Curiosity Killed the Cat

Another con come and gone. I really enjoyed being on Guest Relations staff this year - got to see a slightly different perspective of the con, and all the guests were awesome people. My favorite part of the con was on Sunday, when Johnny Yong Bosch was wrapping up the final autographing section - while waiting outside the room, he signed the poster on the wall that told people the events that were going on the room and remarked, "My work here is done." He also drew a happy face in the AOD logo.
Unfortunately, by the time Nat had returned to the hallway after we finished up events that night, hotel staff had removed the poster during their cleaning, so it was gone :(

Mucho thanks to catsonmars for introducing me to my new favorite j-drama: Haken no Hinkaku, or better known as Surly Temp Worker Takes On The World. I found ENGLISH subs (sorry nanakaoru!) at Crunchy Roll (Here's ep 1!)

I shall be spending the next day finishing my recovery of con plague by endulging in SURLY TEMP WORKER!

In AX news, nothing much to say that hasn't been said, except I hope next year Karaoke room gets better A/C coverage (we were the only room where it seemed to cut out. Go fig.) Also, staffing K2 is awesome, I loved the small size and more intimate feel.

Also, possibly first con where I never set foot in the exhibit hall. Seriously though, what would I have bought? I have moved on to spending greedy amounts of money on BBC box sets (well, I will if they ever release Life on Mars in R1...)

Also also, (also wik?) I must remember to add those two Animaniacs songs to the KKD database (Nations of the World and US Capitols) -- if we've got Disney and Simpsons and soon to be South Park, those Warners need some representation too!

Edit the first:
HOLY CRAP THE NATIONS IN JAPANESE. This song DOES NOT WORK in Japanese. Seriously. No. But full of awesome too.

Don't forget to check out the Astro Boy doodle on Google Japan celebrating Astro Boy's 5th birthday!

You can also use the Astro Boy iGoogle theme that Tezuka Studios created.

People prefer robots that do small talk.
So that's why the Tachikoma tanks in Ghost in the Shell are always gossiping!

For folks from AOD who didn't catch this the first go-round: The (slightly edited) Otaku Hazard Warning System presentation. (It may ask you to log in, but you don't have to to view the presentation. Also, it would have been nice if LJ allowed iframes so I could embed the presentation directly, but alas...)
You can also download the printable poster.
And if you're in my friends list, you can read the original posts.

Should I buy this?
Never mind, I have demonstrated my utter lack of willpower and ordered it.

OMG MUST WATCH BLADE RUNNER NOW


I love cheap anime boxsets.


Oh, and since half my FL is in Long Beach: Have fun at Anime Expo! Enjoy GACKCKCKCKCKCKCKCKCKKCKTTTTTTTT (CDs).

My brother works as a film editor, but this sort of stuff doesn't always pay the bills on time, so he also does some post-production work for Nickelodeon, getting 'toons ready to be shown on the air. When I think of Nickelodeon I think of stuff like Blue's Clues, so when he describes it as being pretty dry work, it's not a stretch of any imagination to see why. But, hey, it pays the bills, and gives him time to continue his film editing work, too.
When he came home for Thanksgiving he did a little work on my mom's computer, and didn't delete the files, so today we took a look at one of them. It was a spreadsheet, for Zoids, and we discovered it was a list of suggested edits to make to the episodes so that they could be aired. And while most of the edits were the expected variety (removing implied nudity, toning down the violence) there were a few that were just a bit, hmm, silly to say the least, and had us laughing.
Apparently, cruelty to animals is as egregious as violence, for there were two edits on this count - in one scene a character is roasting a frog, which was asked to be edited so the animal was a more indistinguishable shape. The other animal cruelty edit was to trim a scene where someone is chasing after a bird with a spear.

...


Yeah.

Got Kino v1 today. I wrote about it here. In summary: I love it. Need more.

Also, ONE MORE DAY. GIBBORZ ME MOVIE INFO DAMMIT.

And Kino run next Saturday to pick me up a copy of Kino 10.

Maybe I should make another Kino wall.

Best conversation this weekend:
Magali: I'm raging against this muffin. It's like raging against the machine.
Me: Well, it'd be easier to rage against a muffin. You can tear it apart with your hands. Raging against the machine requires a hammer, and a wrench, and some heavy equipment.


Tommy: "I don't want to eat in a restaurant named after a website!"


BEST. PANEL. EVAR.


Mercedes is 6ft tall.


Ridiculously low clearance in the crappy parking garage.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF...

Posted in the Kino no Tabi LJ comm, but anyone here who's a Kino fan might be interested.

A version that incorporates pink. I don't want to totally shed the red, since red and black are signature AX colors, but I do like the red with pink center version (the pink with red center looks kinda, uh, ghostly I guess.)
( Picture under the cut )

By Jove, I have the perfect cosplay idea!
You know that scene in Honey & Clover ep 1 where Morita gives Hagu the giant leaf?
They're only $15!
And since H&C is a modern college anime I could wear normal clothes and have an easily recognizable character!
Plus, since it's Ikea it assembles and disassmbles in minutes in case I have to pack it.
IT'S PERFECT.

There are a couple of these canopies in my workarea; today some of my coworkers picked up a pair for our own area. It makes you feel like you're in A Bug's Life or something, but they're cute and the perfect size (for me at least.)

BRILLIANT!

Oh look, update (Honey & Clover, Kino no Tabi)
Rewatching Rose of Versailles, thanks to a friend who copied me a set of CDs (I had long since managed to loose my first copy of CDs and as for the tapes from Dess~ne, well, they're long gone too.
I love this show.

Survived day 1.
Here's to many more ahead.

If you're Californian, and you're registered, vote tomorrow. Unless you've already voted absentee.

Also, I always forget just how fucked up Sigsawa's world in Kino no Tabi is. I mean, I always get suckered in to what appears to be a decent, normal country and he just blows everything up in your face. Take "Country of Diaries -- Historians" -- which is a really short chapter in novel 9. It starts out all cute and stuff with three students writing in their diaries about their day: a traveler named Kino visited their school. Each person has their own impressions of her (obviously), ranging from Emily's, which is fairly mature, to Gene's (who thinks her guns are really cool) to Carrie's, who rambles and rambles and complains she wants short hair like Kino's but her parents won't let her. All's well and good, yes? Then the next page, we hear a speaker whom I assume is some sort of principal or other authority, because he/she is telling all the kids to write Emily's entry as their own in their diaries, because they're all in the same class and thus should be sharing the same thoughts. But they don't; Gene is brave (foolish?) enough to try and speak out and gets punished for it. The last part of the chapter is a diary entry nearly 75 years later by Hans, Gene's grandson. He apparently read his grandfather's diary and came upon the entry about Kino, which the reader will recognize as Emily's entry. Hans then observes, "Sometimes my grandfather uses "watashi" and sometimes he uses "boku". It's mysterious."
Dude, wtf. Censorship and brainwashing and whatnot. Double-yew tee eff.

Maybe this will convince a NA licensor to bring the series to the states.
...please?

Amusingly, I'm also rereading the manga right now.

From Anime News Network:
It was announced last week in the entertainment section of Nikkan Sports that a live-action movie of the popular shoujo manga and anime, Honey and Clover, is going to be made. Sakurai Sho (23), member of the popular J-Pop music group ARASHI, will play the lead male role as Takemoto Yuuta.

Aoi Yuu (20), Iseya Yusuke (29) Kase Ryo (30), and Seki Megumi (19) will join Sakurai as the five main characters of Honey and Clover.

Masahiro Takada, a commercial advertisement director, will direct. This is his debut as a feature director.

The movie is scheduled to open to the public in the summer of 2006.