Mid-November 2018 Check-In

The San Jose Convention Center during Crunchyroll Expo 2018

Hi there. I’ve been busy with my first semester of law school and with work projects, so I haven’t had a lot of free time lately. I was able to watch some anime series and go to an anime convention, though.

In the three months since my last post, I finished watching Aquarion and Ouran High School Host Club (a re-watch for me) with an anime classics watchgroup. Aquarion was an interesting mecha action series with character-building episodes and goofy moments. Some parts of the Ouran anime series don’t hold up well 12 years later, such as when the club meets Haruhi’s cross-dressing father the first time, but I still enjoyed hearing Maaya Sakamoto play the snarky “commoner” Haruhi Fujioka and revisiting back stories about the host club members. I’m thinking about reading the manga sometime.

I also attended Crunchyroll Expo in San Jose during Labor Day weekend and had a good time re-connecting with friends and making a few new ones. I made a Twitter moment that you can scroll through with pictures from that weekend. Continue reading

Weekly Check-in: September 27, 2017 (October Premieres & Neo Yokio)

Screenshots from promo videos for The Ancient Magus’ Bride, Children of the Whales, Dances with the Dragons, Girls’ Last Tour, Himouto! Umaru-chan R, Osake wa Fūfu ni Natte kara, Recovery of a MMO Junkie, and Two Car.

A new crop of anime series debut next month and I’m interested in a handful of them. I also sampled Neo Yokio and didn’t like what I watched. Continue reading

Tuesday Check-In: August 22, 2017

I read volume 1 of Kore Yamazaki’s The Ancient Magus’ Bride tonight, partly because Yamazaki is a guest of honor at this weekend’s Crunchyroll Expo in Santa Clara, California. I had heard praise for that manga over the past couple years but didn’t know much about it. This first volume engaged me with its characters (mage Elias, his apprentice Chise, and Elias’ various acquaintances), fantastical creatures, and recurring talk about magic gradually fading out of practice.

Kore Yamazaki is scheduled to talk on Saturday afternoon about her career & other projects and she will also participate in a Sunday preview event for the upcoming Ancient Magus’ Bride anime series. (The three-day schedule is available on the official website and through the Guidebook app.)

I’ve been thinking about how Crunchyroll Expo appears to be organized more like a media expo than like a fan-run convention. Many of its guests have prior connections to Crunchyroll or its parent companies (Otter Media and Ellation): Rooster Teeth and Cartoon Hangover appear on the VRV video service (operated by Ellation); some of the YouTube “influencers” have Crunchyroll free trial affiliate links or sponsored videos; and upcoming anime series Kino’s Journey, Juni Taisen, URAHARA, and The Ancient Magus’ Bride have already been announced as simulcasts on Crunchyroll. Please note that I’m not implying any of the guests are not worthy of being invited; I’m just being conscious of its promotional aspects and how different my experience might be compared to Fanime or Otakon.

Anyway, I plan to be in Santa Clara all weekend so if you’re also going to be there, please say “Hi!”

Tuesday Check-In: August 15, 2017

One of the few non-violent scenes in the 2000 Battle Royale film

I re-watched the first Battle Royale film, accompanied by a Giant Bomb subscriber-only audio supplement. (That website’s staff has enjoyed playing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds a lot in recent months and that game has some noticeable Battle Royale influences.) I think I appreciated the movie more now compared to when I first saw it in college.

There is a flashback scene involving two students and one of them is reading manga while lying on a bunk bed. He’s holding a volume of Slam Dunk and there are a couple stacks of manga behind him. I was watching on a stream through Shudder so it was hard to make out some of the titles in those stacks, but I think the tall stack in the far back with red titles on a white background as a Young King Comics series, thanks to the gold “YK” at the top of the spines. Continue reading