random stupid crap

Ok, so my digital camera is a piece of crap. But I took a crappy fuzzy picture of my Aria figures. The cap is about to fall off the head of the figure on the left.

<3
But seriously, Ichigo 100% had all the same flaws as every other harem show.

Finally nice warm weather.

Useful tip: Don't buy figures if you don't have any place to put them on display. In my case, I picked up this really cute figure of Mizunashi Akari from the series Aria. Unfortunately, my digital camera has been broken for a while, so I can't put up any pics. Since my room has virtually no space in it, the figure is sitting on top of my collection of Heinlein short stories.

So summer supposedly started 3 days ago or so, and the weather has been pretty damn cold. Still I went biking tonight after I got home from work. Just a quick run to the nearby Borders where a couple of things that caught my interest.

Fruits Basket vol 10 came out, so I picked that up. Incidentally, they had like 30 copies on the shelf, so I guess its a big mover for them. Also, Viz's Shojo Beat was available. This anthology is targeted for girls, and it looks like on the advertisments side it is working, since there are makeup ads and other girly advertisements in there. I have severe doubts that an anthology magazine targeting girls will survive in the North American market, but Viz has already succeeded with Shounen Jump, and a larger percentage of girls read manga compared to guys, so it might actually work.

The video game magazine have finally started talking about E3 a couple of weeks ago. I am so old school, I found that the screenshots that grabbed my attention were all the 2-D ones. I would be flipping through the E3 coverage, and my eyes would glaze over as I see all the 3-D crap, and then all of a sudden I'll notice an image and think "Holy crap, that looks good!" and it ends up being a 2-D title. Of course this means its on the DS, which is probably going to be the last video game system with a fair amount of 2D games. And yes, I'm a Nintendo fanboy, and yes, I will be getting a DS when Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow comes out, and yes, the PSP is crap.

On the way home, I was biking past Lake Elizabeth when I basically rode into a huge swarm of gnats or some other kind of tiny insect. There were a ton of them, and as I rode along, literally hundereds were hitting my face, arms, chest, etc. Looked like all the insects were coming out, since its the beginning of summer, and the sun had set maybe half an hour prior. Luckily, when I passed the lake and got back into the residential areas, the swarm of insects disappeared.

Just recently finished Maison Ikkoku 11, and am currently reading Tuxedo Gin 12 and Terry Goodkind's Naked Empire. After I finished Tuxedo Gin, next up is Yotsuba! from the creator of Azumanga Daioh.

Watched Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle today. It was pretty funny.

So you might have looked at the image in the previous post and thought "WTF, that windmill base looks totally messed up!" Well, I thought so too until I saw this:

So I downloaded the fan scanlations of Aqua, of which Aria is the continuation of. I have already stated numerous times that scanlations suck and that I would ALWAYS pay for a physical copy of an english translated version of a manga.

Unfortunately, this title is one which is most likely not going to be coming over here to the U.S. Even though Aria has be released here (3 volumes and on hiatus - I'll talk about that later on) the rights to Aqua are owned by Square Enix with Mag Garden allowed to publish it in Japan (I think that is how it works). ADV has the rights to publish all of the Mag Garden titles (Blade Comics) in the U.S. and they basically published the 1st volume of everything in Blade Comics. Unfortunately, Aqua is not one of them since it is still a Square Enix title. There is a Square Enix title out right now, Full Metal Alchemist by Viz, but that has an accompanying Anime and PS2 game. Also, its unlikely Viz would put out Aqua, since its only 2 volumes long, and any fans would then follow ADV's release of Aria afterwards, rather than any of Viz's other titles. So Aqua is stuck in limbo and may never see a relase Stateside. But until then, I'm stuck reading fan scans, which makes me sad, and hoping for a release here.

As for Aria? Its stuck on hiatus, just like every other Mag Garden title ADV has released over here (some titles are still published regularly). Unfortunately, in a 6 month span, ADV released a ton of volume one's of those Mag Garden titles, and basically all of them were crap. Their sales were terrible and they laid off a bunch of people in their manga division and canceled or put on hiatus a lot of titles. (Hey, didn't this happen in the 90's with Image comics? But they actually brought down the whole comic book industry with them, which ADV failed to do.) Instead "ADV is refocusing its manga publishing on 'winners,' Oarr says, and will publish about 50 titles in 2005, down from as many 80 books last year. Oarr says ADV will focus on properties 'where we have both sides'--both the manga and anime licenses--pointing to the upcoming release of the much publicized Cromartie High book and anime series," as stated in Publishers Weekly. What does this have to do with Aria? Aria is on hiatus, BUT it will get an anime series in July. Hopefully ADV is just waiting for the anime to air before they renew their Aria releases (Hopefully they don't license the series and wait to release both at the same time, that could take years). Hopefully ADV didn't cancel the series outright.

Had lunch with Howard yesterday. I am amazed at how much deli food prices have gone up. A turkey sandswitch at Cheese Taster was $5.98! All the deli's I eat at semi regularly have gone up in price. Erik's and De La Cruz are also about $6 per sandwich. And for what is considered to be the only true delicatessen in Fremont, the Cheese Taster sandwiches are spectacularly average. They make decent sandwiches, but they do not give me that OMG factor that I get with Erik's, nor the size of the sandwich satisfaction I get with De La Cruz. At least they are better than some other places, such as House of Bread, Anderson Bakery, and Ohlone Deli.

So in August, Jump Superstars will come out in Japan for the DS. A Super Smash Brothers type game from the makers of Super Smash Brothers, featuring prominent characters from Shounen Jump? Most likely having some kind of wireless or online play? This thing is going to sell millions (ok probably several hundred thousand or so).

Just look at the character list so far:
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Here's the list in consistent with the most recent update: June, 05 2005

Characters confirmed:

DRAGON BALL Z
Son Goku (playable)
Vegeta (playable)
Gohan (playable)
Piccolo (playable)
Kuririn (Support)
Senzu Bean (item)

SHAMAN KING
Yoh Asakura (playable)
Anna Kyoyama (playable)
Hao & S.O.F. (Support)

HIKARU NO GO
Hikaru Shindo & Fujiwara no Sai (Support)

BLACK CAT (all support)
Train Heartnet
Sven Vollfied

YU-GI-OH!
Yugi Motou (playable)

RUROUNI KENSHIN
Kenshin Himura (playable)
Sanosuke Sagara (Support)
Hajime Saito (Support)

BUSOU RENKIN
Kazuki Mutou (playable)
Tokiko Tsumura (?)

NARUTO
Naruto Uzumaki (playable)
Sasuke Uchiha (playable)
Sakura Haruno (playable)
Rock Lee (Support)
Neji Hyuuga (Support)
Hinata Hyuuga (Support)
Shikamaru Nara (Support)

EYESHIELD 21 (all support)
Sena Kobayakawa
Hiruma Youichi
Kurita Ryoukan

ONE PIECE
Monkey D. Luffy (playable)
Roronoa Zoro (playable)
Nami (playable)
Sanji (playable)
Nico Robin (playable)
Usopp (Support)
Tony Tony Chopper (Support)

BOBOBO-BO BO-BOBO
Bo-bobo (playable)
Don Pachi (playable)
Heppokomaru (Support)
Tokoro Tennosuke (Support)
Dengaku-Man (help)
Gyorai Girl (help)
Beauty (help)
Hatenkou (help)

DEATH NOTE (all support)
Light Yagami & Ryuuk
L

ICHIGO 100%
Aya Toujo (Support)

MR. FULLSWING
Saruno Amakuni (Support)

KOCHI KAME
Ryotsu Kankichi (playable)
Keiichi Nakagawa (Support)
Reiko Akimoto (Support)
Daijiro Ohara (Support)
Honda (Support)

PRINCE OF TENNIS (all support)
Ryoma Echizen
Shusuke Fuji
Kunimitsu Tezuka
Eiji Kikumaru
Takeshi Momoshiro
Shuichiro Oishi
Kaoru Kaidoh

GINTAMA
Gintoki Sakata (playable)
Kagura (Support)
Shinpachi (Support)

D.GRAY-MAN
Allen Walker (playable)

KATEKYO HITMAN REBORN!
Tsunayoshi Sawada (playable)
Reborn (Support)


Characters seen in site pics:

SLAM DUNK!: pic #18, 20, 21, 26
Sakuragi Hanamichi

YU YU HAKUSHO
Kurama (pic #27, 28)
Hiei (pic #6)

JOJO'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE: pic #22-25, 27, 28
Jotaro Kujo

ICHIGO 100%
Tsukasa Nishino (pic #7, 29)
Junpei Manaka (pic #18, 20, 21, 26)
Yui (pic #7, 29)
Satsuki (pic #22-25)

Titles Pending: (marked in gray)
????????????
Yuuto
????????????
Waq Waq
Bleach
Hunter X Hunter
????????????

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I mean, come on, who wouldn't want to play as Goku or Kenshin or Naruto? I dunno why they have Ichigo 100% characters in there though....

Read a couple of volumes of manga recently.
High School Girls volume 3 is still crude but extremely funny. There is a lot of bad fanservice manga out there, but High School Girls does the fanservice and comedy just right.
Fruits Basket 9 is all new material, not covered in the anime. It has some awesome chapters such as how Hana-chan meets Tohru and Uo-chan, and it looks like a new character called Rin shows up. This might be the best volume of Fruits Basket yet (although those Kagura chapters were pretty fun).