Next is an O-Bon festival, which means yukatas, of course! And they look mighty fine in yukata, all right.

I’ve been very intrigued by Hatsukoi Limited. I love this show. My female friend, who’s into pretty boy shows like Hanasekeru Seishounen, is also crazy about this show. Yet I absolutely hate chick lit, chick flicks and other romance movies/shows. So why do I like HL?

Wait, make that, why does almost every guy like Hatsukoi, to varying degrees, even if we all objectively know that it wasn’t a very mature or deep show?

I can think of a few reasons actually, and these are the main things something like Hatsukoi has over the vast majority of romance series that only girls would love.

1. There are only shitty guys who each are so weak, they are capable of starring in their own harem anime. Misao can fit just right into School Rumble (not exactly harem though), Mamoru behaves the same as 90 percent of harem leads, Kusuda is the typical lecher harem lead etc. As some blogger whose name I have forgotten mentioned, there are no standout guys in Hatsukoi, and I think this is the reason why it is beloved by us male viewers. We fucking hate pretty boys who steal our women. We can emphatise with these regular joes, who have issues that we have once faced or are facing. Stuff like short legs, ugly faces, inexperience, envy towards better males, siscon, unrequited crushes etc. There are absolutely no annoying bad boy pretty boys, the type that are permanant main characters of shoujo manga like F4. Everyone hates those bastards except fangirls and they easily ruin a show.

2. There are plenty of hot girls, each with their own harem-animesque personality traits. I’ll say that the characters aren’t particularly unique, deep or rounded and some don’t even get developed at all throughout the series. But like a good harem anime, us male viewers just pick a favourite girl and root for her. It helps that the artwork/character design is one of the best around and there’s also lots of fanservice of the really titillating kind. I love boobies and Kei/Misaki/Meguru have nice boobies. The key to drawing in a huge male following for a romance series is to have beautiful girls and not-so-beautiful guys, and HL really succeeds with this. It doesn’t alienate female viewers as females aren’t as averse to beautiful females as males are to beautiful males. Speaking of which, I’m having a hard time picking a favourite girl  because so many are awesome. The only ones who I won’t instantly turn down if they ask me to date them are: the flat-chested swimming junior, the crazy drama club girl and weird incesty Koyoi. My favourite is probably Misaki in terms of appearance, but Chikura in terms of character.

3. There isn’t emo shit. The series doesn’t really have the sort of annoying whining, and it’s done very simply and to the point. The worst part about female-oriented romance shows is that some retarded emoshit will arise due to amazing coincidental tragedy, such as car crashes, diseases, affairs, or whatever natural disasters. Then the lovers will conquer the barriers and show their undying love. Hatsukoi is a mere gateway, and it doesn’t hide the fact that it shows the sweet, shallow and beautified version of first love that we all thought we had. It’s about nostalgia, rather than fantasy. Where everyone was shy, innocent and didn’t think about sex or money. Where people blushed just by talking to the opposite sex. Where everything done was a first. The whole show was saccharine-sweet and even the rejections weren’t outright, like Chikura and Ayumi’s. We guys don’t like heartbreaks in our romance shows. Also, the relationships aren’t overly grand and earth-shattering, like those you see in romance movies. I absolutely hate the sort like in Sex and the City (THE MOVIE) where the bride and groom finally get together intensely after 2 failed weddings etc etc and live happily ever after. HL has simple romances that you can easily relate to, instead of cursing that these wretched movies are tricking the foolish real girls into having unreal expectations of relationships.

4. There’s also the element of growing up in HL, which is sort of the same rush you get when viewing Honey and Clover, which was also equally popular between guys and girls.

5. Each arc was quickly settled and wasn’t wishy washy. I think this is pretty important, but not as important as the first 2 reasons. Come to think of it, Suzuka and its sequel, Kimo no iru Machi, were long, emo, and extremely wishy washy and convoluted but they were huge successes cos they had loser guys and lots of hot girls. But regardless, Hatsukoi’s quick and concise conclusions of each of the relationships prevented boredom from settling in, but at the expense of depth, which most guys don’t care about anyway. To us, romance is people getting together, and not the freakin process.

Hatsukoi Limited will probably be my recommendation to anyone who’s interested in a boyish group romance anime, which is surprisingly quite rare. I can only think of Boys Be for this genre.

Though I’m wondering how Haruhi can keep her ribbon intact in the water; is it easier than it looks or something?

Next is an O-Bon festival, which means yukatas, of course! And they look mighty fine in yukata, all right.

Next is a one-day part-time job. Must be a bitch to be stuck inside these walking furnaces in the height of summer.

So….that’s the same frog costume that appeared in Someday In the Rain, right?

Erm, yeah. I probably made plenty of gay, FABULOUS, and bromance comments here, too. Let’s just leave it at that.

Eh? This is the first time I’ve heard that Ritsu is an oneechan. She hardly seems the type.

As for Yui….I really don’t have to describe this, do I?

"Would you like a coke and fries to go with me, sir?"

You read that right. In other words, too much of a good thing makes you sick, especially if it makes you dizzy at the same time. Transformers 2 is probably the most disappointing movie I’ve ever seen. I went into the cinema with high expectations, ignoring the warnings of movie critics who rated it half a star out of five stars, as you know, they are snobby stuck ups who can’t see the magic in our youthful movies like Speed Racer. I left the cinema with egg on my face, as the critics were totally right.

This movie sucks, and it was so long that it ended after the last bus had left and I was forced to take a cab home, costing me a further 17 dollars. Fuck you Michael Bay!

To make things simple, I’ll list down in point form why this movie is shit.

1. Megan Fox is ugly. There, I’ve said it. I don’t understand why people think this manufactured, heavily plasticised, fake-boobed, weird-faced creature is hot. Look at her closely, she looks so fake and slutty that it’s a turn-off! There are too many shots of her in slo-mo with digital boobie bouncing. There are far better actresses (she’s not an actress anyway) and her role was a walking set of fake boobs.

2. Saturation. The same things happen over and over again that it numbs our senses. Robots punching, spinning shots, military hardware flyby shots and fucking explosions. Too many. This is the first time I’ve ever felt that there were too many special effects. Previously, I was of the opinion that CGI was like money, you can’t have too many.

3. The story is nonsensical. Note I don’t use the word plot here. Too many idiots don’t know the difference between story and plot. But Michael Bay knows neither. Transformers 1 was way better in that while it had a simple story, it was direct and was a vehicle to show off the action. It made sense. Transformers 2 is just rubbish.

4. The battles are poorly choreographed and nobody cares who gets killed because we can’t recognise who’s who! It doesn’t make sense when Prime had double headblades and only uses them when he’s dying. Is it some sort of limit break??? He wins easily with his double heat blades but prior to that, was getting pummeled when he fought 2-3 enemies with just his bare fists. Why?? Also, what’s with the rail gun? It’s stupid deus ex machina to get rid of the over-powered Devastator. Speaking of which, the annoying autobot twins should’ve been eaten up by Devastator, but instead can burrow in his face upon being ingested.

5. The whole movie is a retarded commercial for so many products, not just the cars, but worst of all, the US military. It is no secret that Bay is on very good terms with the US military, since his movies tend to portray them well and as such, is allowed very good access to the toys of the military. In return, he has to suck their cocks and give lots of airtime to the hardware. The movie was chock full of stock footage-like scenes of aircraft taking off, tanks rolling out and other shots that would be more fitting in an army recruitment video! It’s ridiculous and tiresome. You didn’t actually need the autobots as the military were owning the Decepticons easily. They really got pummeled hard, unlike in the first movie where they were invincible. I guess the military bosses didn’t like their equipment being shown to be so inept.

6. The camerawork is horrible of course. The love scenes were cheesy and to distract from this, they had the camera spin around 360 degrees so rapidly that the audience threw up their popcorn (half-digested). The mecha battle scenes were unexciting and really quite dull compared to the first movie. The problem was that they set it in a sandy, open, brightly lit environment, which means that the combat is quite slow paced.

7. The college scenes were extremely retarded. All the girls in those scenes were long-legged, boobie-showing, long-haired, slutty beauties. It’s like the Fast and the Furious movies.

8. Too many unnecessary characters. The autobot twins, the Leo guy, and even the evil Prime were completely worthless. The parents of Sam were useless too. In fact, Megan Fox herself could’ve been cut out of the movie and it would’ve been the same show.

9. The humour was just bad and totally unfunny. For some reason, the otakus I watched it with laughed at every single thing, while DM and I sat in stony silence.

10. It could’ve been Decepticons 2: Rise of the Fallen, a blockbuster horror-action flick. Because really, the Autobots barely featured and had little to no personality. Not that the Decepticons had any, but at least they had the role of scaring the humans and cutting them up.

Overall, a bloody disappointing show. I never thought I would dislike an effects-laden sci-fi action movie adapted from my childhood toys, but yeah I hate it. Fuck you Michael Bay, you suck!

We all know humans are sheep and sheep are cool, so to be human you must be cool, and as a special breed of human known as the Anime blogger, your coolness needs to be upped to the maximum, to facilitate the electronic penis growth. But how? Fret not, in just a short 15 minute post written at 4.49 am, I shall teach you how!

1. Always flame the most popular thing on the market at the moment, and then you will be cool.

Although we are sheep, we don’t like to be just any old sheep that blends into the flock. Hence we must be counter-sheep, and we start our own flocks. How best to do this than to utilise Newton’s law and harness the opposite forces? In other words, hate on K-On really badly! Flame Naruto! Speak ill of all the shows you loved before they got too popular to like! A quick search online, however, shows that almost every anime blogger now hates K-On, OMG! How now? The trick is to go even further, and counter those counter-culture sheep by being a counter-counter-culture sheep, in other words, praise K-On! And repeat if you garner enough support.

2. Always watch the shows that nobody watches, and praise them, in order to praise yourself.

This is a tactic popularised by Baka-raptor and some of the other episodic bloggers. To be a special blogger, you need to watch shows that nobody watches, to show that you have unique perspectives. Even if the show utterly sucks, like Akikan. Mind you, nobody watches more than me because I watch everything except shoujo and yaoi, even the English unsubbed series that most people have yet to hear of. So I am best blogger. Anyway, most people should just pick a few shows they don’t like and are not popular, and then start watching them, through gritted teeth, and make obscure jokes relating to these shows. This will get the crowd in awe of your l33t anime hunting skills, which will be seen as cool.

3. Always talk about deleting people from your blogroll as you have outgrown their importance.

Yes, nothing stirs up your fanbase more than threatening to cut off their precious traffic. Even if you aren’t actually generating any traffic. Once again, Bakaraptor is the one who has put this action in the spotlight, by hinting that he will be beating out anyway who does not suck him and worship him. This promptly causes a tsunami of bootlicking from his loyal fans, which will now show the other viewers how important he is.

4. Do not allow comments on your blog but make sure to leave hints that you are extremely well-educated and successful in life and do not need to listen to the shit spewed by 12 year olds online.

One might think Aninouto is most guilty of this, and it is true, but there are plenty of other blogs who do it. And it bloody works, cos they are cool.  Everyone visits Aninouto and secretly hopes they get on the site somehow. Other bloggers also live in fear of being impaled by the sharp sniper swordpen of Aninouto, and thus will keep themselves in line. Snipers are cool, everyone uses them in every game. So online word snipers are cool too.

5. Name drop. You ought to mention which great VIP you’ve met in real life or online, and who knows your awesomeness, such that people identify you as one of the upper crust bloggers.

I’ll give you an example, since this might be a difficult tip to follow. Here goes, "I went to kino and met up with Uematsu, my good friend from college, who introduced me to Danny Choo, the so-called king of Otaku bloggers. He and I had a beer and went to watch some baseball in Tokyo." The best part is, it works even with middle-class bloggers, sort of like "Well, Jpmeyer and Hinano urged me to battle Scott with them together, but I had to decline as Impz was having a tennis match with me." It’s all just to show that in your active social life, you get to mix with hip people. You might wonder why anime otaku are hip, but trust me, everyone thinks writing on the internet about anime on forums are gay, but if you do so on your own blog, you’re cool.

Yeah so if you do the above 5 things, you’ll be real cool and unique.

Amazingly, I did a quick search on the various anime blogs out there and found that absolutely nobody has blogged on the new manga series, Beelzebub, yet. It’s probably one of the best, if not the best, comedy battle manga I’ve read in years and yes, it’s far better than even M x 0, which for me, was the best comedy battle manga I’ve read in years.

With 17 chapters out so far in Shounen Jump, Beelzebub, by rookie mangaka Tamura Ryuhei, is about a super-strong, super evil and utterly hilarious high school kid named Oga, who chances upon a baby who pops out of a old man who splits into half. Apparently, the baby turns out to be the future demon king who’ll destroy the world and he was sent to the human plane to get attached to a human parent, who’ll be the catalyst for the channeling of his evil powers. A gothloli demon girl follows him and acts as his babysitter. Like Persona 4, there is a social link between the Oga and the baby Beelzebub, and this link is increased by an upping in mutual trust, which is in turn increased by Oga’s doing of evil acts. The catch is that the baby cannot be further than 15 metres away from Oga or he’ll die instantly. Of course, this sucks, so Oga tries to get rid of the baby by being good but obviously since he is pure evil he can’t do it. He’s also in a super delinquent high school where everyone fights to the death more often than not. Along the way, high school delinquent bosses fight him, sort of similar to how Onizuka is challenged in Shounan Junaigumi, the prequel to GTO.

Think of it as a variation of the M x 0 style of gag battle manga, with less ecchi but more side-splitting humour. The writing is really witty and I laughed more in the first few chapters than I ever did for any manga, I suspect. If you ever feel like picking up a brand new shounen series, make this your first pick! As is evident from the Jump questionaires, which have Beelzebub in the top 5, beating the likes of Bleach! Art-wise it’s a bit similar to Bleach, but more rough about the edges, with fewer pretty boys, and the faces aren’t that consistently drawn, which is as expected of a newbie mangaka.

Ever since I read Bakuman which actually mentioned Beelzebub as one of the Gold Future Cup winners (true in real life), I’ve sort of leveled up my manga reading stats and I predict this manga will go places. So, mark my words, this manga, if it is sustained, will probably become one of the new Jump top series, replacing the likes of Bleach and Naruto, the latter ending pretty soon. In conclusion, if you like shounen, or just like comedy in general, READ THIS AT ALL COSTS, even if you have to pirate it on onemanga.com like I did, though I do intend to buy the series when they are released.

People constantly and right talk about the likes of Genshiken as an otaku bible, but the relatively new (started in 2008) manga Bakuman offers an even better perspective. See, Genshiken is from the viewpoint of the consumers, that is, otaku. Bakuman stars two wannabe-mangaka who single-mindedly want to be successful Shounen Jump serialised pros, and get their own anime. The view point is completely different and it is very educational, to say the least.

Bakuman is written by Ouba Tsugumi and Obata Takeshi, which are the people who brought you the somewhat epic Death Note. Obata is already quite the legend in Jump, and so has tonnes of experience in the manga industry, which he sets out to share with Bakuman. The manga is chock full of insider information, which even the average Japanese might not be aware of, much less the typical weeaboo, whose interest is spread out among manga, anime and games.

Saiko is a 14 year old artistically-talented kid whose uncle was a somewhat famous one-hit wonder gag mangaka, who died tragically due to "overwork" after his manga series got cut by the infamous Jump chopper. He believes the true reason is suicide and thus discontinued his childhood dream of being a mangaka. Takagi, on the other hand, is a brilliant classmate who aspires to be a mangaka but knows he does not have the artistry to handle the drawings. He desperately recruits Saiko who turns him down at first, but later accepts when Takagi sort of matchmakes him and his crush, who turns out to be a seiyuu-wannabe. So the crush, a pretty ojou-sama character named Azuki, makes a promise to marry Saiko when she gets to play the heroine of his Jump-manga anime adaptation. The catch is, they now have to follow their dreams and cannot talk to each other or date at all until then. By a quirk of fate, Azuki’s mom and Saiko’s uncle, the dead mangaka, shared a similar relationship, but after 10 years, Azuki’s mom couldn’t wait and married a rich man instead. Saiko and Takagi are determined to succeed and the manga charts their journey from n00bs all the way to the pro-level. Bakuman also features plenty of Jump staff and mangaka, some of which are disguised as other characters.

In a sense, Bakuman is quite similar to another one of Obata’s manga, Hikaru no Go, in that there’s a lot of wowing and "you’re so talented and awesome" lines without ever showing us how so talented they are. There’s a huge amount of social commentary on the manga scene, and criticisms of Jump, which is quite generous of the magazine, since Bakuman itself is serialised in Jump. It also shows off the inner mechanics of the company, which is actually the best part of the manga. It has completely changed the way I look at all manga, not just shounen. We always laugh at the likes of Bleach and Naruto, but I’m sure once you read Bakuman, you’ll be able to appreciate why the mainstream shounen titles are made that way. You’ll also learn to appreciate the huge amount of work that goes into the creation of a manga, even a 19 chapter weekly featuring nothing but fighting scenes and "I’ll show you my true power!!!".

The interesting feature of Bakuman is how despite it not appearing to follow the typical Jump formula, which they themselves describe, if you look deeper, it totally does follow it. You have talented main characters who have a simple to understand fighting reason, attractive love interests, stronger enemies who will join them soon and manga battles in the form of the dreaded Jump questionaires.

Please read Bakuman, it’s worth it. With only 42 chapters out, it’s possible to read it all in half a day, which I did. It’s bumped off one of my favourite manga to become top 5 material for me.

FAIL

YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG

"Die, damned bugs!"

Actually, is this even possible in real life? If so, I wanna see the Youtube video of it.

Next on the itinenary, cicada catching. Haruhi sure is plowing through all the signature summer activities here.

And of course, Yuki being h4x and all, misses the point but scores a Hercules beetle instead.

FAIL

Next is a one-day part-time job. So….that’s the same frog costume that appeared in Someday In the Rain, right?

Yo Kyon, it’s a hint, you know what that means?! HIIIIIN-TO!!!!

FAIL

You FAIL too!

Redefining the phrase "stars in her eyes".

One two three four five four three two one two three four five four three two one two three four….

"Maybe…mouth-to-mouth might work!"

I doth wholeheartedly approveth.

Cosplay, cosplay, cosplay angel!

Enemy Mio is confused! It hurt itself in its confusion!

Yet it’s not so easy to shake the feeling that there’s something missing, isn’t it?

Yes, the MugiVision virus certainly is a success in more ways than one.