Now, unless you got a hotel room at the J W Marriott or the Ritz-Carlton (so close to the venue, you could spit on the people down below. Note: Please don’t do that, OK?), you’re going to have to avail yourself of the shuttle buses. Now, this, in and of itself, is not all that bad. They come at regular-ish intervals, so you need not wait too long, especially in front of your hotel, early in the morning. A lot of the street people will stare at you, because you look like Sailor Moon (still a very popular cosplay option) or Sephiroth and his ten-mile sword. It’s just that you ARE dealing with humanity and things can go south faster than you realize, both outside and inside. (more…)

Now, with AX being at the Staples Center crypto.com Arena, it is somewhat easy to get to. There is a subway line that runs close to it (provided you are near a stop. The Biltmore is.) and the shuttle buses are, for the most part, reliable and safe (but more on that later). Driving your car to the venue gets pricey, at $20 a day. But one mode of transportation that was as ubiquitous about the area as discarded Starbucks cups were eScooters. (more…)

In years past, one of the harder panels to get into were all those 18+, FAKKU, hentai fun shows. Even if they put them in ever larger and larger venues, there never seemed to be enough seats for all the perverted people who wanted to show up and ogle and stare and hoot and holler and stomp and enojoy the ‘adult’ activities so presented. And since the Fire Marshal did not allow standing for these things, it got tough, When I got the preliminary schedule for AX, there was one panel that I really, really felt that I had to get into. (more…)

There is a scene from the movie “A Fish Called Wanda”, where Kevin Kline cracks open a safe, hoping to find a ton of pelf within, but is greeted instead with silent emptiness. Screwing his face up with disgust, he loudly proclaims, “OK… OK… DISAPPOINTED! Son of a bitch.” I know how he feels, when I got the letter from Anime Expo, letting me know that there will be NO AX for 2021. *sigh* OK… OK… DISAPPOINTED! Son of a bitch. (more…)

Now, you need to understand that I am Old School. Hell, I’m Ancient School. I’m so old, Plato taught me at the Academy himself! I come from a time that when we got a FIFTH TV station in our area, we lost our collective minds. If you missed an episode of your favorite show, you had to wait half a year for the summer reruns to catch it. And if your show was cancelled, that really was the end of it. Home taping? Maybe with an AUDIO cassette recorder, perhaps a Super 8 camera pointed at the tube. (more…)

I recently gave a review regarding “Princess Lover”, a rather standard romantic comedy anime. It was a fan-service heavy eroge game, which became a fan-service heavy manga, which became a fan-service heavy anime. OK, the above picture never happened in the anime, but it skated pretty close to it.

They later came out with two OVAs. The first one was a six-episode offering. If you didn’t have the time to invest 300 minutes to watch the entire series, you could cough up 16 minutes to get an overall sense of the show, but not get a good feel for it. Look, if you don’t have the time to watch anime in its entirety, then go watch something else, like “Schoolhouse Rock” or “Foul-Up, Bleeps and Blunders”. Anime does require your attention.

It was the second OVA that bothered me. Now, I have seen a lot of things in anime that bother me, but this one really sticks in my craw, as it doesn’t make any real sense. The second OVA is a two-episode excursion into hentai. (more…)

Have you ever been in this situation?

Random Person : Do you watch anime?
You : Of course!! I can’t live without that stuff
Random Person : So whats your favorite anime?
You : Thats a hard one, Death Note probably, although Shingeki and Mushishi are pretty good too.. How about you?
Random Person : Avatar
You : -.-” Avatar isn’t anime..
Random Person : Well then what is it?
You : 

So what is Avatar? And why is there so much confusion surrounding it? (more…)

So, you have been reading me for a while now, and you should know by this point that the genre in anime I detest the most is Giant Fighting Robot. However, the one that is in second place is sports anime.

This is not to say that all sports animes are terrible; I could name two right off the bat that were very interesting, in that I watched them all the way through: “Bamboo Blade” (Kendo) and “The Big Windup” (Baseball), but they went against the grain to tell their stories. (Another is “Suzuka”, but the track and field aspect is a means to an end and not the core of the show). It’s that some of the shows get so involved in presenting the sporting aspect of things, the plot suffers to the nth degree and one loses interest. If I want to watch basketball, I’ll watch basketball, not a basketball anime.

Here is the problem that I have with the approach to the sporting life story, as it falls into the same tropes and traps:

Our hero (or heroine; mustn’t be sexist) is just a-walkin’ down the street, singing “Doo wah diddy, diddy, dum diddy do” and is called upon to use some hidden talent that is reflective of the sport that we are angling towards. Once this ability is now out in the open, they are asked or blackmailed or coerced or driven into joining the particular club or team to really present his talent (or hers; mustn’t be sexist). (more…)

I am noticing another trend in anime as of late and it is really starting to irk me, as it seems like we have to calm down people, lest they go screaming into the sunset because the whole world is coming to an end because of something they saw in the recent series and IT MIGHT BE TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now, I first encountered these warnings way back in “UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie”, letting us know that everything that went on in the bathhouse was done with the cooperation of the National Association of Guilds Maintaining Sanitary Operation of Public Bathhouses. We’ll just ignore the fact that all kinds of naked babes are parading through. You KNOW that when the boiler is set at a certain temperature of the floors are mopped in a particular manner, that it all done with proper protocols of the industry. You’ve got our Seal of Approval…..and naked babes.

I next came across one in “Fairy Tail”, where Natsu would remind us to watch with enough light and be far enough away from the TV. OK, I have no problem with that, as some folks are so close, they might as well be behind the TV. “Dude, move your head. What the hell is Lucy doing?” (more…)

Ritsuka (dark hair) and Sobei (light hair.. but this rave isn’t really about him)

Loveless is just one of those anime I could watch/read a thousand times and never get tired of it; I absolutely adore it. I have spent hours of my time (which I don’t have a lot of anymore since school started) watching and reading this particular anime/manga combo. Loveless has slowly but surely taken over my heart. I suppose one could say that is a normal reaction for me seeing as I have I have said same with multiple anime but I am insisting still, that Loveless is a special case. It has secured its spot in my list of addictions (which includes One Piece, Naruto, Ouran High School Host Club, and a bazillion others) because it has taken the word “neko” to an entirely different level, it speaks the importance of keeping memories, and its characters left me spellbound.

Now you may be wondering what I mean’t by ‘it has taken the word “neko” to an entirely different level’. In the anime/manga all of the younger characters are cat people. Now I suppose you’re wondering why only ‘younger characters’… well it’s because they haven’t been in a “serious” relationship yet. In other words, they haven’t done anything promiscuous. (Thank God, seeing how the main young characters are twelve!). Most people don’t necessarily think of stuff like that when they decide to create a new manga. Normally it’s based off of one of the more popular topics like Giant fighting robots or zombies. It’s quite unique that they would put so much detail into such a topic. (more…)