My time at the Aniblog Tour­ney was deci­sively ended (23/77 ouch); well, I had known I stood no chance against the mega­lo­cor­po­ra­tion led by the pointy-haired trap Impz over at THAT Anime Blog, but they deserve the win fully and even I was tempted to vote for them xD. Nev­er­the­less, I was pleas­antly sur­prised I made it all the way to round 4 given my noob sta­tus. A big thank you to every­one who voted for me \o/. But instead of giv­ing any lec­tures today, I need to ram­ble… Read the rest of this entry »

I was hardly the biggest fan when the Aniblog Tour­ney started. Suc­ces­sor to OEG? Those elit­ist chan­ners. Pop­u­lar­ity con­test? There are eas­ier and far more reli­able ways to do this than E-PEEN stroking (what would one call the girls’ ver­sion?), like com­pil­ing indi­vid­ual blog’s pageviews, read­er­ship (feeds), com­ment den­sity, etc. The fact I got rolled into it made me par­tic­u­larly uncom­fort­able: this was sim­ply not the type of com­pe­ti­tion I enjoyed, espe­cially if I have to face off against a friend on the first round.

But now that the tour­ney is on the road, I feel like the efforts of Scamp, meflo­raine, and RP are actu­ally com­ing off as very worth­while. The haters have entrenched them­selves far too deep in their own opin­ions to real­ize some­thing: the Aniblog Tour­ney is doing what the OEG should have done — pro­vid­ing spec­i­fied crit­i­cism that comes with con­struc­tive val­ues. The gems… lay within the comments.

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With the wide­spread suc­cess of Full­metal Alchemist, its man­gaka Hiromu Arakawa seems to be seek­ing to broaden the fan­dom by fur­ther increas­ing its appeal to fringe sup­port­ers of the FMA fran­chise — prob­a­bly aim­ing mostly at those fans who nor­mally do not read or watch Shounen but were nev­er­the­less caught up by the intrigue of the Full­metal universe.

Both the two new spin­off series announced will be joint col­lab­o­ra­tion projects: the par­ody 4koma Full­metal Otaku, writ­ten in con­junc­tion with Tat­suhiko Taki­moto (Wel­come to the NHK) and illus­trated by Arakawa her­self; as well as the political/military drama light novel The Flame of Amestris, which will be co-authored by Hiroyuki Morioka (Crest/Banner of the Stars).

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As Giz­modo was kind enough to remind us all on how soci­ety view Otakus, I find myself once again tem­porar­ily agree­ing with the Otaku Elim­i­na­tion Game (the hor­ror of it!) on all the Dan­ny­Choo wannabe blogs.

Otaku
These folks are totally obsessed with Japan and its anime cul­ture, col­lect­ing all sorts of fig­urines of either huge-breasted fan­tasy girls or shy-looking school­girls and hav­ing book­shelves full of manga books and anime DVDs. They replace nor­mal social inter­ac­tions with hours spent fan­ta­siz­ing about a world that doesn’t actu­ally exist. Sad would be the word for it.

Yeah, it’s easy to claim they don’t under­stand, but sadly this seems to be what we’re com­ing off to the rest of soci­ety as.

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While brows­ing Kotaku for amuse­ment in their only-in-japan cat­e­gory, I came across the Love Plus trailer. I swear I could feel a ter­ri­ble ache in my chest after watch­ing it…

The begin­ning I didn’t mind that much. I’ve seen dat­ing sims before. Trial-played one even, although it’s really not my thing since they sim­ply lack the char­ac­ter and plot val­ues their visual novel sib­lings have ( for the last time vis­nov != dating-sim!!! ). The first half of the trailer sim­ply dis­played Love Plus as a dat­ing sim with more ani­ma­tion than what my men­tal imagery gives.

Then she greeted dear player good morn­ing… (~1:45)

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Roy Mustang’s dream…

Excuse me for this rant oblig­a­tory of a crazed Chi­nese nationalist…

I could prob­a­bly write a book to describe my feel­ings of pride, on the national and eth­nic sense, when I watched China’s 60-year anniver­sary mil­i­tary parade roll down Tianan­men Square.

For those crit­ics who say this is the Com­mu­nist State dis­play­ing their author­i­tar­ian power and show­ing mil­i­tarism, they obvi­ously don’t under­stand the Chi­nese men­tal­ity one bit. This parade was meant (mostly) for the Chi­nese peo­ple, to show at last, after recent cen­turies of being humil­i­ated by West­ern pow­ers due to lack of mil­i­tary strength, China has finally stood up to fully level the play­ing field.

It is a moment we have wait­ing long and ardu­ously for.

It is akin to China declar­ing — we will no longer accept trash from the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity, or any attempt by West­ern nations to bully us. The days when for­eign pow­ers exer­cised Spheres of Influ­ence upon China is long past, and the shame is being washed away even as we speak.

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Flash of inspi­ra­tion occurred ages ago, lazi­ness delayed it until now…

So the pro­posal for a joint blog between me and sajuuk, was finally writ­ten, sent, and approved this morn­ing. It marks a new, and hope­fully long-lasting, dec­la­ra­tion of pro­le­tariat activ­i­ties aimed at increas­ing the pros­per­ity of our peo­ple and blog (ha!).

A rev­o­lu­tion is upon us! It begins with ren­o­vat­ing the toi­let save­point and cleans­ing it of Impe­ri­al­ist (wait I’m included in that) Cap­i­tal­ist scum.

First we need a new blog name… (civil war ensues)