Animedragon

I don't have any tattoos or piercings, and I don't want any. Personally I don't understand why anyone would want a tattoo, I especially can't understand why someone would want their whole arm or body covered in tattoos, but it's their choice so I just accept it and don't make any comments. Then again I do things that some others wouldn't do and don't understand why I do, so each to their own.

Yes, the practicality of the merchandise on sale at the last couple of conventions I went to had dropped quite a lot. Most of the stuff I bought was more in the way of memorabilia of the series I liked, if I had a model, CD or art book it was like I had 'part' of the series. I have to say that I find the idea of a body pillow with a waifu printed on it just a tiny bit creepy. I think the coolest thing I bought at a con was the Totoro.

The anime merchandise available at conventions 17 to 20 years ago largely consisted of art books for various series which had some really beautiful pictures in them, all the text was in Japanese but that didn't matter the books were worth buying just to look at the pictures. Other items were original soundtrack CDs with most of the track lists in Japanese (sometimes I could find translations on the 'Net), enamel pin badges were also a common item. There was usually a small collection of character figures and model kits, the the size of the packaging meant that the dealers couldn't get many of them in their cars. One year there was a stall selling anime plush toys and I got a rather nice Totoro who stands about a foot high to the tip of his ears. 17 to 10 years ago the rot started to set in with more and more dealers selling locally produced stuff and not all of it was properly licenced, and some of the soundtrack CDs were pirate copies, some of which were really professionally produced and not easy to spot.

A while back I read somewhere that some anime studios produce series just to sell merchandise, they're not really bothered about the story just as long as its got cute girls they can sell models and other stuff of. The trouble is that if they keep doing that eventually people will get fed up with generic series and stop buying them. About 10 years a go I used to regularly atend anime conventions and I saw the contents of the dealer's rooms slowly change from quality original Japanese merchandise to items produced by Western companies who were jumping on the merch bandwagon. Some of the stuff was good, but most wasn't.

"Garnet" the wonderful ending song from "The Girl who Leapt Through Time".

I rewatched "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" yesterday, it's an interesting story. What would you do if you suddenly found you had the ability to jump back in time? Well, High School student Makoto Konno has the perfect answer, she'll leap back to retake those tests and improve her grades and avoid a few personal mishaps, then she'll set about "helping" her friend's relationships. But she soon learns that meddling with the past the change the present isn't quite as easy as it seems and can lead to unintended and tragic consequences.

Your first point is very true. Here in the UK anime got a VERY bad press due to the actions of some distributors (no names, no pack drill) if I'd read that before I actually saw any anime I most likely would never have started watching it. What hooked me into anime was the quality of the whole package. Artwork, characters (their design and personalities), the storylines and the background music and the way all these elements are blended together to create a whole experience. If you read a book by, for example, J.K.Rowling, J.R.R.Tolkien or Agatha Christie they go to great lengths to create the character's personalities and situations for their stories so it's easy to believe that Harry Potter, Gandalf and Miss Marple etc are real people and when you reach the last page and close the book you know that somewhere those people are carrying on with their lives and I get the same feeling at the end of an anime series. Someone once said that in Western animation the storyline dictates the character's actions, while in anime it's the characters that drive the storyline forward. It's a very subtle, but very important difference. I could probably waffle on about other aspects of anime that I like, but I've waffled enough for one post.

In 1996 I discovered anime by accident while channel hopping on my TV. One of the channels was showing what I took to be a cartoon of some sort, but after a few minutes I realised that it was nothing like any of the cartoons I'd seen before, the artwork and animation were far better and it was obviously part of a long running story so when the episode ended I took to the Internet, or the World Wide Web as it was known then, it wasn't as big as it is today and it was a lot slower. In those days access was by dial-up connection and even at 56K pages took a while to load, but at the end of my search I knew that what I'd been watching was called 'anime' and it came from Japan. Much to my disappointment the TV channel stopped showing this 'anime' thing after a couple of weeks, a couple of weeks after that I found out that a local record shop sold anime series on VHS tapes and one the the series they had was one of the ones I seen part of on TV, so I bought the wholes series, which was about 5 or 6 VHS tapes. The rest,as they say, is history.

One thing I don't quite understand about YouTubers is why do they speak so fast? Some of them gabble away so quickly that I can't keep up with what they're saying, in the end I just stop their video and go somewhere else.

Gunbuster.

Today I finished watching The Vision of Escaflowne. I haven't watched this series for several years and it's still as good and enjoyable as it was when I first watched it. I was surprised to see the date of 1996 on the tiles because from the quality of the artwork and animation I would have placed it nearer 1999/2000.

Today is St.George's Day, so I'm looking forward to going along to the celebrations in our local High Street which will be closed to traffic and filled with stalls, sideshows, fairground rides for children, live music and of course the St.George's Day parade of local marching bands, floats and walkers from local clubs and vintage vehicles. The weather is bright and sunny so it should be a good afternoon out.

There's a topic in the Chit Chat forum about how old members are.

"Kimi no Koe" the closing song from "The Place Promised in Our Early Days" ("Kumo no Mukō, Yakusoku no Basho")

Today I rewatched my favourite movie, Makoto Shinkai's "The Place Promised in Our Early Days" ("Kumo no Mukō, Yakusoku no Basho"). Set in an alternate present day where Japan was divided up after world war 2, much like Germany was. The northern island of Hokkaido is now "Union" territory, it's never stated who the "Union" are but it's not too hard to work out. The story has many layers and while mostly Sci-Fi there is some action and even a love story all bound together with some fantastic artwork and animation and a beautiful soundtrack, and yes, you could end up shedding a tear or two at the end.

Nice. I've never had a new car, they've all been second hand. Although my current car could almost count as a new one as it was only 11 months old when I bought it. It was a leasing company return, I've no idea why the previous owner returned it, I've had it 4 1/2 years now and not found anything I don't like about it.

It's been sunny all day, but the temperature is nowhere near as high as it was over the weekend. This doesn't really surprise me as its a Bank Holiday today and in the UK it's traditional for the weather to go downhill on a Bank Holiday.

"Serial Experiments Lain". I've just finished watching this, it's been quite a few years since I last watched it and it's pretty much as I remembered it. A typical 90's Sci-Fi series from a time when the Internet was still a fairly new thing and about the only people who had home computers were geeks and enthusiasts. The series starts off quite well, but I think that somewhere around the middle the storyline disappears into a mess of disjoined weird scenes and the last three episodes gave me the impression that the writers were desperately trying to find a way to bring the story back and give it some sort of sensible conclusion. Overall I suppose it's not a bad series, just one that's very much 'of its time'.

"Ano Hi Ni" (To That Day) the ending song from Video Girl Ai, a largely forgotten 6 part series from 1992 when it was fairly common for anime studios to produce short series based on the first few volumes of popular manga which didn't always do the manga story justice. The Video Girl Ai manga is well worth reading.

Cereal and milk followed by a cup of tea, There is no way I can cope with anything cooked first thing in the morning.

Welcome aboard. I'm in my 60's and I still watch anime. Some of my friends know I watch anime, but not many. I don't really hide it, anime just never comes up in conversation and curiously no one has ever questioned how I know so much about Japan and Japanese culture.

I'm happy. It's Easter, the sun is shining, it's not raining, the wind has dropped, it's warm enough that the central heating didn't come on this morning, the weather forecast says it will be 20C today. Hopefully this means summer is on the way.

So am I.

Just finished "Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions". This series is good fun to watch and I think it's under rated, it has some interesting characters and underneath all the crazy action there's a serious story. I suspect that, if we're honest, we can all relate in some way to Yuta Togashi and Shinka Nibutani as I'm sure we've all done things in primary and/or junior school that we'd rather keep quiet about when we reach senior school.