I’m just going to Bechdel Test everything I read and watch. The criteria are three simple yes or no questions:

1. Are there at least two women in it?

2. Do they talk to each other?

3. About something besides a man?

It comes from the general trend in all media that women are simply seen as extensions of men rather than their own selves. A woman tends to be defined by the roles of mother, sister, daughter, wife, and reflected through the lens of male characters.

I’m not saying all stories have to be feminist stories. I have varied ideas of what constitutes a “strong female character.” I think this will be an interesting topic to explore.

I probably won’t Bechdel Test yaoi manga and anime for obvious reasons.

I spent most of today reading the rest of my random purchases that I hadn’t gotten around to before. I didn’t want May to come around and they be gone forever. I think I may be worse off than if I hadn’t read some of them, however.

Pride and Twelve Hour Ruler were pretty damn good, and I would love to read more. So was Edo Nekoe Jubei Otogizoshi. Heck, for the last one mentioned, I’d gladly pick up Japanese editions just because I like the art so much. Who knew you could portray so much emotion on the face of a cat, along with inspiring a possible cosplay no one will ever guess? Crazy for You only had one more volume to be complete! One volume! As for the rest of what I bought, fortunately Girlfriends is pretty available in a print edition (I think/hope), and the rest were just random harlequin/weird/trashy things I will never read again anyway.

So farewell, Jmanga, and thanks for introducing me to Edo Nekoe Jubei Otogizoshi. Maybe someday I’ll learn Japanese so I can just read from the source!

This year’s Naka looked to be the biggest yet. The main guest of note was Nobuo Uematsu, famous for composing the soundtracks to various Final Fantasy games. Kyle Hebert and Greg Ayres made return visits this year, joined by Tony Oliver and Richard Epcar. The musical guest was blue chee’s, a multitalented female pop/rock/idol group.

So what did I think of this year’s Naka-kon? It really depends on which day you’re talking about.

Full disclosure: this may be a long post. I’ll try and break it up with some pictures. Apologies in advance for my fuzzy pictures. To be as fair as I can, I have to share some of what my week leading up to the convention was like, because that had a pretty big impact on how I felt about things. That week at work had been an extra long one, at least it felt like it because my group was behind on our work and had been for a couple weeks then. Our boss was out sick suddenly, our lead was pretty much acting as supervisor, and everyone was pretty stressed. I’d been trying to keep my own stress down while dealing with the fact that some of my coworkers just aren’t reliable at all.

I couldn’t take any time off for the convention, because snow days this year took what had been left of my vacation time. I figured it was best to save the sick day I had for Monday, to rest up if need be. So to set it up: I worked Friday from 6:00 am to 2:30 pm, then my husband and I drove to Overland Park to enter the convention and get our badges. Luckily, we pre-registered, or so we thought.

We stood in line for TWO HOURS. Now my memory isn’t the best, I tend to forget really negative things after a couple months or whatever, but it seemed like a ridiculous amount of time to wait in line, especially since I pre-registered. It begs the question, what is the point of paying ahead of time if the wait is still horrid?

Side note time: I know that staffing at a convention can be horrid. Things happen all at once that can’t be planned for and there’s never enough people to adequately handle everything all at once. I understand that. However, given the choice, I won’t stand 2 hours in line for ANYTHING. EVER. It didn’t help that later that night, whoever was in charge of Naka-kon’s facebook page politely assured everyone that they were working on registration, but that if you didn’t want that happening next year, perhaps you should sign up as staff. I’ll give them credit: it was very polite. I still took offence. It seemed like a weird way of blaming the problem on the con goers, because simply attending isn’t good enough, how about you spend your time helping too?

Well. I have staffed before. The year that I was staff, I actually spent no time doing anything else. I didn’t get a chance to check out the dealer’s room, or hang out with non-staffing friends, or even really attend anything. Frankly, it sucked. I found that really, I’d rather chill at the convention and maybe volunteer if the urge to help arose. I have a full time job, and like I explained before, no time to take off this year so staffing wasn’t an option for me at all, especially since I had surprise mandatory overtime Saturday.

Tl,dr: waiting in line for two hours sucked. Happily once I got to the counter itself, I got my badge in a snap. Unhappily I had to go sit down and rest, because my hips, knees and ankles were all stiff from standing for so long. An added note: the asshole behind us that kept hovering right at our backs then loudly talking on his phone still right behind us didn’t help. I know that he can’t be blamed on the convention though. I just have the horrid luck to always have to wait in front of some jerk in line, pretty well no matter what.

So, once we got our badges we looked at the schedule and didn’t really find anything to do until the blue chee’s concert. So we sat and rested, and met up with a friend who waited in line for 2 hours also. Then we checked out the concert. I enjoyed the few songs we stuck around for, and blue chee’s were really good about engaging the crowd. Besides being absolutely adorable. Sadly, we had to ditch pretty early because we’d been up since before 6:00 am, and had another day of work to look forward to. Ugh.

Oh yeah. We visited the dealer’s room and I found my main goal for that year: a Homura (from Puella Magi Madoka Magica) figure. I ended up getting both her regular and school uniform nendoroids! Will probably post a review of those sometime after this.

Saturday morning, I dragged myself out of bed to go to work. I had mandatory overtime, and I don’t think a convention is a good enough reason to miss mandatory overtime. If it had been voluntary, I probably wouldn’t have shown up. The sad thing is that it effectively cut my convention schedule in half, since I wouldn’t get off work until 2:00 pm.

The end of work arrives, and we head to the convention. Before I get into that a quick story. I decided to toss together a half-assed closet cosplay of Bon from Blue Exorcist, since I’d bought a wig specifically for his character from the last convention I attended. I arrive at work in a dress shirt and yellow sweater vests to exclamations of “you look nice!” and “do you have an interview today?” It makes me wonder what kind of slob I normally look like. Anyway, we get to the convention and I am immediately recognized for my character, which is awesome. That’s pretty much all the attention I need.

We met up with my friend and her parents for a moment before hitting the dealer’s room again. I end up buying some plushies. Then we just hang out for a while waiting for the panels we want to attend. Both panels are run by Catherine Jones of God Save the Queen Fashions, and weirdly they’re in different rooms although they are back to back. (There is literally no space between them.)

That brings me to something else that seemed weird. Naka-kon has a recent emphasis on track programming, as in different “tracks” are different broad categories of programming. I had thought that meant there would be a room or rooms dedicated to just one subject, so if you were interested in say, all cosplay panels you’d just stick around the same room. This was definitely not the case though. All the tracks were mixed in all the rooms. I could not even begin to imagine what the scheduling process is like though. I’m not even going to try.

Anyway, Catherine’s panels were pretty awesome. She had good clear slides to go along with her subjects, and had definitely prepared or given the panels before. I learned quite a bit and I’m looking forward to applying that new knowledge soon. She is also tiny! After her last panel Saturday, I was finished for the day, so home we went.

Amazingly, I managed to get up early Sunday to attend a panel about making plushies. It was…kind of informative. It wasn’t anything I couldn’t have found out on my own, but still fairly valuable. Now I have a starting point! They stretched the panel out with questions and little contests which was kind of cool too – and made me wish I’d thought to do that for my panel.

Finally it was time. My panel! About collecting figures. And I blew it. (Kinda. I will explain.) I got really nervous while I was setting up, super shaky. I haven’t felt that way in a long, LONG time. I got about a dozen people in which was all the better for me, I was already nervous enough about it. Side note: I’m introverted and super shy. Basically I decided to submit a panel to see if I was able to do it. I succeeded to a point. I held the panel for a mere half an hour instead of the full hour. In my nervousness I confused myself on the time. I count 50% success as success though. If I’d had slides and a presentation, I probably could have done an hour. Maybe not though. I have trouble holding a topic for any amount of time. It seemed like a successful-ish panel also (apart from the couple that were asleep the whole time).

And like that, the con was over. I don’t know if I’m going to try another panel. I really don’t think I know enough about anything to be able to run an informative/entertaining panel. I could be a pretty good cohost though.

So! TL;DR version – convention pros: great guests, fun concert; cons: awful registration line, lack of schedule on website. Overall, I enjoyed this year’s Naka-kon although the registration line really has me pondering keeping Naka in my plans in future years. I’ll probably give it one more year to see what happens. I’m crossing my fingers for continued awesome guests and concerts next year.

Did it live up to my expectations?

Not really. The beginning of the story was the same, with Lydia being taken in by shady characters and “rescued” by an even shadier character! After the initial arc, the story of the anime laid itself out differently. That’s not my complaint. With plenty of material to adapt, I’d actually be pretty disappointed if the anime and manga followed the exact same story.

The animation is bright and airy. It’s pretty decent quality animation. Lydia’s hair is weird though. I also enjoyed the fact that her wardrobe actually changes episode to episode.

The story itself seemed much different to me. Whereas in the manga Lydia seemed like a capable young lady who always decides on the side of trust and kindness, the Lydia in the anime seemed to spend much more time disbelieving the Earl, being jealous and figuring things out much too late.

It’s a very melodramatic (and boring) series. Kelpie provides some much needed competition for the Earl (or does he? maybe for the audience’s affections!), Nico is a constant, and Raven is Raven. The Earl himself is smugly confident all the time, except when he’s drunk.

I blew through this series and I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s romantic mush. Lydia is reduced to constantly worrying about someone that she won’t admit she loves, and then declaring he needs her help. The only saving grace for me came in the last couple episodes with the sudden friendship between Lydia’s magic cat Nico and Raven, the Earl’s stoic bodyguard haunted by a murderous spirit. The fact that they become and possibly stay fast friends is the highlight of the last couple episodes.

The biggest reason I don’t like this anime is that it commits that awful act: resolving absolutely nothing. Lydia does not admit to her feelings for the Earl, the Prince that is the Earl’s mortal enemy is merely hinted at and his arrival is even threatened at the last episode. The Earl does not seem to win over any more support or legitimacy although he carries the sword that proclaims he is the Blue Fairy Earl. I realize with the light novels there is probably no real end to be had, but something could have been resolved beyond the arc that took half this anime! If there is a second season I will not be watching it. (Unless there’s more Nico and Raven being friends. I’ll watch it for that.)

Let’s revisit the plot in the beginning, just for fun. Kyoko Mogami gave up finishing high school to move in with her boyfriend, Sho. She works many part time jobs in order to help support the fledgling rockstar as he begins to make his name, until he betrays her. Then Kyoko swears to get her revenge on him by entering showbiz and passing him in terms of popularity.

She decides the best way to achieve revenge is to join the talent agency that’s directly competing with Sho’s agency. In the process, she meets Ren Tsuruga who strongly disapproves of her motives for working in the business. There’s a lot of history between them that Kyoko is completely unaware of.

Even though Kyoko has shut herself off to the possibility of loving anyone any more, she manages to gather a small group of men who all want her love. At times, the men even compete with each other for her affections which ends up being pretty hilarious considering they know what they’re all about and Kyoko has no idea. She is exceedingly naive.

Anyway, 30 volumes! The saga of the Heel siblings continues, with Ren being slowly overtaken by his inner darkness, and Kyoko being aware that he is fighting something. And that’s about it. I swear this is the slowest moving plotline ever, and I suffered through plenty of Bleach before giving that up. I should also note that I am only keeping up with Viz’s releases of the manga stateside and not reading any scanlations whatsoever. I’m sure if I did I’d catch up way too quick and be super irritated about it. I’m happy to not forget what’s going on volume to volume, but the plot could really move along a bit faster. This especially sucks since Skip Beat! is the only manga I’m keeping current with at the moment.

One thing I won’t complain about is Yashiro getting out of the shower. Yay fanservice!

When the movies came around to Kansas City, I jumped at the chance to see them. Really I’ll watch just about any anime movie on the big screen whenever the opportunity presents itself to me. I enjoyed the movies and wondered about what differences there might be between movies and series. So I watched the series afterward.

I didn’t really see any differences. The movies seem to follow the series pretty verbatim, with possibly less crying and stalling from Madoka. The only difference I observed was that Kyuubey explained why Miki healed so quickly in the movie, but not the series.

I do like the series/movies, but when I finally purchase a copy it’s probably going to be the movies, since I imagine they’ll be more affordable.

I was pretty excited to hear about a yaoi-centric convention in my area, and also a little scared. I tend to think (probably unfairly) that yaoi fans are scary people. Unfortunately, I paint fans like myself with the brush of those weirdos at conventions that carry paddles. I do know that there are plenty of fans that are polite and pretty reasonable.

Anyway, Ahn!Con was held at the Ramada by the river, which is where Motaku got its start. It’s a pretty small hotel. Saturday, usually the big day for any convention had a pretty dedicated little crowd. It had a pretty good showing. Unfortunately I could really only go one day and all the interesting panels were either Friday or Sunday. Next year I may just go for the three day pass and see what happens. I did pick up a yaoi sci-fi webcomic book, so I’ll be checking that out and reporting on it…sometime. Don’t expect that any time soon, I have quite the backlog.

Hopefully Ahn!Con will be a yearly event. I also hope more people show up next year so I don’t run into that guy that doesn’t shower so often.

Recently Mick Foley (the wrestler who’s also known as Cactus Jack, Mankind, and Dude Love) has been pursuing some success as a comedy act. It makes sense. My favorite things about him as a wrestler have been the extremely goofy storylines and things he’s done. Mick’s a talented individual. Not only is he a wrestler, he’s been a bestselling author, and now a comedian too.

We went to Stanford and Sons, which is now located in Legends, which is a sizable shopping area in Kansas. My husband tells me that it used to be located elsewhere. We arrived well ahead of time so we wandered around, and found the T-Rex cafe, which I definitely plan to visit once it’s warmer. It looks like a fun place to eat. As the time to the show wound down, we went back to Stanford and Sons to wait for the doors to open.

Their lobby is pretty small. It got packed quickly. It was easily the longest 20 minutes of my life. Mind you, I’ve been in lines tons of times, and been in places with lots of people, but I’ve never had to spend so long packed up so tight before. Once the doors finally opened, we got to auditorium which was pretty nice! It was spacious, but the farthest seats were still pretty close to the stage. I didn’t feel like we were terribly far away, having bought the cheapest tickets.

The first act was….I forget his name. I am terrible with names unless I write them down or look them up later, and Stanford and Sons website isn’t very helpful. It only lists the main act for the night. I do know that he was a Kansas City native, a pro wrestler and pretty funny.

The next act was Christine Stedman. (I did find her on the website!) She is hilarious. I was skeptical after hearing that she was on a Nick at Nite show, cause late night or no, it’s still Nickelodeon. I was completely wrong. She really had a way with one-liners and puns that had me doubled over for almost her entire segment.

Last but not least was Mick himself. He entered, then asked the audience to sing his entrance music so it’d feel right for him. His portion really flew by, and was more him telling wrestling stories than making jokes, but it was fascinating to see him up there talking. After the show he did a meet and greet, and I have to say that Mick is one of the nicest people I have met. Definitely recommend it if possible. I got a shirt signed and a phone picture with him, making Mick the most famous person I have met.

Ichigenme is the story of two students studying law in a multi-year research course called a zemi. Tohdou is the son of a politician and a smiley goof. His love interest is Tamiya who is super serious and also the only person that actually works in their class. The zemi they attend is known as the easiest one.

Tohdou is interested in Tamiya early on, but Tamiya doesn’t reciprocate, mostly because he is straight. What’s really nice is that Tohdou lets that go. He’s pretty content to love from afar and start befriending Tamiya instead of immediately raping him as happens in so many yaoi manga. This was a sweet manga. I especially like how Yoshinaga is able to convey so much with just facial expressions. I do wish she didn’t constantly draw guys that appear to be grumpy and/or scowling.

The second volume takes place some time after the first volume. Tohdou is getting ready to start his own company and Tamiya is now a law professor. Tohdou’s younger brother and another law professor at the same college, Ito. It’s fun to see how the elder Tohdou and Tamiya’s relationship has progressed, and the side story fits in well with the world already created. There is some really interesting angles used in scenes, and more great facial expressions. It gets darker at the end with the younger Tohdou’s escapades from high school into early college.

All in all though, the story is sweet and the characters are enduring. I especially liked the elder Tohdou. It’s always fun to have a goofy emotional character in romantic stories, helps to keep the mood a bit lighter.

I will definitely have to check out more of Yoshinaga’s work in the future.

The Earl and the Fairy tells the story of Edgar Ashenburt, a possible criminal who seizes Lydia Carlton to help him claim the title of the Blue Knight Earl. Lydia is a fairy doctor, one of the few humans who can see and interact with fairies. This manga really seemed like it was tailored specifically to me: it has fairies and fairy lore, a pretty feisty heroine, a suitably devious and mysterious guy, and a talking cat! A talking fancy cat.

I love that Lydia is very decisive. She makes her decision and sticks with it even when she knows that Edgar is lying to her. She is a compassionate young woman, despite being ostracized because of her hair and her chosen profession. Edgar is a twisted, yet noble young man with obvious designs on Lydia. Their relationship is a lot of fun, and kept me engaged throughout the manga. Unfortunately it looks like four volumes is all there is of this.

I’m just going to have to cross my fingers and hope someone translates the light novels sometime (there’s 29!). In the meantime I have to go check out the anime. I definitely recommend reading the manga if you like fairies, Victorian England, and feisty but compassionate heroines.