Detour, wherein Brian and I will be cosplaying Kei (Hyde)



and Shou (Gackt)


from the Emmy-nominated (in the WTF was Gackt thinking category) vampire film, Moon Child. Taiwanese gangster, future vampires even.



Therefore.............I cut off all my hair. That's right kids......all of it. And now, for the before and after (so you can make a comparison with just how scary much I look like Hyde..........

Pre-cut:


and....post-cut:


There you have it kids.........the craziest thing I've ever done for cosplay. Do I miss my hair??? Yes. Do I like my new hair??? Yes.

Bonus (sorta): It also doubles as short-haired Riza Hawkeye of FMA fame (at least for now), which would be great if I had bought the FMA military uniform from the Cospatio in Akihabara instead of my beloved Ouran Jacket.