August 2008

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Otakon 2008 Outsider’s Report (Not My Pics)

August 14, 2008 in Conventions by Tom Langston (calaggie) | 3 comments

Photo by Flickr user Sklathill (under Creative Commons)

Like last year, I did not attend Otakon and instead watched the first days of the Beijing Olympics. Sorry, anime – sports trumped you this time. But I was able to catch up with the help of Gia-Japanator combo liveblogging as well as reading raw transcriptions from an IRC channel (I think I saw one of those guys at an AX panel). Surprisingly, ANN lagged behind in terms of reports and also no video as of Wednesday evening, which is strange since they supposedly were taping the fansubbing panel based on one of Scott‘s tweets. [UPDATE 8/16: ANN has posted a 79-minute video of the Fansubs and Industry Panel along with a breakdown of the event.]
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Extra-Wide “Anime” Contact Lenses Not My Style

August 11, 2008 in Commentary by Tom Langston (calaggie) | 2 comments


Inventorspot (via Mahalo) reports that a number of companies such as Geo and Dibra are offering extra-wide contact lenses that are tinted prominently on the outer ring to mirror the big-eyed look familiar to those with 2D complexes. Contact lenses in cosplay are not new to me since The Contact Lens Company (yes, that’s their name) had a booth in AX’s dealer hall – those are strange on their own because the irises don’t appear to move and sometimes freak me out. These appear to be more general use lenses as they work like clear contacts and you can have them made to order. It’s just…*sigh* why aren’t normal sized eyes good enough? I know it’s Japan and some women want to appear younger but really?

P.S. If I had the choice between wearing glasses and wearing contacts I’d spring for glasses because I have an aversion to touching my own eyeballs and might have trouble putting in contacts. Plus you shouldn’t lose glasses as often. Thank goodness I have fine vision so I don’t have to deal with either.

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Talking About Scanlation Links Is Unbecoming Behavior

August 7, 2008 in Commentary by Tom Langston (calaggie) | 5 comments

Last week, I finally added an overdue comment policy explicitly telling readers not to post or request links to illicit material after seeing yet another comment asking where one can read the Karin (Chibi Vampire) manga online:

OMG Can enyone tell me where i can get Chibi on line!!!! its driving me crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One of the unspoken rules of participating in viewing fansubs/scanlations is to not publicly ask for where to obtain such illicit goods. (Another is not to monetize it through donations or subscription fees but that’s another subject.) If you really want to read or watch content for free, then do your own damn research – it’s not that difficult, sadly. While I don’t believe that scanlations have as severe an effect on the manga industry as fansubbing does to anime, it can still breed the feeling that one deserves to read something for free.

I personally have not read or looked for scanlations for about a year and that was just to see what Shirow Miwa’s Dogs and Sakae Esuno’s Mirai Nikki were about by reading a few chapters. I will try to check Dogs out further whenever it hits American shelves along with Maid-sama, Shinji Ikari Raising Project and some others I can’t recall at the moment.

That short list of my anticipated releases says something about my limited interest in the manga scene, which makes my authoring of this post a bit strange from my standing as a fringe reader. I never understood the rationale of complaining that something became licensed in your region because that means it becomes more easily accessible; this is more so for manga than anime because you can now read them in paper form, assuming you couldn’t read Japanese and didn’t have a Kinokuniya nearby. You can even sit on a couch in a bookstore and read whole volumes – I don’t care, just stop complaining that you cannot access a series or, worse, brazenly continue to do so.

Saying that you’re reading it in a browser and not downloading is a faulty excuse just as watching an licensed anime series on YouTube, Veoh, or even Crunchyroll is – you are still consuming the media in a non-sanctioned manner assuming it hasn’t been uploading by the actual rights holders.

I have since removed the comments that involved links or requests but you can read them in chronological order after the jump, with the links obviously taken out.
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Quote in MAL Acquistion Press Release Concerns Me

August 4, 2008 in News by Tom Langston (calaggie) | 4 comments

If you haven’t heard by now, “leading lifestyle destination for men” CraveOnline has acquired social networking website MyAnimeList. Unlike Mania’s buyout of AnimeOnDVD, I would not expect there to be drastic visual overhauls and it is comforting to know that Xinil will remain lead administrator and editor-in-chief.

From Xinil’s post on the MAL general forums:

This acquisition enables MAL to continue to grow without being burdened by rising server and bandwidth fees (which have increased a lot lately), and helps us branch out into more beneficial features (think video). CraveOnline has no plans to change our community or thwart the direction we’re headed. If anything, they’ll help us get the things we need faster and more efficiently.

Onto the slightly worrying part: in the press release, Mike Dodge, SVP/General Manager of AtomicOnline (CraveOnline’s parent company), said that “MyAnimeList continues to bolster CraveOnline’s leadership position in the highly competitive online male youth market“. As far as I know, the general anime and manga fan community is diverse between both genders and MAL shouldn’t be too different.

A quick advanced search of MAL’s user base conducted this afternoon shows that 14,107 of its 79,056 users have described themselves as female, 19,364 as male, and 45,585 have not specified a gender. So that means out of the 33,471 who picked one or the other, it’s 58% male and 42% female which seems to be a pretty good balance.

I’m not intending to make a mountain out of a molehill so I apologize if it appears that way but my minor worrying is based on a perception of AtomicOnline’s attitude toward its brands. While I know MAL won’t be totally messed with, there could be a change in the way it is marketed toward non-users and in potential shifts in on-site advertising including cross-site promotions.

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Paramount To Adapt ‘Miki Falls’ Manga Into Film

August 4, 2008 in News by Tom Langston (calaggie) | 2 comments


Variety is reporting that Paramount Pictures and Brad Pitt’s Plan B have acquired the rights to adapt Mark Crilley’s four-volume OEL manga Miki Falls into a movie with Sera Gamble, a producer and writer for “Supernatural”, attached to the project as the scriptwriter. Crilley is best known for his Akiko series of comic books targeted at 9- to 12-year-olds; all four volumes of this latest series are being published on HarperCollins’ HarperTeen label.

Miki Falls‘ beginning plot is that Miki Yoshida is starting her last year of high school when she falls in love with new boy in town Hiro, except that he doesn’t want anything to do with her or her town. She decides to be his friend but she finds out he is a Deliverer, someone who monitors couples about to break up and snatch their before it dies to pass onto another couple. Deliverers are forbidden from falling in love but Miki ignores that rule and acts on her ambitions. The series takes place over the seasons of a year so it would seem natural for the film to start in spring and end in winter.

Greg McElhatton from Read About Comics’ reviewed of the first volume, Spring, last July and described it as “well-rounded” with a “very soft, relaxing art style” that could appeal to readers outside its intended audience. All Ages Reads, whose review crew is a teacher and her grade-school daughters, also liked the series and recommended it for the 10-and-up crowd as the romance is confined to kissing. In September, Brigid at MangaBlog published the full version of an interview she conducted with Crilley in July 2007 for a Publisher’s Weekly article (that’s where I got the story description).

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