Archive for the Miscellaneous Category


Event Report: Derpycon

December 6th, 2015

DPConDerpycon is a general pop culture entertainment event that was so hyperlocal to me that I walked over from my house. ^_^ And I have to tell you, I’m really glad I did! Derpycon was delightful and if I can, I will definitely be returning next year.

It’s been a long time since I went to so many really small events as I have this year. It’s a little like waiting for Great Pumpkin, everyone is so sincere, but you just never know how it will turn out.

My visit started with a delightful cosplay mashup: Attack on Titan Christmas Corps, with gift-wrapped vertical maneuvering equipment.

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There were a number of other area cons, groups and communities with tables along the hallways and in various rooms. Of these, I spoke with T-Mode, a Washington DC metro area con and community that does get-togethers and events and Fan Focus Con which had interesting spin on guests – every guest has to add some unique value to the event. For instance, one guest would be leading morning yoga sessions, another hosting the Karaoke contest.

The Panels were very focused on fannish things, ranging from anime-world building to cosplayers against harassment and and other “how to be a human among humans” type panels, but Derpycon wins for the best panel title ever: The Equestrian Candidate: MLP Conspiracy Theories.  ^_^

One of the most fascinating groups tabling at Derpycon was Operation Hammond, a volunteer First Aid organization that specializes in attending geeky events. Along with first responders and EMTs, Operation Hammond also provides support for people who have social anxiety, panic attacks and other “too many people” problems.

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The Artist alley was mostly folks selling fan art of popular series, but I found two wonderful things! First the delightful ladies of Un-Re Designs, with their unique color palette and delightfully creepy-cute  accessories.

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And I came across the folks from Gay Breakfast, Nillia and Judith, who along with fun Yuri/lesbian fanart, had an *amazing* and wonderful original story of two goddesses who had been separated, reunited by a young boy. The story, told here on Azami Comic, in whole, and in parts with narration, is presented as a series of postcards. It’s a lovely tale, beautifully rendered and presented in a unique way.  For this alone, Derpycon was worth my time!  I do hope you’ll take a look at the story, it is truly lovely.

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 The Dealer’s Room was much bigger than I anticipated, with hallways leading to it filled with other area events, including Otakon (which is moving to Washinton, DC in 2016), promoting Otakon Vegas, and Katsucon.

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Spent some time visiting with Su from Sci-Fi Continuum and and Erin S of AnimeNEXT (which is moving to Atlantic City in 2016,) who was there with the Manga Library.

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Got to spend some time there chatting with old friends, which was such a pleasant surprise.

They had a pretty extensive gaming room, including folks promoting their own original games.

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I spoke with the designer of Cupcakes and Critters, in which you protect these cute little cupcakes from being eaten.

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Deuce  was very enthusiastic about this version of a castle-defense game, and the table area smelled like sugar. ^_^

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There was also a Tabletop gaming room, and video, music, LARPing and other features of cons these days.

As I made my way out, I nabbed a few cosplay pictures of folks that might interest us. ^_^ A *lot* of the cosplay was anime/manga specific.

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And then my time at Derpycon had come to an end, but I will definitely be back!





Thanks to All of You!

November 25th, 2015

It’s pretty traditional around here to write a meaningful and probably a little weepy Thanksgiving wish, but since Okazu was down and right now I’m mostly thankful that it’s back up ^_^; I’ll keep this short.

I want to thank you all for your support and comments and friendship. Thank you if you are one of my Patrons and thank you if you just drop by to read reviews from time to time. It’s always fun to converse with you here, on Twitter, on Facebook, in the hallways of conventions and here and there about the planet.

To all of you from the bottom of my heart, thank you. ^_^ Have a terrific day.





Akuma no Riddle Manga/Riddle Story of a Devil, Volume 3 (悪魔のリドル) （JP and EN)

November 9th, 2015

AnR3There’s almost no point in reviewing Akuma no Riddle (悪魔のリドル) as a manga series, since clearly the manga was contracted out by Kadokawa to illustrate the anime and not much more. This is frustrating, as I quite like Kouga Yun and would have liked a chance to see her flex her writing skills a bit.

Instead, we have a nearly word-for-word repetition of the anime, with no new depth or information about the characters.

Volume 3 follows arcs set around the school festival, including one about the one apparently Yuri couple, otokoyaku-like Kirigaya Hitsugi and her nemesis with whom she’s fallen in love, Namatame Chitaru. Their arc is almost tangential to the hunt for Haru, so it’s a bit of a relief when they, as Romeo and Juliet, die on stage during the school festival and make room for more actual assassination attempts.

At this point, it’s hard to not feel pity for the broken (and obviously doomed to fail) members of Class Black. Haru hasn’t been more than scared slightly and whatever baggageTokaku is carrying isn’t stopping her from being an effective bodyguard. In fact, the only reason to read this series to relive the set up, so that hopefully, we’ll get an explanation at the very end that makes some sense. ^_^;

I was able to read this book twice, in fact, to fully appreciate how silly it is. Once in Japanese and again, using the relaunched Global Bookwalker. For that one, I purchased the English edition, Riddle Story of a Devil, Volume 3. (The print edition from Volume 3 from Seven Seas has a release date in April 2016. Seven Seas clarified on Twitter that the Bookwalker edition is Kadokawa’s own content and translation.) The Bookwalker format worked beautifully on my phone. Pages were crystal clear, easy to zoom in and out, with very nice color pages of various “couples” in the series. I’ve got a Japanese light novel next on the thing and if it works half as well, I’m going to be a really happy reader.

Ratings:

Art – Competent
Story – Ridiculous
Character – Tragic
Yuri – Contrived
Service – Of course

Overall – 7

This series is brain candy, if your brain likes assassination by absurd means, pointless conspiracies, and whole plotlines that make no sense, are never developed and have no connection to the actual story. ^_^





Silent Möbius QD Manga, Volume 1 (サイレントメビウスQD)

November 6th, 2015

SMQD1In the late 1980s, Silent Möbius crossed genres, age and gender barriers, utilizing all the various media available at the time; anime, manga, voice drama. It was even melded fantasy and science-fiction in it’s own way. Nothing about Silent Möbius was specifically original, but taken together it was unique. And it had an ending, which at the time was also a little unusual.  The women of the Attacked Mystification Police or AMP for short, were tasked with saving the earth from the invading demon-like beings of Nemesis, known as Lucifer Hawks.

Silent Möbius QD (サイレントメビウスQD) begins a few years after the end of the first series. Rally Cheyenne, founder of AMP, still is CEO of the police. AMP is now comprised of several teams. In Volume 1, we are introduced to the new members of Team Woofer, Team Squawker, Team Tweeter and Team Equalizer…and in those team names you may recognize the technophile hand of the new chief of AMP, Lebia Maverick. Rather than go into detail on the new characters, of which there were many, check out this handy intro to the new faces.

Rally continues to be chief of police, Lebia has taken over as chief of AMP. No other characters have returned thus far, but that’s perfectly fine. Volume one is primarily setting up the new AMP teams and their members, with a focus on the somewhat curmudgeonly Makijima Aoi, whose partner Haifa takes one in the chest for Aoi…who, we come to see, has serious issues about being partnered with anyone. Most mysterious of all, Aoi wields our old friend the wizard’s sword Grospoliner. How and why are left unresolved at the end of volume 1.

As the book opens, we can see that Re-Tokyo is as much as target for 3rd attraction attacks as ever before, and that AMP’s team is more multicultural, and now includes non-humans as well.

Aoi basically mopes through the volume as everyone around her fights their hearts out, until Lebia sends Aoi to the bowels of headquarters to confront the Lucifer Hawk in the basement, who, unnervingly, takes a human form, declares herself Aoi’s new partner and asks to be called Chris. Maybe it’s me, but I found that hilariously out of place after the death and destruction, action and drama of the rest of the “overture,” as the chapters here are titled.

Lebia interested me. She seems to have more than one body now, which makes sense, as you may remember that her consciousness is all but infinite and fully networked. One of these bodies is that of a little girl, thus allowing or maybe requiring Asamiya to have a little moe in this volume. The uniform skirts are shorter than ever. I was almost disappointed in these tiresome ruses for service. I’d always pointed to Silent Möbius as a series that was mature about enjoying the adult female body without resorting to creeping. Apparently nothing in manga is allowed to be mature and non-creepy anymore. I weep for future generations of women.

There is no Yuri, there never was, but it is obvious that Aoi and Haifa’s relationship, of which we see only the violent end, was fraught and intense. I hope that Chris and Aoi’s is equally fraught and intense.

Ratings:

Art – 8 It was nice to not quite be able to see the Lucifer Hawks again
Story – 8 Solid stuff for this series
Characters – There are a lot of them, but I hope we get to learn a bit about PAL and a few others.
Yuri – 0
Service – 4

Overall – 8

This series has already wrapped up after 2 volumes, the second of which will be out in December 2015, so I don’t expect the kind of detailed, complex plot we had with the first series, but I have to say it was really nice to see AMP again. ^_^





A Walkthrough of Global Bookwalker

October 19th, 2015

KGBW-300x46Just before NYCC, I posted a press release about the relaunch of Global Bookwalker from Kadokawa. While at New York Comic Con, I had the chance to speak with the VP of development, Tominaga Norihide and get an idea of what Global Bookwalker is trying to do and what niche it might inhabit in our book-buying process. After which I tested the system for you. ^_^

Tominaga-san began his discussion of Global Bookwalker by making an important point – Kadokawa is one of the largest online bookstores in Japan and the largest when it comes to Light Novels. currently 90% Kadokawa properties.”

Tominaga-san was eager to explain that while Global BW is currently focusing on English-language properties from their publishing partners, they were of course continually working to expand their partnerships. The content on JP Bookwalker and Global are not identical, since Japanese publishers have their own individual restrictions about serving their IP outside Japan.

I was curious if Kadokawa was including collaborative content, such as some of their titles published in conjunction with Media Factory. “Yes,” Tominaga-san confirmed, “but 115 titles on Global BW are exclusively from Kadokawa.”

In response to questions I had been asked by readers, Tominaga-san confirmed that all digital content was reproduced as it was published, including color pages. When I asked about age ratings, he said “Not now, but we will be implementing a tagging system to be able to identify adult books, or sci-fi, sports, BL, Yuri and other genres.”

There are no magazines on Global Bookwalker now, but there are some titles on the JP version and these can be purchased by global users. In fact, they’ve got a guide on how to use the JP site if you don’t read Japanese. Bookwalker is providing access to all existing volumes of any series they currently carry (no embargo on old volumes like Crunchyroll’s simulpub service, because, once again, BW is a bookstore, not a service.)

The focus for Kadokawa is, obviously, getting localized Kadokawa properties up on Global BW, but they are working with western companies to get more publishers’ titles up. And they do plan on expanding the languages they will carry. Right now they are focusing on English, but hope to be able to include French and Spanish. Tominaga wrapped this up by announcing that the Kadokawa office in Taiwan was working on a Simplified Chinese section of Global Bookwalker.

“Right now,” he finished up, “we are working on getting as many people to sign up as possible,” before they begin any big promotions. A smart decision, as the Silicon Valley model for digital business has pretty much reshaped the landscape. First get the users and the investors will follow. ^_^

We ended up discussing the critical niche that Bookwalker might inhabit. Right now, to buy digital and print manga content here in the US, it’s a bit higgledy-piggledy. You can get some titles digitally through the publishers, others through Amazon, B&N or Comixology and some not at all. Others can only be found on publisher’s proprietary systems and we in the US have harder time buying Japanese digital content than shipping books over from Japan. If Kadokawa can be the one-stop for all these things it can make a mark in the western market.

Now, armed with all this info, I headed over to Global Bookwalker to see how easy or hard it is to buy and read stuff!

Before you start purchasing books, I recommend taking a look at the Global BookWalker FAQ. For once, this has pretty useful info and at least one thing I really needed to know.

To begin with, I registered a new account at Global BW. Registration was simple and straightforward. They had a manga volume I had not yet read and was interested in purchasing. So I added it to my cart.  There is also a link to add an entire series to one’s cart, which I quite liked. Almost all items in the bookstore also have a free sample that you can read in the built-in viewer. To checkout, I chose Paypal, which processed with no difficulty. There appeared to be no options for credit card in the Global checkout. The two options are Webmoney or Paypal.

I added the GBW app on my phone, and once I logged in was able to see the manga. The reader is quite good, once the entire thing is downloaded. Expanding and shrinking by pinching and movement around the page was smooth. The reproduction was very high resolution and easy to read, even on the phone screen. (I have a Galaxy S6, so the image is quite crisp.)

Now it was time to get something from the Bookwalker JP store. You may remember I was looking to get the next Miniskirt Pirates novel and so I did.  Checking out was a little more complicated. Paypal wasn’t connecting properly from the JP shop, but I found an option to use a credit card and that posed no problems at all. There are warnings that you may not be able to use some overseas cards, but it went smoothly for me. (Which was a relief, as when I had attempted to subscribe to a webcomic on Note.mu, the same credit card would not process, and each side blamed the other, so I never was able to make it work.)

In order to read a title in your library on your PC, you’ll need to download the Bookwalker application/reader, then login and read it through that. You can change the type size, but you can’t copy anything from the text. Bummer, I was hoping to be able to copy directly from the text to a translator, but it’s still way easier on my eyes at 12 pt than it is at 8.

The Japanese store has a number of Comic Yuri Hime titles, including some that are out of print, so I’d suggest giving the JP store a try, since Kindle is region-restricted. (I especially recommend Butterfly 69.)

I’d give the whole thing a 7. It would be better with credit cards accepted on the Global store, but at least it’s functioning smoothly, multi-publisher, and allows reading on multiple devices. I’ll definitely give this another try in 6 months and see where it’s going.

In the meantime, I really hope you’ll take a look and let me know what you think. Especially those of you in non-USA countries. Let me (and Kadokawa) know if you run into any issues!

And thank you Tominaga-san for your time. It’s much appreciated. Here’s hoping that this is a good solution for those of us who love Yuri and have a hard time getting it here in the US.