Anyone watching Bakuman? Basically it’s an anime about two high schoolers who want to get serialized and have their own animé before they’re 18 — pretty ambitious huh? ^^

Reminds me back in the day when I wanted to draw manga and create video games too. Seemed almost impossible at the time but hey, I ended up creating my own game, Wind And Water, along with my brother.

Here’s the trailer video for the Dreamcast and Japanese release if you’re curious about it:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Just remembering the thirteen hundred thousand lines of code that it took me makes me feel nostalgic about it. Maybe I’ll go back to making video games one day…

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Recognize the person above? Hayao Miyasaki, one of the best J animated filmmakers and my favorite. The above fanart includes many well known characters from his animated films like Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and many more.

If you don’t know him then your life is not complete and you should go watch any of his films. It’s amazing how he can capture the attention of kids and adults with his messages about childhood dreams, environmentalism, and anti-war criticism.

I haven’t watched his latest film yet, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, and I have great expectations. My favorite movie is tied between Mononoke Hime and Nausicaa. Which one’s your favorite? ^^

Image found via Kevin Parsons.

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Here’s an original animé illustration/drawing by me ^^, dating back  to 2006. As I mentioned before and on my profile page, I love(d) drawing as a hobby, but actually stopped doing it a long long time ago, about ten years ago. As with my piano, I did this particular drawing for a special occasion :) done 100% CG without scanning anything, which is harder to do since I’m not used to graphic pens.

I’ve written about two hobbies these month — weightlifting and piano, the three of them mutually exclusive ^^; I’ll be adding more and more of my drawings as I find them (lost somewhere in my hard drives), and will try to go back to drawing when I have some free time. Maybe a fanart from one of Danny Choo‘s mascots? I’m officially playing the piano again and I’m quickly remembering everything from my memories not lost :)

On other news, I’ve been working on a few website upgrades, the first one (mentioned yesterday) is the new Related Articles / Currently Read dynamically loaded news, and also, comments are finally threaded (and more cute)! Used my Engrish post as a test, and fellow English sensei Chris B was there at the right time to help me test it (thanks!). He is an amazing English teacher running his own school in Japan who uses great methods of teaching like money laundering schemes and such to make kids learn — as I was once a tutor for many years, I find his ways very inspiring. If I’m ever back in the industry I’ll probably lend his ideas!

Anyway, anyone around here loves drawing too? ^^

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The Tokyo International Anime Fair 2009, one of the largest anime trade fairs in the world, was held last week in the Tokyo Big Sight, home of the Comiket too, the biggest comic convention in the world. Oh, and I want that Totoro in my room!

As always, pretty cosplayers are there posing, which is much more fun than trying to take paparazzi pictures of cosplayers in Akihabara ^^;; non-anime related, the Tokyo Big Sight is an incredibly astounding piece of weird architecture, more pictures of the outside on the same event here.

The Usavich rabbits ^^ if you don’t know who they are, you’re missing all the fun:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some episodes are available at the official Usavich website (in Japanese), if you have ten minutes then go ahead and watch them all!

You start feeling old when you no longer recognize cosplayers — that’s my case. If anyone can point me in the right direction I’d be grateful ^^

Finally a familiar face, Gundam 00. I’ve only seen one episode but it’s on my to-do list!

And that’s Keroro-chan, I know little about him though.

On a previous post, I wrote about crunchyroll becoming a public Japanese Company. If you don’t know what’s crunchyroll, it’s an anime/asian drama video streaming website with loads of content. They started out indie and now are very big. They introduced themselves on this fair and I hope my friend Osk got that covered for me, will let you guys know about it ^^.

Contribution by my friend Katarina — thanks!

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If you’re into animé or JDrama, you probably know about crunchyroll, a website founded in 2006 by some students containing tons of high-quality dubbed series, perfect for people like me who are addicted to it, JDrama in my case ^^

Anyway, the website started to catch the media’s attention and with hundreds of thousands of views, venture capital and legal problems came. Famous licensed series and movies were quickly removed, and after raising $4 million (!) investment capital from Venrock, other less known series were removed too, even though they were not licensed outside of Japan Y_Y

How my JDrama addiction started

Since I’ve been studying Japanese for a while, a friend of mine suggested watching JDrama instead of animé to practice my Japanese. At the time it didn’t sound like a bad idea at all, so for an unknown reason I stumbled upon crunchyroll. The first drama I saw was 14才の母 (14-year-old mother). I didn’t like it at all, but I did managed to digest it. In any case, it really helped more than my usual animé’s Japanese and I learned a few things here and there, so I thought watching another drama would do so too. This is when 花より男子 (Hana Yori Dango) came.

Again, I didn’t like it that much but it was funny, so at least I was enjoying it. Everything was alright until I watched Hana Yori Dango 2. My inner self awaken, I couldn’t help it but hear Utada’s Flavor of Life and Arashi’s Love So Sweet the whole day, fall in love with Inoue Mao, and watch more and more drama.

Fortunately, my drama addiction stopped for a while after going to Japan, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t watched lots of dramas (actually, I’m watching Mei-chan no Shitsuji). I know, I feel embarrassed sometimes ^^; Anyway, back on track…

クランチロール株式会社

Japanese for, Crunchyroll Public Company. After removing tons of unlicensed content, to my surprise, licensed series started to appear, Naturo Shippuden being the biggest one. I’m not too much into recent animé since I don’t have time to watch 50 episodes of anything except Gundam Seed, so I stopped following crunchyroll. In fact, I just logged in and remembered that I shared a short conversation through messages with Shinji, the creator of crunchyroll. T’was epicness ensued ^^

The company was registered in September, 2008, their website being crunchyroll.co.jp. In summary, the company’s website states that Crunchyroll is the biggest animé social nerworking, and the biggest animé portal site with licensed content, bragging with the above mentioned Naruto ^^, and that through advertising, they are able to license content for their users. The company also states that Japanese animé has zealous fans and is extremely popular worldwide (oh rly).

I’m happy that crunchyroll succeded and that it has the vision that many others lack. Fansubs have been around for years now, and those who don’t understand Japanese or live there don’t have any other way to see content not officially translated, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I’ve paid crunchyroll’s subscription before, and would gladly pay to watch high-quality subbed JDrama or animé if I ever have time to watch animé.

Crunchyroll reserved three halls on the Tokyo Big Sight for tomorrow’s Tokyo International Anime Fair 2009. I don’t promise anything but I’ll try to  bring you exclusive pictures of the event, so don’t forget to check back or subscribe!

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I watched Gundam Seed and Destiny a while ago. Seed was great but I didn’t like Destiny that much. Shin sucked and most of the new characteres (Stella, etc.) did too. Of course, it has its great moments but I don’t want to spoil anything ^^. Apparently, many Gundam otakus didn’t like this one that much because there’s too much drama and less robots involved compared to other Gundams, but I was almost swept in tears after watching it. Both have an incredibly good sound track. I gotta catch up with Gundam 00, I’ve been told that there’s a lot of backstabbing and Mexican drama involved! (joudan)

Wallpaper from animepaper.

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