Saki only doujinshi event review – Kiyosumi Oasis, Kawasaki-shi
Posted on | February 1, 2010 | 1 Comment
I was really looking forward to this weekend as I had picked up a flyer a while back that said there was going to be a Saki only doujinshi event in Kawasaki-shi (10 minutes south of Tokyo) which promised to be a lot smaller and less crowded than Comiket. The poster said that there were only 20 spaces for vendors and that there would be events and an “after event”…
So happily, we trotted down t Kawasaki-shi on a lovely sunny Sunday – found the venue without much problem (The Kawasaki-shi Centre for Industrial Promotion) and took the lift up to the 4th floor to be greeted with what seemed like a wall of people. The first difference to Comiket became evident in that you had to pay a 500yen entry fee per person for the courtesy of buying things from the event, though you did get a nice catalogue and presumably you could get entrance tickets for less before the event.
The event itself was a single room, and I found out later from reading the catalogue that at the last minute they’d increased the number of vendors from 20 to 50 on demand (that being why it was so crowded). By the time we’d fought our way through the crowds for the first time in a flurry of doujinshi and 1000yen notes we’d seen all the booths and it was barely 10:45 (It started at 10:00am). The only booth to sell out before we got there was Hakka-ya, though since their doujins always get scanned I wasn’t too bothered about that. Vista was also there and had a new copy-bon out (They work hard! They had a new doujin out for FuyuKomi). We also ended up buying a rather nice wallscroll of Nodoka who had (surprisingly) normal sized breasts – though I believe the artist is female, so that might be why…
And so now for the other highlights and lowlights of the convention.
- The cosplayers – being mainly men in drag, served mainly to disturb rather than admire. Particularly the Touka/Hajime combo could run for ugliest cosplayers any day…There were two female cosplayers, a Yumi with her own hair dyed highlights of purple which was nice, though she didn’t look anything like Yumi; and a Kanbara with great hair…though the girl was short and would probably have been better off doing Hajime or Koromo…
- The Mahjong tournament! They had an automatic table! While I was in the UK, a friend and I constantly debated whether these existed (I thought they must do) and there was one in the flesh. Unfortunately, since the buttons weren’t labelled, I pushed a couple and secretly broke the machine. I didn’t find this out until they started playing the tourney and pressed the exchange buttons and the tiles jammed ^^;; Needless to say it was fixed and I was not in the least bit suspected…
- Tacos! They had a taco vendor outside, but unfortunately I found out too late that you had to apply for tacos in the convention and get a taco ticket, which seemed to be so that all the people walking by wouldn’t buy up all the tacos. Just for the record, they weren’t real tacos, since they were made using soft tortillas which are WRAPS. Typical Japanese nomenclature mistake though…
- Hand holding up queues! I still don’t understand these – According to the signs they were holding, they were queueing for the more busy booths, but at the same time they were queueing, I (and a lot of other people) were just pushing our way to the booths and buying the stuff – you know, au-naturelle. I really don’t understand what they were queueing for…a new item? Limited edition goods? Maybe someone can enlighten me on this…
- Hawking their wares – It’s difficult to get to work without someone from some company in a brightly coloured raincoat shoving a packet of tissues into your arms or a flyer or discount ticket for a nearby restaurant…At night, the competition gets even more fierce as the izakaya and the restaurants compete to see who can hassle the most people into going into their eating hole (I mean, how else would a restaurant on the 11th floor get any business?). Hilariously I saw a pretty girl who was getting a lot of business, but when I listened to what she was actually saying she wasn’t actually promoting the company at all, she was just shouting “I’m giving away free tissues!”
- Police doing useless jobs – I think it’s pretty safe to say – the Japanese police are completely useless at everything except perhaps looking at maps and directing you to where you need to go (and even that takes a lot of effort). Recently, the killer of Lucie Blackman (she was killed and put in a bathtub of sand a few years ago) was caught, but only because he handed himself in. Instead, the police concentrate on seemingly important duties, such as standing outside their police boxes looking useful, walking round and saying hello to people, completely failing to understand tourists asking for directions and most importantly, directing traffic, even when there are traffic lights at the same junction.
- Worrying about things that are a lot worse in other countries – Apparently according to my lab mates, about 90% of Japan has had or has swine flu. The fact that it is never tested for and the symptoms are not as severe or even remotely like normal flu doesn’t seem to perturb them – a two day cold is NOT swine flu or any other kind of flu, by the way. Lots of train companies have also put “security services” on their trains to deal with the “terrorist threat”. This would probably have been more useful after the Sarin nerve gas attacks a while back, but no matter. The fact that I’ve never once seen any of these security personnel combined with the fact that Japan is probably the easiest country in the world to be targeted (each station has about 500 coin lockers for putting bombs in, not to mention litter bins all over the place) doesn’t seem to occur to them…
- Killing themselves by jumping onto train tracks – Almost every day there’s at least 2 in Tokyo alone. Can’t people do it in a way that doesn’t make other people late for work? Please?
- Imitating other countries’ cuisine – Sometimes, it works really really well – Their Chinese food is very good, and there’s not much to complain about with their Italian eather (though the portion sizes could be bigger and they could use less potato ^^)
- Driving extremely carefully – Because the cyclists are such assholes.
- Making sure that you can buy the essentials, even at 4 in the morning – these inculde food, meat buns, beef bowl, ramen, MacDonalds, stew, alcohol, cigarettes and most importantly, pornographic magazines (note that these are on the BOTTOM shelf rather than the top, since short Japanese people would have a hard time reaching them to stock up)
- Cycling – I’ve been through this one, but it continues to infuriate me! Though I saw a hilarious pair of schoolgirls the other day cycling the wrong way down Otakibashi Dori – one of the biggest roads in Shinjuku – one with zettai ryouki and long socks, the other riding on the back of the bike with loose socks…
- Imitating other countries’ cuisine – No, that is not how you make an Indian curry. Not anywhere else in the world, not here.
- Speaking Engrish – Though it’s better than most English people’s Japanese…According to one of the top 4 English conversational school’s advert “A little bird told me you are birthday is just around the corner”
- Making things foreigner friendly – For some hilarious reason, the Japanese language proficiency test webpage (if you want to take the test in Japan) is all in Japanese…Well done guys – I think someone hasn’t thought this one through…or IS THE WEBPAGE THE TEST!
- Makking pretty buildings – Well, cast undecorated concrete appears to be in at the moment…
- Preserving areas of beauty without putting tourist shops and cafes all over it – Yeah I know everywhere is just as guilty, but they covered a sacred mountain with o-miyage shops for Buddha’s sake. And no, I don’t want to buy a miniature model of Mount Fuji from your souvenir stand at the top of Mount Fuji. Thank you.
I pressed reload table when there were still tiles on the table and it jammed…Lawl.
Anyway, we escaped the mahjong tournament before someone realised that the gaijin had sabotaged the only automatic mahjong table to find that on the ground floor some Japanese schoolchildren were having a piano recital so we sat in and watched that for some free entertainment (very cute dresses). For our patience we were treated to a (slightly mangled) rendition of “Brave new World” from Disney’s Aladdin. I was sad to see that there was no Nobuo Uematsu on the schedule though…
So that was my first small convention – packed, small and like mini Comiket, though you pay to get in and the prices of the doujins themselves are generally cheaper. Oh and here’s my haul…
Left – Nodoppai wallscroll. Right, clockwise from top left: Kaju/Momo – Cute doujin where they’re sleeping on the roof and reminiscing about their dreams. Hisa/Mihoko – Cute but nothing much else type doujin. Kaju/Momo by Vista – Yumi and Momoko share a moment in the clubroom invloving Yumi’s oppai. Kaju/Momo light novel by Amaranth – yet to pluck up the courage to start translating. Kaju/Momo mini doujin mainly with cute art and mini strips. Hisa/Mihoko and Kaju/Momo doujin mainly centering on Hisa/Mihoko and what Hisa is doing after graduation – Significant “MIHOKO IS MAI WAIFU” ending.
Nanoha ZA MOVII -FAASTO- Opinions
Posted on | January 28, 2010 | 5 Comments
You may or may not know this (depending on how many Nanoha news groups you read), but the 1st Nanoha movie has just come out in Japan (the premiere was last Saturday I think). So I was naturally very excited (being an enormous Nanoha fan) and even more excited that it was going to be based on the first season (which is naturally the best, with Nanoha/Fate goodness and no pointless added characters or Kansai-ben, tsundere pink haired knights or pseudo-German-named hammer-mauls). Here’s what I thought…
The movie is about 2 hours long (I lost track) and the Japanese is rather easy to follow (except when the TSAB shows up and starts spouting about rifts in the space-time continuum, of course…). It basically covers the storyline of the first season of Nanoha from episodes 1-13 with additional backstory of Precia and Fate outlining how Precia went mad and why she hates Fate so much…
The storyline is compressed but not losing the main points – Yuuno shows up, loses mightily to a crap levelled Jewel-seed fuelled beastie and gets discovered by Nanoha and friends. That night she’s already transformed into a magical girl (complete with reworked transformation sequence – thankfully without that rather fetching pink-hue that it previously had) and by the end of it she’s already using Divine Shooter and Yuuno’s eyes are already popping out of his head. The fast development of Nanoha’s fighting skills is explained in part by giving Raising Heart a bit more dialogue – supposedly training Nanoha a little in the magical arts while she’s having class and such. The very next battle, Fate shows up and the whole Jewel seeds storyline kicks off.
The storyline as a whole doesn’t change that much. The characters are the same, but somehow Fate seems more kind and a bit more wistful, there is a bit more electricity between Nanoha and Fate, especially in the closing scene and, most importantly, the entire battle sequences have been reworked. The final battle especially between Nanoha and Fate was almost completely unrecognisable – When Fate pummels Nanoha with Phalanx Shift she doesn’t even pause for the spell activation phrases and Nanoha looks a lot more the worse for wear afterwards. The Starlight Breaker magic is even explained (Fate exclaims that it’s “absorbtion magic” – i.e. that it absorbs used magic from the battlefield) and the animation sequence for it is amazingly well done.
The one qualm I have with it is that reading the comics (you can get them over at MangaUpdates), they pose a lot of unanswered issues. The first is why Nanoha is so lonely at home on her own and really wants a close friend that she finds in Fate. This is alluded to in the movie, but never addressed – we know that Nanoha’s family is a jetsetting team of crimefighters (see Triangle Heart), so she must get left on her own a lot, but she has friends (Arisa and Suzuka get precious little screentime in the movie, poor girls) so it’s hard to see why she would be so lonely. Maybe the following comics will explain… The second issue was that Precia in the comics was undoubtedly rather obsessed and mad as in the anime, but by a couple of chapters Linnith (the cat familiar she creates to take care of Fate) seems close to breaking through to her and Precia is showing at least a little trace of humanity. I was waiting for that trace to show in the movie, but it never did – which is a shame, because I think that it would have made Precia more than your traditional insane 2-dimentional villain…
In conclusion, the movie was a really good watch, if not for the lack of new material the fighting sequences and polished animation really shine and there is a good dose of Nanoha/Fate magic to be had for those looking out for it. It just remains for me to pose the question – why do animation sompanies bring out “remake” movies rather than movies that fill in gaps in the plot. I’m sure the storyline that is most yearned for amongst Nanoha fans is “what the hell happened between A’s and StrikerS” – namely Nanoha growing up, telling Arisa and Suzuka, her and Fate becoming an item, her accident and all the events surrounding it, why Fate ended up in the Special corps, so on and so forth. However, if this first movie is anything to go by, then “Nanoha ZA MOVII – SEKONDO-” will probably be a reworking of the A’s storyline! Is it just left up to the OVAs to fill in the gaps?!
Oh, there’s a Haruhi movie coming out soon too I hear – perhaps I can test this theory…is it just going to be a marathon of the first season in the right order, I wonder…
Winter anime review: I don’t like anything this season!!
Posted on | January 19, 2010 | 9 Comments
I don’t think it’s happened to me for a good long time, but a combination of the winter season being slim pickings and some rather insufferable attempts at animation, I have to say there really is nothing to hook my fancy this season at all (T_T). Actually, that’s a lie. I do quite like Hidamari Sketsh~Hoshimittsu~.
Let’s go through all the offerings shall we?
Dance in the Vampire Bund
Despite the awesome name and (apparently) awesome source material, Dance in the Vampire Bund started off with a talkshow episode. Kurogane hated this interpretation, but we rather liked it, since we’re forced to watch Japanese talk shows whenever we turn on the TV and its ALL SO TRUE. And at the end, Mina kills a vampire using her MIND CRUSH. Which is fairly awesome. But then in episode 2, for some reason we get a boring school scene with a spine-tinglingly cheesy amnesia storyline where Mina stalks Akira in a scary way, then falls over and gets naked. Apparently her MIND CRUSH powers don’t work on attack helicopters. Or other vampires. Or maybe past episode 1. Evangeline A.K. MacDowell could so kick her ass.
Protagonist weakness factor: 3 – Akira is actually quite cool. If only he hadn’t got “amniesia”.
Ookamikakushi
(Really annoying) boy goes to a new area where everyone is (creepily) nice to him and he gets arm-raped by a tomboy with short hair. The only awesome part was when purple-haired girl got her scythe out. Seriously, can mangaka NOT do an awesome demon storyline without attaching a stupid school life seinen one to it as well?!
Protagonist weakness factor: 8 – No confidence, gets arm-raped and is probably the wettest protagonist this season.
Omamori Himari
(Annoyingly voiced) boy gets visited by a cat monster that turns into a (improbably busty) Japanese beauty who must now protect him at all times from demons (apparently including lolis in swimsuits). This ticks all the boxes for an acceptable harem anime – Flat-chested osananajimi, Big busty new girl moving in on her territory, swimsuits in the second episode, monsters that are actually cute girls or lolis and a maid that looks a lot like Asahina Mikuru. Now if only the protagonist wasn’t so annoyingly voiced, I could take his claims to chivalry more seriously. And there’s the “Kanokon syndrome” as I will now call it – a teenage boy getting hit on by an improbably beautiful woman and NOT TAKING ADVANTAGE?! Puh-leese.
Protagonist weakness factor – 6 – He’s not that bad, at least he’s not as wet as the guy in Ookamikushi. But come on, she seriously wants you, at least hit it once! Maybe he’s a secret lolicon.
Chu-Bra!
I was kinda waiting for this one, as I’ve been reading Comic High, but I was a little disappointed (though seinen type anime like this are often really slow). By episode 2 there isn’t much to recommend it by, and nothing’s really happened except that there have been a lot of (achingly slow to resolve) misunderstandings. Nayu is a rather improbable lingerie-fetishist trying to push her “interests” on her friends in school by making an underwear club. However, according to love, she hasn’t said anything incorrect yet, so boys can really learn about the ins and outs of women’s underwear by watching the show! benkyou ni nattayo ne!
Protagonist weakness factor – 3 – Nayu is one of those irresistably kind but dream headed girls who probably don’t exist in reality. Well, not if they’re also lingerie monsters as well…
Ladies Vs. Butlers
I’ve been forbidden to watch this, even though it has naked nipples. Mainly because love has hated butler animes since Hayate no Gotoku
Seikon no Qwaser
Oh how crap was this. I watched episode one because I was aware that there was some controversy surrounding the censorship of the nipple sucking, but no-one quite prepared me for the absolute crapness that ensued around it. First and foremost, White-haired-emo-scar-guy who could control iron. Could you be more of a jerk? He’s not even that good looking, so he could have easily been a girl and pulled off the tsundere angle, but no – they went for the cold bishie guy instead. Rubbish. Biri-biri could so kick your ferrous ass. And the “baddie”? Who in their right mind would pick Magnesium if they had the choice of all the elements. Even if I was limited to the low numbers I would definitely pick Carbon and throw buckyballs and carbon nanotubes at people. Is the premise that the more powerful someone is the higher atomic number element they can control? Are we going to see the uber-baddie control Lawrencium or Seaborgium or something?
Uarrgh! Bad science makes me twitch!
Protagonist weakness factor: 3 – Mafuyu is fine as a protagonist – protective older sister types are done and dusted though.
Hidamari Sketch ~Hoshimittsu~
Well, it’s more of the same as the previous 2 seasons, but with two new characters, the loner and future NEET Nazuna and the computer geek and not-quite-genki-as-Miyako Nori. If you liked Hidamari Sketch before, it’s more of the same. Watchable, ignorable, cute, SHAFTy.
Protagonist weakness factor: 4 – Yuno is rather amusing at times though. Otonappoi ni naritai ne.
Others
I’m not sure yet of whether I approve of the new arc in Railgun yet, as I was quite looking forward to Kuroko going goggle eyed at all the Mikoto-onee-samas. As long as it doesn’t go all head fuck I think anything will be fine if Mikoto gets to go uber-railgun and Kuroko gets to smother her with her love afterwards. Hanamaru Kindergarten looks kinda cute, in a Animal Yokocho kind of way, so if I get completely bored I might check it out. Quiz I am boycotting myself because it’s YET ANOTHER SCHOOL SEINEN. Sigh. Do something original people, please…
Living in Japan #6 – A collection of strange and wonderful things
Posted on | January 16, 2010 | 8 Comments
For lack of better things to write about, I wanted to make a list of all the strangest things that I’ve seen in Japan so far this visit…Also included is “strange drinks you can find in vending machines!”
Around town
1. A mother breaking my cycling with stupid things record with three children (all about primary school age) on the same bike (two on the back, one on the front, all with helmets and strapped into chairs). Crazy.
2. A man whose job it is to straighten up all the bikes in the free public bike park by the station after all the commuters pile in and shove their bikes in any old how. I say hi every morning.
3. Being shown the room catalog for a fetish hotel by the grandmother-age lady proprietor. I could never get used to that…
4. Following a single, 20-ish year old woman alone down a dimly lit alleyway in Shinjuku for 400 yards and her not even turning round once to check who I was. Japanese people are far too trusting.
5. Being served sashimi from a fish, the rest of which was still moving on the plate. Apparently that’s a good sign it’s fresh.
6. Watching Cinderella and Pinocchio on tiny TV screens while eating Japanese curry in Tokyo tower.
7. Enormous (1-2 hour long) queues outside the Shinjuku Krispy Kreme. They’re doughnuts, people! NOt gourmet food!
8. The fact that you often see people buying things from vending machines, but very rarely see them actually drinking them. In fact, there seems to be an unspoken rule not to eat or drink openly on public transport (I guess that’s why most anime characters sit down to drink their vending machine coffees). Doesn’t stop me though…
9. Seeing a transsexual/transvestite couple on the train – you had to look closely and listen to them, but the “man” was a spotty boyish girl and the “girl” was a tall, effeminate boy in a skirt. Actually, the boy was particularly convincing. Also, saw a transvestite man in a skirt suit going to work on the morning commute. They’re not all that common in England, I have to say.
10. Really old tramps. Like, tramps who have been tramps all their life. Professional tramps if you will. They sleep around Shinjuku station and under the bridge near Seibu Shinjuku. All the tramps in the UK are quite young – made homeless through drugs or other unfortunate circumstances. They probably die quite young but here, they live on and on…
11. Hundreds of people doing a job that would be done by two people…in the same amount of time – for example, around 10 engineers fixing a (short) escalator. For hours. Or 5 people directing traffic where it’s obvious where cars should go. Or at Comiket tons of people acting as barriers holding sticks. Could you not afford Tensabarrier(TM)?
12. Housewives drawing enormous sums of money from cash machines to put into other cash machines to pay the monthly bills (thereby avoiding the nominal transfer charge for transferring money from bank to bank – about 200yen)
13. Cat cafes! – Cafes you can (pay to) go to to sit and drink a (normally priced) cup of coffee. Sort of like a host bar but for people who are more of an animal persuasion…
14. People in parks walking their animals – Not so strange, you might think, but we have seen at least two people walking cats (without leads) and one person in Yoyogi koen with three cute lop-eared bunnies. Seemed quite difficult to catch them though…
Drinks and Things
1. Soba tea. Ugh
2. Black bean tea. Uugh.
3. Corn soup in a can. (actually this is quite nice)
4. Bean soup in a can (Shiruko) – I don’t wanna know what this tastes like…
5. Tangerine jelly in a can. Yay! Jelly in a can!! Note the coffee jelly in a can to the left of it.
6. The tissue packets given out a Comiket – Just that little bit bigger than the usual size – Man-sized you might say, for activities that men do. At home. After Comiket.
7. Fried chicken cartilage flavoured crisps. These appeared in my research lab one day. They havent been eaten yet.
8. Turmeric flavoured tea (doesn’t taste of anything)
9. A whole pig intestine in a ball (available at all good supermarkets), looking rather like an alien brain of some kind.
10. Probiotic toothpaste – we got this for free at my research lab and it kinda tastes like what you don’t want your mouth to taste of in the mornings. Obviously. And then your teeth feel worse in the mornings. Someone obviously hasn’t done their homework…
Comiket report – Status of your porns
Posted on | January 12, 2010 | 5 Comments
So I thought that I would write a short post on how trends in the doujinshi world seem to be developing, according to my limited view of browsing Toranoana and Comiket 77…
Parodies
Touhou is especially going strong at the moment (though it’s been pretty constant for the last year or so). Shijima visited the Touhou section on C77 day 2 and said it was a warzone, though I avoided it like the plague (mainly because I don’t really recognise the characters…). In Toranoana Akiba there is an entire floor dedicated to Touhou doujinshi (and sections of the other floors as well.) I myself am not entirely sure what makes Touhou so drawable for doujinshi writers – it’s not like the mythology is as well detailed as a manga or visual novel… There are a wealth of characters (all female) I suppose, and every fetish under the sun is catered for – Mikos, witches, ghosts, lolis, huge breasts and such. I guess you’ll have to ask the team at Wings of Yuri what it is about the series that makes it worth translating!
K-ON! is still going strong too – it was the last big thing and with talk of a season 2 confirmed, I think the next Comiket will be another “everyone does another K-ON doujin year”. Not enough yuri though, despite the fact that there are no men in the entire series. I do get tired of random men raping Mio doujinshi…
Saki has a lot of doujinshi following, and unfortunately it seems that Kyoutaro as well as the usual faceless male cock frames are getting a lot of action… There’s a few futanari doujinshi but yuri doujinshi are few and far between. Hakka-ya released a few at C77 though and they’re already on line at Tokyo Toshokan. There is a Saki only event in Kawasaki-shi (aptly named) at the end of January which I’m planning to go to that looks like there should be a wealth of Saki yuri, but we’ll see…
Nanoha is the series of the moment though…The doujinshis never really stopped since the series ended, with big circles like STUDIO HUAN continuing to pump out the Nanoha material, the fanbase never really died. With the release of the movie this January (I’M SO EXCITED!!!) C77 had an entire section of the West wing devoted to Nanoha doujins (which all the otaku in the East wing failed to find, it seemed) More Nanoha/Fate yuri please! There’s also a Nanoha only event coming up, but I might give it a miss unless it looks awesome…
Of the other themes, Hatsune Miku of Vocaloid is still poking around, Bayonetta makes her first (inevitable) appearance, ahead of the Japanese game release, no less… Queen’s Blade is all the more popular after the second season of boob fighting and To aru Kagaku no Railgun is really popping up everywhere (though relatively little Kuroko/Mikoto)… Bakemonogatari seems to be mainly taken up by the bigger groups (T2 artworks, most notably) – maybe the characters fit less well with random rapings and deserve a bit of pampering?
The old favourites such as Dragon Quest (why?), One Piece and Evangelion are still supported as much as before, though Bleach and Haruhi support seems to have gone down (especially after that abysmal second season). There was also relatively little Full Metal Alchemist, even though Brotherhood is currently being shown…I guess the lack of good female bodies counts for something…They showed up a lot in the Yaoi section though, believe me. And also disappointingly for me – no Seitokai no Ichizon yet. sigh…
Fetishes
Rape lovers will be pleased to know that their favourite fetish will never die – there’ll always be sufficient fap material involving girls getting raped by nameless and faceless men (who generally get reduced to semi transparent cocks) and covered with copious quantities of sperm.
Yaoi – still going, please ask someone who actually paid attention on Day 1 and 2…or find a fujoshi.
Yuri – I think there is a slow but sure rise in the yuri genre, but nowhere near the level that the fujoshi set with their gay boys…The queue at Fujieda Miyabi’s stand was immense (he’s currently doing K-ON! mostly, I believe) and a lot of Nanoha material is of the yuri persuasion. There is a lot of yuri support for certain couples – Konata/Kagami in Lucky star is still being drawn for example. Kuroko/Mikoto of Railgun fame may not get many doujinshi, but there are at least 3 volumes of collections of yuri material on sale in Melon Books (of various quality…) Girl’s Love Festival is also coming up in March and I intend to go! If anyone wants anything there they’d better tell me!
Futanari – There’s definitely a penchance for mangaka to spoil a good yuri story with inserting some cock – especially when it’s not well drawn. However, the classic futanari mangaka are still going – Behind Moon put out a new Angel Beats book in C77, Rebis is (still) continuing his “Prina” series, but Arsenothelus (his circle) have taken a couple of new artists under their wing – namely Sengoku (who draws beautiful, yet improbably proportioned futanari women). Hinemosutari continue to improve with their original works and last but not least there’s no comment to describe the awesomeness of the new Askray (which is still not online, I don’t think…)
So here are a list of festivals I am going to in the next few months:
January 31st – Kiyosumi Oasis (Saki)
March 28th – Girl’s Love Festival 3
April 11th – Sunshine Creation 47
May 4th – Futaket 6
More for my own reference than anything else…-_-
Comiket Day 3 – Real shopping begins!!
Posted on | December 31, 2009 | 3 Comments
Approximately 1/10 of the people waiting to get in at 7:30am
So perhaps a shorter post about Comiket day 3 – somehow I caught something between day 1 and day 2, so I didn’t sleep at all last night and felt pretty crappy when I got up at 6 am to start off to the Big Sight…
Completely different sight to arriving at 11am yesterday – by 7:30am when I arrived there were already hordes of people sitting in little squares in front of the Big sight and two enormous queues 12-15 people wide stretching 500 metres down the main walkway away from the Big Sight towards Aomi station. I asked a steward where the East Halls queue was and he replied that they weren’t letting anyone else in the East halls queue at the moment so we were shepherded around the corner to form yet another 500m long line where we stood waiting… Shijima from Wingsofyuri was probably somewhere in one of the squares sitting down somewhere.
So there I waited for 2 and a half hours. It wasn’t bad, sitting half on my bag, half on the floor with my Seitokai no Ichizon manga for company and my copy of Link’s Awakening (which I was stuck on and couldn’t get any further), listening to the few episodes of “I’m Sorry I haven’t a clue” that I had left on my MP3 player. They do their best to keep you interested – at 9:20 the line moved a little, then in little portions towards the main stairway where we stood, poised, until at last at 10am, someone started clapping and the line started moving.
The view from the top of the steps, Day 3
Even taking into account the tunnel of horrors, I was still in the East halls by 10:20am, so I don’t think it really matters a great deal if you’re not looking to get the limted edition gear…I headed to A-20 first for Askray, I was a bit scared since he was an outside booth, but the queue was only 2 people long in the end. Then I hit the interesting snag which makes Comiket like a mosh pit.
For some reason, the Comiket committee choose to put all the ero hon in the East halls, which is where 95% of the people in Comiket on day 3 want to go. The West halls, in contrast, are relatively empty, filled as they were with a few ero hon (Nanoha themed), Key and Leaf fanbooks and the leftover yaoi from day 1 and 2. Why they do not spread the material out is beyond me. Secondly, they chose this day to close at least 3 of the 6 doors in East halls, so that all the people coming in and out of the sides were shepherded through a narrow causeway between the end booths and the wall. Amusingly, the queue for Arsenothelus was the only queue I’ve had to fight to get in to…I’m going to guess that there weren’t enough stewards to guard the remaining doors (of course, you need at least 10 per door, to say “migi ni detekudasai” and “kochira ni hairanaidekudasai”)
So anyway, most people are pretty polite, but there are the odd few who push through crowds with their lists in a “MUST BUY ALL MY PORN” kind of way which pisses me off. It’s only porn, man!
So anyway, after hitting the (nearly empty) corporate booths I was knackered so I retired to the East halls balcony to check my wares and wait for Shijima. She found me there wearing my brown nekomimi today (the other half’s suggestion) and we went for coffee. End of Winter Comiket 2009!
Haul! – Top row – Mutsuya (For someone else)
Middle Row L to R – Isago Jou (copy bon, but cheap), Hinemosutari (I swear he keeps getting better with each one) Behind Moon (No oversize in this one, so a little plain) Kesson Shoujo Memories 3 (4 previous Kesson shoujo books in 1 – a good deal…)
Bottom row – Radiohead (no scat, always a bonus) Arsenothelus (Not Rebis! Actually half is done by Sengoku so art is rather good) Senya Sabou (Maybe I’d rather have got his recent Fate/Nanoha one, but there was a long queue and I was rushed) Askray! (Lots of Buchou, so awesome, if short. Pity he didn’t finish the next one before Winter Comi…)
Comiket Day 2 report
Posted on | December 30, 2009 | 2 Comments
A slightly scaled down queue to get in
So missing out the fact that I avoided day 1 and apparently missed all the Saki yuri doujinshi (shimatta!!), I decided to go on day 2 – not exactly to shop, but to scout the place out and also to walk along to Oedo Onsen Monogatari to see whether they are open tomorrow (we were planning to go along after I’m done with Comiket and have a nice relaxing bath – and hopefully not missing the last train on New Years Eve while we were at it…) They are incidentally, so we’re going. Then maybe going to Hanezono Jinja in Shinjuku for Hatsumode in the evening…
So I decided to go along to the site at 11am, since I heard that it only takes about an hour to get in at this time. However, as I arrived at the Rinkai line station (Kokusai Tenjijo), I was surprised that the queue had already progressed to halfway up the plaza and actually I ended up walking straight in…
I went to West halls first because there were supposedly a lot of yuri circles there, but by the time I got there, the circles were already out of their new material and there were relatively few people in the West halls…(by relatively, I mean “lots” of course.)
A slightly scaled down Corridor of Horrors
So due to my own mistake I had to navigate the “corridor of horror” joining the East and West halls (Tokyo Big Sight architects obviously didn’t foresee people actually needing to get from the West side to the East side in large numbers…Thankfully, it was winter and there weren’t that many people, so it was only a mildly unpleasant experience, but in total it did take about half an hour to get there…Note to self – use East halls entrance tomorrow.
Some miscellaneous yaoi
In the East halls, they had joined together all the halls on each side to form two long halls straddling the central gangway. The content was fairly disappointing – unless you like Touhou or yaoi of course… in total, probably about one hall of the two was dedicated to yaoi circles, half a hall to Touhou doujinshi and the other half to Doujin soft, Doujin music and a small amount of crafts and merch.
Comiket from the sky
I thought that my money was better spent on the non-Touhou stuff that will emerge tomorrow, so I exited and went over to Oedo Onsen instead, had lunch in Venus Fort (amongst pairs of girls and couples galore), got to the second stage in Time Crisis 4 for the first time with the money I saved from not riding the (stupidly expensive) Yurikamome monorail and then ambled back to meet Shijima, though we somehow missed each other completely, even though we were probably standing at the same station in exactly the same place… Oh well, better luck tomorrow!
Living in Japan – #5 – Differences
Posted on | December 22, 2009 | 6 Comments
When I came to Japan for the first time, I thought that the lifestyle here was really different, but now on my fourth visit and having stayed here for nearly 3 months, I can see that it’s not really that different from the UK. There are certain things that are obviously different – that there are fairly few visible foreigners and the culture of course, but there are several ways in which Japanese people differ markedly…
So I decided to write a post about what Japanese people are particularly good or bad at compared to other countries…
Things Japanese people are good at
Things Japanese people are bad at:
I might add to these…
Living in Japan #4 – Autumn
Posted on | December 9, 2009 | 2 Comments
Well, as I write this, the autumn here is quickly turning into winter, but since nothing particularly exciting happens in winter, let’s talk about autumn instead…
The Japanese have a particular way of celebrating times of year. In just the same way we in England complain at the bad things at different times of year – In the spring it’s too rainy to go out, in the summer it’s too hot and sticky on the tube, in the autumn its rainy and there’s wet leaves everywhere and in winter the ice make the trains run hours late; Japan likes to celebrate the good things about each season. It’s probably because they have better weather.
In spring – it’s the countdown till the cherry blossoms come out (and the other flowers as well, but the cherry trees have their own particular forecast), in summer it gets dark late, so they have summer festivals, fireworks and get drunk in yukatas, in winter there’s not a whole lot, but there’s New Year’s and visiting the family in the hometown and in autumn there’s watching the leaves.
Watching the leaves turn (kouyou – literally “crimson leaves”) is as much a national pastime as hanami (cherry blossom viewing). The trees (especially the Japanese maple) have leaf turnning forecasts and city-ites commute to the countrysinde in droves (or their nearest tree containing open space) in order to sit under trees, drink amazake and take photos of the same thing they take photos of every year. Oh, and get drunk in the middle of the day. This season is helped by the fact that the weather is seasonably milder in the autumn months than at other times of the year – not as hot as summer, past the August/September monsoon season and not as cold as winter…
The colours Japanese trees turn is also beautiful. The only trees that turn red are the Japanese maples, but the other trees turn different shades of yellow and brown (though much less brown than in England thankfully) and forests are punctuated with swathes of different colours that somehow seem more romantic than a similar view back home…
The foods also change according to the season. in autumn it’s time for the yakiimo (baked sweet potato) served steaming hot and ridiculously expensively from mobile vans in the street, but also taiyaki (fish shaped pancakes with bean jam), various types of kinoko (mushroom), kuri (small sweet chestnuts) and pumpkins (kabocha). Amazake is a sweet lumpy rice pudding made from the sweetened rice pulp that is left over when they make sake (and is non-alcoholic). Convenience stores dust off their oden warmers and soon the faintly sickly smell of various fish mince boiling slowly in broth is a staple of life. (Incidentally, the best thing in oden is the little sacks of tofu with mochi – pounded rice inside…and I still don’t know what the puffy things that look like marshmallows taste like.) Shabu-shabu (sort of like “cook your own stew”) restaurants start collecting more and more chilly customers…
Here are a few more things in the I Spy guide to Japanese autumn:
- Chilly primary schoolboys in their cute officer’s hats STILL wearing shorts in temperatures below 10 degrees.
- Bakeries trying their best to incorporate all the autumn flavours into bread – baked sweet potato shaped bread anyone?
- Christmas sales – the opposite of everywhere else in the world, Japan just sees the Christmas season as another excuse to have a money off sale.
- Shinjuku and all the big shopping districts lit up with surprisingly tasteful lights.
- Little boys and girls dressed up in kimonos carrying long bags of candy on Shichigosan
- Schoolgirls STILL showing off their knees…maybe they think it’s alluring?
Hmm, I might add more to this list later…
Living in Japan #4 – Sexual Japan
Posted on | November 25, 2009 | 3 Comments
I’ve struggled to come up with things to write about in my Living in Japan series – mainly because my opinions haven’t really changed and I’ve probably said it all before in some post way back when in the archives…But I thought that I should at least comment on a few of the things about sexual Japan that seem important while I’m here.
So I was on the train the other day and I was patting myself on the back for being able to read a poster advertising some issue of a current affairs magazine. What really drew me to the poster in the first place was the fact that it said “SEX” (in big capital English lettering) in no less than 3 places. THe whole sentence turned out to be – “SEX – why Japanese people are not having enough of it revealed” and below (well, to the right) “I’m too small! I’m too weak! Men’s reasons for their loss of self confidence.”
In truth, Japan is not a very sexual place. I guess its the long working hours, coupled with the fact that to find employment, many couples get split up – with one (usually the husband) working away while the wife stays at home, or has a job nearer the house. That sort of arrangement can’t be good for sexual relations (however limited they might be with a son or daughter in the house). Yet as I have said on this blog time and again, Japan does come up with the most depraved pornography (and volume of it) – per head probably the most in the world. And not only that, but there is evidence of it elsewhere – the frequent fan-made pornography shows, the enormous red light districts bulging with love hotels boasting cut price cosplay outfit rentals, being accosted in the streets of Ikebukuro by a nice-looking lady who wanted me to share her umbrella (I played the “no speekee Japaneese” card”). There’s no doubt about it – at least part of the Japanese populace likes their sex.
I’ve mentioned Enjo kosai (teenage prostitution) before and it’s obvious that it still goes on, with enormous 7-8 storey buildings boasting “Telephone Club” (Place where you can call girls who are up for Enjo) in 3 foot high neon lettering, not an uncommon sight in the Love hotel districts. I don’t have any evidence about Chikan koui (fingering girls in trains), presumably for the horny older men who can’t afford to Enjo kosai. I assume it still goes on, but I’d have to poll Japanese women to find out… So what does can we conclude from this? Obviously there are a lot of frustrated older men separated from their wives around and some younger high school girls who like Prada who seem willing to fill that gap (the other part is probably filled by good old Thai prostitutes).
And there is one more piece of evidence that needs to be put forward. This month, the wife and I decided to spend some of our hard earned yen on going to the Tokyo Fetish Ball (well, it was being held just down the road after all). And needless to say it was a great show, but the one thing that really surprised me was the menbership of the society that sets this ball up every year – half foreigners. I know they want to retain a “varied membership” but aren’t there enough Japanese people into S&M to go round? Or perhaps they’re too scared to come out and admit it? And what of all the foreigners that joined – since there aren’t that many foreigners in Tokyo, the obvious conclusion is that there are a disproportionate amount of foreigners that come to Japan that are into that sort of thing. In which case, either they chose Japan because of its reputation in that sector (more likely) or Japan turns people weird (possible).
I’d like to insert here the random fact that I have not been able to find striped panties anywhere in Tokyo. Well, I have a long time left to look ^^
Conclusions
I’d like to draw all the evidence together and make some sweeping generalisations (or conclusions as I like to call them). First of all, horny men are separated from their (presumably equally horny) wives for the sake of work. Those with money hire prostitutes or find a nice high school girl who will take care of things while they’re away from home and those that don’t get it for free on the crowded commuter trains in the mornings. Meanwhile, the frustrated teenage boys who can’t get any because the girls from their age group are off banging middle aged businessmen turn to pornography resulting in the production of said material rising to the equivalent of 15000 metric tonnes per year. The other less able teenagers find foreigners who have come over to Japan because they heard it was a haven for pornography and sex and hook up with them instead.
And the horny frustrated housewives buy all the striped panties so I can never find them. The End.
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