The anime I’ll be posting about today is Anime Runner Kuromi, parts 1 and 2.  Originally I watched this anime as part of my college’s anime club, and at the time thought it was…hyper.  On a second and third watching, it’s still hyper, but there’s a lot of charm, and in the current industry climate, it’s pretty informative.

Kuromi has just graduated college and is on her way to work at an animation studio.  When she arrives at Studio Petit, the president hands over the reins of their latest project and leaves in an ambulance.  Now it’s up to Kuromi to manage a wacky cast of animators and get this episode turned in on time!

Anime Runner Kuromi is colorful and charming, and maintains an optimistic feel through the whole of both OVAs.  I’d especially recommend it since it shows some of the inner workings of an anime studio, informing viewers how their favorite shows are made along with telling the story of Kuromi learning to take on a gargantuan task she wasn’t prepared for.

In Anime Runner Kuromi 2, our crew is given 3 episodes from 3 seperate anime to be finished in the same time that they previously finished one episode.  When trouble meeting the deadlines arises, a new director is assigned to the studio, making drastic changes.  Kuromi must find the courage to go against her new boss, and get those episodes done without sacrificing quality.

Personally I like the second OVA better, however it wouldn’t have been possible without the first OVA to introduce our cast of characters and their quirks.  It’s hard not to like Kuromi as she industriously rides her bike back and forth gathering animation from the Studio Petit crew.  She does give in to despair, but after she spends some time crying, she decides to keep trying, which is pretty admirable.

Overall, I think Anime Runner Kuromi is interesting to watch mostly for what you’ll learn about the animation process, probably not so much the story.  The characterization is pretty good, and the color palette is quite bright, which I personally like.  I hated the annoying octopus mascot who served no real purpose.  All it did was hang around and make random comments.  This isn’t a magical girl show after all.

Basically, if you’re wondering what the basis of my Anime A to Z Project, that’s it.  I re-organized my anime collection in a fit of OCD.  I also decided that’s how I’m going to watch my collection, until in a fit of pique, I change my mind.  That, or simply decide I feel like watching something out of order.

The subject for today’s post is Akira.  I’m in a weird middle ground of anime fans where I’m too young to remember Akira showing in movie theaters or the initial dub for it, but I’m just old enough to have heard of Akira, and received a copy of the newer dub for Christmas while I was still in high school, I think.

Having just watched it again, I think Akira is still pretty relevant.  Sure, it doesn’t have the prettiest looking characters ever, but that’s not the point and would actually detract from the movie.  The main characters are a group of punks that run around on their motorcycles at night.

Personally, the biggest draw in the movie for me is Kaneda.  He’s something different than your current typical shonen hero: he’s COMPLETELY normal.  There’s no superpowers, and no latent abilities whatsoever.  The only thing that sets Kaneda apart from everyone is that he’s the leader of his gang and his awesome bike.  For the rest of the movie, he has no idea what’s going on, and he’s just doing the best he can to try and save the guy that he’s used to protecting.  As long as I can get behind at least one character in a movie/series, I will watch the entire thing, and I am completely behind Kaneda.  He’s thrust into a complex situation with absolutely no preparation for it.

So go watch Akira.  It’s considered a classic for good reason.  Also, it’s now on blu-ray, so it’s easily available.

To that effect, I’ve started playing Disgaea 3 once again.  I figure I should probably try and finish a game that I’ve already started before I start on a new one.  At least until the end of next month, when the new Metroid game comes out. I imagine I’m about halfway through the story, but I quickly got stuck on a new map and will either level up to try to beat it, or look up what I should actually be doing to defeat this map.  I don’t really think grinding is the complete solution, although it’ll probably make the maps after this one easier for me to defeat.

As for portables, I finally found my copy of My Japanese Coach after digging around for it for nearly a month.  I know that’s not really “playing” but it also serves as a re-entry into my self-study of Japanese.  I looked into taking classes recently, but unfortunately they’re just too expensive to be an option for me right now.

I think once again I may plug my Playstation handle, look me up if you have a PS3!  My name there is Kaeryo.  I’ll be happy to friend you, and maybe even play a game competitively or cooperatively, although I suck, so you might keep that in mind.  I was pretty startled recently to find that I friended a coworker on PlayStation Network, and we have absolutely NO games in common!  Not a single one!  I have some odd taste in games though, so I’m sure that accounts for most of it.  Plus, I don’t buy most new games until a year or two later when they’re much cheaper.  Pretty much the only games I buy new are either Disgaea or Metroid.

Yesterday, I came home to find the first Gurren Lagann movie on the table waiting for me, which was a pleasant surprise because I forgot that I had ordered it.  There was some accidental good timing on Bandai’s part, because I read about the movies being available through their website right after I had finished watching the series, and full of the warm glow the series had left me with, I ordered both movies.  I found out somewhat later that they’re just recaps of the series, but I figured that could be good too.

So I decided to watch it when I went to bed, which was probably not the best of ideas because I tend to drift off to sleep pretty quick once I’m cozy and watching pretty much anything on my television, boring or not.  Needless to say, the movie kinda dragged.  I did enjoy taking the trip back into the series and reliving all of Kamina’s awesome one-liners, but after a while even the novelty of that left me.

I am very much in favor of the awesome Yoko/Adiane fight scene however.  That was cool, and the fanservice didn’t bother me a bit.  I actually think it was pretty cleverly done, and ended up more toward the badass end of the spectrum rather than sleazy.

Other than that, I was a little disappointed in the movie.  I watched it with an eye toward introducing new viewers to Gurren Lagann, but I don’t think the movie would be better for that than the series itself.  The beginning is fairly strong, introducing Simon, Kamina, Yoko, and the others, but the middle was too random and just jumped around too much to draw in someone who hadn’t already seen all the footage being covered.  As you may know I’m currently “mentoring” a number of newbie anime fans, so I like to keep an eye out for anything that’s easily accessible to them.

I still like the movie generally though.  It’s good to pop in if I don’t feel like shuffling discs, and there is that great fight scene.  I’m really looking forward to getting the second movie.

I’ve been doing some manga reading, picking up first volumes of various series, mostly because I found them for cheap at the local Hastings when I go to visit my mom.  Recently I’ve read Crying Freeman, vol. 1, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, vol. 1, My Heavenly Hockey Club, vol. 1, and in keeping with my recent habits, Butterflies, Flowers, vol. 3, Black Butler, vol. 2, and Deadman Wonderland, vol. 2.  Pretty good variety.  I’ve had to scale back my spending some, but that really just means that I keep up on around 4 titles, and just put the rest on hold until I can afford to binge-spend, or I start looking up cheap volumes.  My personal favorite of all those is Butterflies, Flowers which is a mature josei (ladies’) title, with surprising amounts of twisted humor.  I literally laughed out loud a few times, and I generally never laugh out loud when I’m reading anything.

I’m trying to clear a few titles off of my “currently watching” list on MAL.  At the moment, I’m in the middle of around 25 anime, which is just too many.  I’ll make exceptions for One Piece and Bleach, since they’re long and not yet ended, but pretty much everything else had an ending, and I need to get to it.  I just finished Ippatsu Kikimusume, and the next series I finish will be Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and Spice and Wolf.  I just borrowed both seasons of Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex from a coworker, so I’m trying to clear a few series before I start on those.

Like I mentioned in the beginning of the post, I’m getting married this weekend.  It’s pretty exciting, but I’m currently of the opinion that the ceremony is definitely not worth it.  As much as I LOVE getting to see my mom, dad, and brother all at the same time, plus aunts, uncles, and other friends and coworkers that I haven’t seen in a while all in one place, the logistics of being “in charge” of an event where people are constantly telling me what I should do is very irritating.  What’s also irritating is people telling me it’s my event and that I should just do what I want.  Try telling that to the people telling me what to do, thanks.  End rant.  I’m really very excited, and the most exciting bit for me is that I designed (with help) my own dress.

I used a pattern of course, and I also got help sewing the top, since that’s a little advanced for my newbie/beginner skills, but I did most of the work on the skirt, and the color scheme and everything else was my idea.  So at least I’m doing exactly what I want with the dress, which really is fine by me.   I’ll try and post a picture sometime next week for you guys.

I have a limited yaoi collection, mostly because this kind of manga just recently became available at the Borders across the way from where I work, which is where I buy the grand majority of my manga.  The last time I shopped at Barnes & Noble the cashier literally shoved my purchases at me after I paid for them, which I found offensively snobbish and will still be limiting my time there.  However, this is not a bookstore review.

I had initially planned to re-read the two volumes of Love Recipe, but since I do most of my reading at work currently I decided that wasn’t really possible due to the explicit nature of the material and one nosy coworker.  This is my favorite yaoi though, so I should be able to review it with no problems now.

If you’re familiar at all with Animation Runner Kuromi, Love Recipe is similar, but with a boys’ love/yaoi bent.  If you’re not familiar with Animation Runner Kuromi, go get familiar with it.  Now.  In the meantime, Love Recipe is about a newly-minted graduate, Tomonori Ozawa who has just landed his dream job as an editor for a manga publisher.  The tiny detail he isn’t aware of before showing up for his first day on the job, is that he works for a Boys’ Love manga publisher!

It’s not long before Ozawa is sent to retrieve a manuscript from RoseBoy’s most popular author, Sakurako Kakyoin.  Under the impression that Kakyoin is a woman, he readily agrees, and is shocked to find that Kakyoin, is in fact a man that draws boys love comics.  Ozawa is molested by Kakyoin shortly thereafter.

There’s an odd charm to this manga.  Although there is the initial consensual-on-one-side sex, the sex scenes in the rest of the manga seem to be mutually consensual.  At least as much as it ever is in yaoi, from my limited experience.  The relationship between the two main characters is amusingly complex, and all the extra snippets about manga editing, moe, and the purpose of boys love comics makes this manga a continuously good read.

The biggest draw for me is the relationship between Ozawa and Kakyoin.  Kakyoin starts out as the older, experienced aggressor, but ends up quickly falling for Ozawa, who doesn’t have a clue.  Ozawa’s cluelessness carries the humor for the rest of both volumes of this manga.

In short, I highly recommend this manga, for yaoi beginners such as myself, or maybe even long time fans.  It’s cute and sweet, and the sex scenes are well done, without being overly graphic or weird.   They’re a little more expensive than most manga, but for the extra money, you get lovely slipcovers on your manga.  It’s definitely worth the extra money.  In fact, feel free to check out Digital Manga’s website to see more of their catalog.

If you haven’t seen Cat Soup, I’d recommend it with a warning: unless you have an idea what’s going on, you won’t know what’s going on.  Heck, even if you know what’s going on, it still won’t make sense.  It’s a very random movie.

Cat Soup could be summed up in the following way: it’s the journey of two kittens to retrieve the girl kitten’s soul from Death.  Alternatively it could be summed up as two kittens journeying to the grocery store to buy bean curd for Mama cat.

Basically I trick people into watching Cat Soup by giving them the technically correct summary.  Then I sit back and watch their head explode.  I do try to be somewhat nice about it by only really showing it to people once I think they’d be ready for it.  I don’t want to scare them away from anime forever.

My latest victim was a coworker who’s been chatting me up about anime and manga.  I’d lent him Cat Soup a month or two ago and he’s just now gotten around to watching it.  Every week, he’d tell me he was going to watch it, and I’d nod and think to myself, “yeah I’ll *know* when you watch it, hehehe.”

He claims that he has something worse than Cat Soup, that he’s going to dig out for me to watch.  I guess I’ll be waiting for that to see what happens.  I think I have a trump card already for that though.  My next act may just be to convince him to watch the Revolutionary Girl Utena movie.  Oh hohohoho!

Unfortunately I don’t have much of a con report, because I didn’t see much of the con.  A great deal of my experience was ruined by terrible roommates.  I have learned a lesson there.  Sadly, I think I could have made room plans with a complete stranger and THEY probably would have been more courteous than these two people, one of whom I was acquainted with.

I’m happy to say that the cosplay this year was actually pretty varied.  There’s still some Chi’s (Chobits) about, but not near as much Naruto/Bleach/Kingdom Hearts/Final Fantasy as I’ve seen in recent years.  It’s nice to see that the crazes seem to be calming down a little bit.  However there must have been around 20 Luffy’s and at least a dozen Grell Sutcliffe’s which sucked for me, because I was looking for a specific Luffy and a specific Grell and I was also silly and didn’t bother to message either of them before the con so we could get together.  That’s an opportunity missed, especially since I don’t think I’ll be going back to A-kon next year.  I want to try and hit another convention, and my thoughts are going toward either Anime Boston or Anime Weekend Atlanta.

I did some cosplay for a few hours.  I got hugged quite a bit, mostly by people also cosplaying Deidara from Naruto.  It’s pretty weird, but nice to be loved.  I have to admit that at that point I was pretty down, and hugs from strangers picked me up some.  Yeah, I know.  It’s weird.  I also really enjoyed baffling fellow con-goers by simply staring at them when they decided to speak to me.  Mostly about how odd it was for Deidara and Gaara to be sitting together without fighting or being dead.  I’m pretty awkward socially, but it was also pretty funny to just watch the bafflement on their faces as they continued talking, like that was going to get me to respond to them.  Poor guys.

I did buy a lot of figures, and I will probably be taking some pictures to post over the weekend.  I was happy to find a Grell Sutcliffe, which goes nicely with my Sebastian, and I started a Zoro collection with a 10th anniversary One Piece figure – where apparently they had some joint thing going with Dragonball.  What a weird crossover.  Anyway, I also picked up about half a set of Petit Nendoroid Vocaloids, but I didn’t manage to get a Kaito, who I REALLY wanted.  However I did snag all three versions of Miku, though I have to confess that mostly I wanted her default.

I’ll leave you with pictures of my favorite cosplayer out of the approximately six cosplayers I took pictures of.  I’m getting weirdly shy about taking people’s pictures – I always mean to take more pictures, but I usually don’t.  Cursed shyness.  Anyway, here’s a couple pictures of a cool Zoro cosplayer.

Zoro cosplayer A-kon 21 (2010)

Zoro cosplayer close-up A-kon 21 (2010)

Honestly, it’s one part sarcasm, and one part stubbornness.  The stubbornness springs from the fact that I regularly converse with a person who’s only seen approximately 20 minutes of Dragonball Evolution, but swears that it’s the worst movie ever made.  Which is in fact, untrue.  Don’t get me wrong, Dragonball Evolution is a BAD movie, but I’ve seen worse.  This attitude is just annoying me enough that I will now attempt to annoy that person by defending the movie every time he badmouths it.

It’s weird, but that’s the way I am.  It really annoys me to read/hear people’s opinions when they don’t even bother to watch/listen/read whatever they have the opinion about.  What’s worse is when a person accepts another person’s opinion as their own.  That’s just lazy.  Why bother having an opinion about something you never plan to watch then?  I really don’t get it.

In non-ranting updates, I’ve finally finished watching Gurren Lagann, and I have to admit that the ending had some tears coming to my eyes.  It’s been a little while since I really enjoyed what I was watching as much as Gurren Lagann, and I’m glad that the ending was…..an ending.  Honestly, I really liked the ending.

Since I finished Gurren Lagann out of my personal collection, I’ve moved on to Vandread which is not as good as I remembered it being.  I have the sinking feeling that this is going to be the trend for a lot of the anime I watched when I first became a fan, unfortunately.  It has a great premise: battle of the sexes in space.  Unfortunately, it really just turns into space harem with combining robots and one hell of a bitchy lead.  He is completely unlikable, but I still like a few of the side characters, such as the elderly captain of the female pilots, and the merchant guy who operates their ship naked.  Poor guy.  I’m just going to try and get through both seasons as quick as I can and move on to the next title in my collection.  If I ever finish, I will definitely be thinning it out.  I own some terrible anime.

I caught up with Fullmetal Alchemist:Brotherhood on hulu, so I started watching Spice and Wolf since it expires the soonest (May 14).  I’ll admit that a lot of the subject matter is pretty dry, and it’s definitely not for the average viewer, but I’ve been surprised by how much I’ve been enjoying watching it.  There’s an excellent chance I’ll end up buying it.  It’s a nice contrast to a lot of the other anime I watch, with it’s calmer pacing and excellent music.  I think that the music helps to draw me in even when my attention starts to wander away from the screen.

It’s shocking that I’ve posted twice in the same week now.  If you know Missouri weather, it’s been back and forth between summery warm and wintery chilly for the past month, and it really messes with me.  I spent most of last week simply working and sleeping, since I was pretty run down.  I’m feeling better so far this week though, so hopefully that stays true.  I hope all you guys are doing well too.

My budget’s been pretty low also, so the cosplay I had been planning to do, I can’t do now.  I’d been hoping to be able to make the shirt from fabric I already had, but I messed that up and put together something that would be way too small for me.  Plus, I’ve been procrastinating ordering a wig and accessories, so now is definitely too late to be doing any of that.  I really prefer to order wigs around 2 months in advance so I don’t have to worry about whether I’ll receive them on time or not.

Honestly I had given up on the idea of cosplaying for A-kon, but my roommate who’s going and will be cosplaying sorta bugged me into thinking about it again.  It doesn’t help any that I believe the last few costumes I have made have been pretty bad.  Bad enough that I’d rather not remember I wore them.  I’ve been in a slump about it, and I’m perfectionist enough that wearing a crappy costume really brings me down.

So I went through my collection of wigs to see what I had, and try to brainstorm characters to use them for, asking friends on facebook and twitter for suggestions.  Now I have a nice little list of characters I can cosplay that I don’t necessarily need to order a wig for, which is nice.  I ended up choosing Ruby from Rosario Vampire, and this weekend I bought material for her top, along with a pattern to make it.  If all goes well, I’ll start piecing it together and maybe even sewing it this week.

If all doesn’t go well, I just won’t cosplay.  I have nothing old I want to bring back out, and nothing comes to mind that’s all that easy to put together.

Fun random fact: the majority of my wigs are blonde, blue, or black.  I also have a couple green wigs.

So to give myself some amusement, I decided to think of voice actors that would be even MORE inappropriate for the role of Zero.  Here’s my list so far, feel free to add any you think of in the comments.

• Steve Blum
• Crispin Freeman
• Spike Spencer
• Greg Ayres
• Mr. T