Nigorimasen! Blog

While in Germany, I have looked for cheap anime DVDs that I also had at home so I could compare technical details such as compression rates as well as more thing like dub voices. So far I have grabbed volume 3 of hack//SIGN and School Rumble Vol. 1 (should get the R1 version by the time I get home) as well as one disc each of Inuyasha, Shaman King, Tenchi Muyo, and King of the Hill. I can’t wait to hear the German version of Boomhauer.

Also on the manga front, I bought the first volumes of Honey and Clover and Love Hina to accompany the Japanese copies I have. This brings me to the new poll question: Do you own multiple physical versions of any anime or manga? This is meant to exclude fansubs or scanlations. After the jump: final results from the month-long “classic in 10 years” poll that I should have ended a while ago.
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Sparked by a comment of a classmate while watching Leni Riefenstahl’s “Olympia” (”Is that a woman?” during the men’s triple jump) and the discussion of possible fandub projects by my anime club like Tenchi and Ouran, my mind started to ruminate about general dualities that exist in anime. The first three that came to mind are harems and reverse harems, traps and reverse traps, and tsundere and deretsun. I tried to think of another solid pair and came up with two contrasting forms of fanservice: pantyshots and intellectual.
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According to Forbes, anime distributer Odex has won a suit against Singapore ISP StarHub, allowing it to gain the names of 1,000 subscribers accused of illegally downloading anime. The penalty Odex can get from each is up to 5,000 SGD (USD $3,285) and the users will have to destroy the stolen content and refrain from any future illegal downloading. StarHub tried to fight the request initially and cited “an obligation to protect our customers’ information”. Odex also won a similar suit earlier this year against another ISP, SingNet, with about the same number of customers involved and is seeking a third one against Pacific Internet for another thousand customers.
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Last Saturday, I went to a Bleach fan meeting in Nordpark in Düsseldorf where many people cosplayed and had fun talking, eating, and posing or taking pictures. I asked a couple people some general questions and I learned that dubbed German anime on TV sucks (the example given was Naruto), some Bleach fans read the English scanlations, and confirmation that there is very little, if any, German fansub action. I managed to make some friends and actually ate dinner at someone’s house. After the jump: a lot of pictures from the event, including some of the general Cosplay/Visu Treffen that was convening in a different part of the park (there was friendly interaction between the groups) as well as shots of the beautiful park itself.
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When I picked up an issue of Daisuki a week ago, I came to like one series in particular. That was “Idol”, created by Dortmund resident Stella Brandner, which began serialization in May. Since then, I’ve bought the other three chapters through issues of the manga magazine and enjoyed what I’ve read thus far. The main plot is that 19-year-old Elle is a photographer and painter who is a fan of the rock band Sub Four, whose tour through Germany happens to make a stop in her home city of Dortmund. She goes to the concert with her best friend Sascha but is mistakenly pushed out by security and loses her sketchbook in the process. The lead singer of the band, 27-year-old Damien, picks up and goes over to her apartment to return it to her while offering her a job as the band’s tour photographer.
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It was rumored that ADV would likely get the license for Kanon (2006) when they announced AIR TV and that was strengthened when there was news the company had snapped up the domain “kanontv.com”. Now, there is this teaser trailer appeared in ADV’s trailer directory last Friday. No dialogue yet but I think a formal announcement could happen within the next month or two.

Even though my Internet access right now is limited to use of university computer labs on weekdays and Internet cafes at the rate of €1 per hour, I am still trying to keep up with my usual information absorption methods through podcasts and RSS feeds. I was not particularly aware of the recent “anime is just entertainment” discussion that happened over the past week and frankly I didn’t really care about it. (My short response: anime is entertainment by definition. It is the viewer that chooses to see depth in it, if any in fact exists with the work in question.) Same goes for the “anime is dead” and “how does one define anime” discourse of the last month or so. I felt that if I happened to fashion a post on the above topics and those of similar ilk, it would get lost in the noise and not get read with as much credence or attention as the first couple people who chimed in. Though I probably would have written a “What are you talking about?!? Anime is alive and kickin’!” post if I had thought of it at the time instead of just now.

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Okay, those of you who are knowledgable with kanji, please tell me why there is a difference between Thomas and Tom when writing them in Chinese? I found these two cards on a rack near the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) in Düsseldorf and wanted to know what each says. It would also be appreciated if you could point out any inaccuracies.

Yesterday I was walking down Immermannstrasse, the main street of Düsseldorf’s Japanese district, and went into a comic book store. Inside there were manga and American comics translated into German as one would expect. I ended up buying an issue each of Daisuki (think Shoujo Beat), Animania (comes with pack-in DVD), and Manga sZene as well as some sticker sheets and a couple Chibi mangas (small sized 56 pages long from German authors). Gonna try to translate some of it during my downtime…

Anyway, I found out through a free Tokyopop pamphlet I picked up that they have already put out the first six volumes of Honey and Clover in Germany (webpage for vol. 1) and volume 7 is coming out in September. Each volume costs 6.50 Euro, which right now converts to just under nine US dollars so not much difference from US manga prices. Speaking of America, Viz Media announced last weekend at Comic-Con that the manga will replace Nana in Shojo Beat next March and that the first volume will also debut that month. Concidentally, just as the series starts its release in the US, the tenth and final volume will likely come out in Germany that same March.