Gen X Otaku 1971: the OG blog

Trinket

The little Erza is something I picked up from Anime Matsuri last Spring.

Good deals, yo! (Mobile Blogging is a GO!)

So it seems I'm all set to do Anime blogging on the go, yo!  I plan to take the iPad with me to Oni-Con 2014 and now I can blog on the fly rather than just doing a summary post after the con.  I can take pictures and append them to posts on the fly also.  Pretty psyched!

iPod Touch Test

Testing with ye olde iPod Touch. Laters!

Phone post test 1

Ditto. iPhone 5 platform test yo. Laters, yo.

Aug 31, 2014

Just a test post to see if my iPad "Typepad" app is working. Nothing to see here, move along.

Recent My Anime this and that

Fullmetal Alchemist volume one DVD cover by Funimation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So I've been catching up on episodes of Space Dandy lately, that I DVR off of Toonami.  I've watched up until the penultimate episode so far and will be DVR'ing tonight's episode for later viewing as well.  I must say, Honey is turning into quite the little badass, even in the "main continuity" (if such a thing even makes sense in Space Dandy's universe); she's also getting way more exploited for her fanservice potential.  I'm seeing lots more of Honey's sweet shapely ass in my face--not that I'm complaining, mind you, just making the observation.

I just like that she's not just eyecandy to drool over, nor is she a helpless damsel in distress.  She may seem ditzy, but she's actually half-Cloudian and really very smart & savvy.  Sort of like an Anime version of Lisa Kudrow or something.  She's really starting to seriously kick ass, and she knows her way around a motorcycle.  I also liked Monica's performance as Scarlet's comiserating co-worker who drags her along to the social mixer with free buffet.  Scarlet's hotness is more my speed than Honey's, just sayin'.  Voiced by one of the sexiest voices in Anime, Colleen Clinkenbeard.  Sho nuff!

I'm also close to finishing My Bride is a Mermaid, which is a love comedy, and after that I'll probably start in with re-watching the first four Episodes of Psychopass.

I took advantage of the FUNimation sale on Right Stuf! to put my pre-order for Attack On Titan Limited Edition Part 2; At the same time I put in my pre-order for the next volume of Kill La Kill [Aniplex] (on DVD), and a pre-order for Collection 2 of the Blu-Ray for Majestic Prince [Sentai Filmworks].  I also ordered the 25th anniversary edition of AKIRA [Funimation release].  Decided I might as well put in these pre-orders because I'm definitely going to buy/watch all these titles this year.  I want to re-visit the 1988 English dub of AKIRA which is the first one I saw at Texas A&M University many years ago (thank you Aggie Cinema for screening it!).

Separately, I also ordered the Girls und Panzer OVA Collection [Sentai Filmworks] separtely from Amazon.com, bundled with some random office supplies I need for work.  I will acquire a copy of Upotte! eventually, but right now the price is still kinda high for that series and I'm waiting for like maybe one more price drop.

One of my plans for Oni-Con 2014 this year is to disconnect my PS2 from my TV and bring it along with me and hook it up to the TV in my hotel room so that I can watch my fill of Anime DVDs during the down times between events at Oni-Con.  I'd hope to watch some Anime on Netflix or FUNimation streaming, but the hotel WiFi sucked goat balls, not least because of all the teens & 20-somethings trying to use it with their own mobile devices.  So I'm kicking it old school and bringing the PS2 to double as my quick & easy DVD player.  Won't be able to play any Blu-Rays, but that's okay.  I've got a backlog of stuff I still need to watch on DVD...maybe stuff I can get some autographs on from various Voice Actors and ADR Directors, too.  I doubt I'll be buying any DVDs in the dealer's room--though I did buy SAO Vol.1 there last year--because usually it's just such a losing proposition.  I only buy if it's something rare or out of print that I really want.  Stuff that I can just as easily find for less on Right Stuf! or Amazon, I leave alone to buy from those online sources.  I've gotten some really good deals on figurines at Oni-Con, a trend that I hope continues this year as well.  This is a big contrast to the dealer's room at Anime Matsuri, where all the merch was mostly pretty steeply priced...I only picked up some really tiny figures at Matsuri this year; a little Asuka to match the little Rei that I bought at Oni-Con last year.  I have a little Ritsuko Akagi from EVA that I bought off Ebay direct from Japan who is the same scale as these other two figurines.  If I could pick up a slightly larger Rei this year that'd be cool.  I'd also like an Asuka with that translucent hair that I've seen before on some figures.  I think that's a really cool effect.  I have a Rei figurine with that for her blue hair, though it's slightly less impressive since Rei's hair is so closely cropped for a girl.

I think I'd like to get the original FMA on DVD (don't think there's a Blu-Ray edition yet).  I have Brotherhood on Blu-Ray (and the Brotherhood OVAs), and I saw Conquerer of Shambala is out on Blu-Ray (OVA from the original continuity).  I think I'd like to get the 2 vols. released on DVD by FUNimation a few years back.  I really do like both iterations of the story, they really are both worth watching in their entirety. 

Anyway, that's what I've been up to Anime-wise since my last update.  Night, y'all.

My forray into Anime podcasting

So here's like my tentative first episode;  Listen in!  Or don't, Baka!  I don't care! ;-)

http://www.spreaker.com/user/7429481/my-week-in-anime

 

 

Anime at the Alamo, September 2014 schedule (narrated)

Here it is:

 

 

Futzing around on Spreaker, for Anime!

So for the sheer hell of it, I've been futzing around with the Spreaker "app" on my iPad, which actually records a better quality podcast than the Spreaker website, at least with some of my current equipment.  The only thing I don't like about the Spreaker app for iPad is that the record option on the microphone is always "push to talk", and it gets to be a pain to hold that button down constantly on one's iPad.  I'm sometimes shuffling my index finger from right hand to left just to give that finger a rest.  I'm basically trying my hand at an amateur Anime/Manga podcast on their platform.  It's just me, "flying solo", as it were.  I'm sure it's not very good, and that I'm probably very monotone and not interesting.  For my 2nd show I used actual show notes and I'm not sure it was any better than when I talked off the cuff my first time out.  I do like that I can fade in, fade out with J-Rock/J-Pop tunes from my iTunes playlist, that's pretty cool.  There's also a limited sound board on the iPad app version.  The website version has a more robust soundboard and a lot of podsafe music to sample & choose from.  I've just experienced some frustration in that Spreaker doesn't seem to like my most expensive headphones and won't record my voice when I use its microphone...though my webcam video capture software has ZERO issues with the very same microphone.  It works better with my cheap-ass Logitech headset, or surprisingly, with the built in microphone on my webcam, though it did require me to do some serious levels adjustments to clear out distortions and background noise, etc., since it's effectively a "boom" mic...I'd never use it on an open channel for 2-way communication (like for a Skype call or whatever) but for me recording by my lonesome, it ought to work out okay.

I first got exposed to Spreaker listening to The Sugar Land Skeeters road games on that platform.  Ostensibly they're supposed to cover the games on terrestrial radio in this area on 95.1 FM or 1640 AM radio, which is an Indian (Desi) cultural channel most of the time.  Last year they broadcast game coverage for home games as well, but since the home games are now on ESPN3, they only do radio coverage of the road games.  I'd tune in at the supposed time and get bupkiss...so I'd point my browser at the Spreaker site for KRBZ Sports and tune in to the web stream for the road game coverage while doing Facebook, say.  I created a Spreaker account with my Facebook credentials and downloaded the iPad app, too.

I'm more a blogger than a podcaster (and not much of a blogger when it comes down to it).  I'm an amatuer Anime fan who also likes to talk about and write about anime.  My 2nd episode was about Anime podcasts I happen to like and listen to...I think I did an okay job, but there were still shows I forgot to include, stuff I would've said differently with more preparation, etc.

If I think of another interesting topic to podcast about, maybe I'll try using the Spreaker website and my webcam microphone and having another go at it.  I'd miss having access to the J-Rock/J-Pop tunes I have in my iTunes library, though.  I doubt there's podsafe J-Rock/J-Pop out there on the Spreaker online library, though I'd love to be proven wrong on that point.

The first 2 episodes were fun, but another thing about Spreaker that differs from, say, recording in Audacity, is the fact that you feel the pressure to fill the dead air...it's not set up so you can just pause the recording in progress then pick up again when you've thought of something else to say...so to avoid a lot of "dead air" (which is disasterous for a radios show), you tend to fill it with blather that can be pretty inane or tangent inducing and it's way easier to trip over your own tongue than you might at first think.  You end up saying stuff that, upon listening back, comes across as more ambivalent than it did when it came out of your mouth.  Show notes help, but they sometimes also get in the way of spontenaiety and just speaking from the heart passionately, at least for me.  Of course there's always the option of recording first in Audacity then UPLOADING to Spreaker and maybe editing in stuff in post-production (intro/outro music, etc).

I remember learning a few things about doing videos for YouTube, too...there's using the web cam, but then you also intergrate it with still shots + voiceover recorded separately with Audacity and timed to fill the still video segment, etc.  It's fun but tricky.

I'm still futzing around with GoAnimate.com, of course.  I didn't post a narrated schedule for August but I've gotten back in my groove and did one for September that I'll post separately later.

Anyway, my main mode of expression about anime will probably continue to be this here blog.

 

Watamote (dub premiere), Ep.1-4

So I took in the dub premiere of the WataMote anime series, Episodes 1-4, at Alamo Drafthouse Mason Park earlier this week.  I really enjoyed it.  I had some concerns about Monica Rial doing the voice for this character, but these proved to be unfounded, as I think that Tomoko is such a batshit crazy character that now I have a hard time imaginging which other English language female voice actress in Texas would do the role justice and I keep landing back with Monica being the perfect fit.  Her range is indisputibly large, and she can voice Tomoko at her craziest (think Momoka from Sgt. Frog) 

...and also capture her at her most vulnerable and tender moments, and there are a few; for example...

That scene at the gazebo, where one of the boys buys Tomoko a replacement umbrella and leaves it next to her while she's sleeping...and she wakes up confused but decides to use the umbrella but says "I wish a boy would be nice to me for once"...that scene is just heartbreaking, in the manga as well as in the anime.  (Because, of course, a boy WAS just nice to her).  Tomoko is pretty messed up but the thing about her is apart from the seemingly permanent dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep from staying up too late playing videogames in poor lighting conditions, she's not a bad looking girl.  Little rough around the edges, maybe, with zero fashion sense, but not hopeless by any means.  She's genuinely cute, she just suffers from poor hygene, low self-esteem and crippling social anxiety and awkwardness.  She externalizes blame, avoids responsibility, and is genuinely creepy & inappropriate.  Tomoko makes me laugh, and I get laughs at her expense, but I never laugh at her in a mean-spirited way.  Both for the manga and the anime adaptation, I find myself ultimately sympathizing with Tomoko and even quietly cheering for her from the sidelines.

Tomoko is what a female anime/eroge otaku would look like depicted more realistically, verus, say, Konata Izumi of Lucky Star fame, who is the anime fantasy heroine, at least in her own mind.  Konata is otaku and proud.  She's confident, strangely athletic for being disinterested in sports, and she's 18 but looks 14.  She's approachable and not the least bit creepy or off-putting.

Tomoko reminds me of the main protagonist of Welcome to the NHK, only as a teen girl and lacking the heightened, full blown paranoia of that particular protagonist...but well on her way to NEET or Hikikomori status if she doesn't mend her ways.  Tomoko is literally paralyzed by her social anxiety...the only person she can have actual conversations with are her former BFF from her Middle School, and her brother, who finds her annoying.  Her social anxiety is even worse than NHK's protagonist.  I think Tomoko is also a more realistic anime/eroge otaku than, say, Kirino from Oreimo.

Anyway, I knew that I was going to want to watch all of this series, so I had already taken advantate of the Sentai Filmworks sale over on Right Stuf! awhile back, and WataMote was one of the Blu-Rays I bought during that sale.  Having seen the first four episodes on the big screen at Alamo Drafthouse, I'm eager to be able to finish it at home on Blu-Ray.  I'm looking forward to continuing the manga in English as well.