There’s only one way to beat manga piracy…

And that would be to license these few GLORIOUS titles for the greater weeaboo.

• THE LEGEND OF KOIZUMI
• Vinland Saga
• Fate/Kaleid Liner ~PRISMA ILYA~
• Fate/Kaleid Liner ~PRISMA ILYA~ 2wei!!!
• MGLN ViViD

Partly because I don’t give a shit about how OneManga has more hits than ANN or how the self-righteous the fucks at ANN are  clearly deluded for thinking that pulling a Bang-Zoom (that is, revealing trade secrets) is going to help their cause or anything, but clearly the licensors should, at least for good PR’s sake, listen to their cash cows once in a while. AND LICENSE THESE TITLES, FOR A START. BECAUSE FUCK, I WANT TO READ MANGA, NOT QUARREL OVER STUPID THINGS. I’LL PAY GOOD MONEY TO GET A HARDCOPY OF ANY OF THESE TITLES. OR ALL OF THEM.

So, will someone license at least Vinland Saga for me? Or even THE LEGEND OF KOIZUMI?

Drunken Anime Watching – Bakemontogatari EP2

Personally, I haven’t watches Bakemontogatari beyond the first episode. It was a nice, if talky show. In fact, in my head, “great conversation” isn’t a plus point for me, considering I’m more of a proper narrative kind of guy.

So on the suggestion of a bro, I decided to get a little drunk and see if it’d improve the experience.

Lo and behold, it did. Somewhat. Details are on Twitter.

And just for everyone: I’m bloody contrarian, and that’s why I’m only watching Bakemontogatari after everyone else has. And it’s looking to be a great show. Unlike Angel Beats.

Angel Beats Tidbits

Before we start off, I’d like to make an announcement.

Nova is getting hitched to Hideyoshi. Somewhere out there, shinn is getting seriously ticked off. Somehow. (I am going to run this joke into the ground. Or until I get bored. Or die. Or something. Even if Nova is goign to get hitched to Fate-chan anyhoo. HIS FIRST WAIFU WILL ALWAYS BE HIDEYOSHI. NO EXCEPTIONS.)

Now onto the show.

• Oh you, TK. Always so wonderfully weird and… … … SECRETLY TIM HOWARD? But that’s impossible! He’s BALD.
• Otonashi has a girly name LOL YUZURU Y U SO GIRLYNAME
• Naoi is yaoi for OtoYaoishi. (See what I did thar)
• Kanade T_T

AND THEN, EPISODE 10 HAPPENED.

After making Yui-nyan so painfully annoying (and pretty much cementing his status as being completely incapable of comic timing FOREVER) in Episode 4, Maeda Jun gives her an entire episode to herself, ending with bloody nHinata going I’LL FUCKING MARRY YOU NO MATTER WHAT as if he finished playing Katawa Shoujo Act 1 and realized Yui was a cripple for life. And then my jaw dropped and my brain shat bricks.

My brain is still shitting bricks at that. HEAR THAT MAEDA JUN, WE WANT MORE MOMENTS LIKE THIS, NOT STUPID GAY JOKES AND SPINNING ROCKET LAWNCHAIRS.

This is all so surreal.

At the height of youth, one does not know what lies ahead. Young and full of vim, the young man charges forth recklessly, plunging self into excitement and danger, without an iota of care in the world.

So it’s extremely surreal to note that one of us has already gone to meet his maker, so to speak.

It gets even weirder that the guy in question actually beat terminal cancer. TWICE. So yeah, while I generally would love to crack a few jokes here (for some of us, humor is how we deal with grief), it feels terribly inappropriate.

…I really can’t say too much, since I never did visit the site nor read the articles.

Man, even as I stare death in the face everyday, when someone dies, I can’t help but feel a sense of surrealness.

“Boring isn’t necessarily bad!” – A whole new look at Summer Wars.

A lot of people love Summer Wars. Apparently, the reverse is also true.

I’m one of the few people who think that the show is wonderful, but didn’t do anything for me. (Partly because the week before, I watched Kiki’s Delivery Service dubbed and I thought that was a pretty good movie, all things considered.)

Overarching theme of how people are able to put aside their differences and work together for a common goal? Check. Wacky-esque family who are good people at heart? Yes. Badass grandma? Check. Super-talented male lead who initially is a bit of a whiny wuss but ends up being a real character? Check. Having redundancy, even for a super-jawsome global FaceBook-esque VR world with reportedly uncrackable security, is important? FUCK YES. The Endoh Maasaki cover of Butterfly? Waitaminute… … …

Now, I’m aware of how some people think Mamoru Hosoda is some kind of genius, but well, compared to real geniuses like Tomino (King Gainer and XABUUUUUNLE), Imagawa (G Gundam, SHIN  Mazinger ZEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETO SHOUGEKI!) and the ever-lovable troll Kawamori (Macross :3c), in my opinion, Hosoda feels more like a very skilled artisan, rather than a real genius. You can’t help but think, “Hey, this is a pretty good work of art!” rather than “HOLY SHIT THIS IS JAWSOME” when it comes to Hosoda.

Worse still, I got bored in the middle of watching it. In most cases, losing interest in the middle of a show hurts the show plenty, especially for TV anime and sometimes, in most movies. But still, I kept watching. After all, roleplaying over IRC is partly patience and I had the entire day.

And boy did it deliver. Outside of kiddie merch shows, I’ve never seen a card game duel THAT INTENSE. It’s probably the best thing about the show I can say that really got me.

But to be honest, a movie is the sum of it’s parts, and Summer Wars is a really pretty show. Subtle touches like character development and fleshing out, the scenery, and the settings were done with a master artisan’s touch, the kind I might actually associate with Hosoda after this. Then again, I’m a Super Robot geek and I’m probably biased about a good bit of the show.

But to be honest, while the show did feel rather railroaded at times (dude, seriously, are you going to complain about how expected everyone pitching in to kick the face of the evil programme was? About the badass old grandma telling her family to welcome the prodigal back with open arms was expected to happen? POSTHUMOUSLY?) and your interest does drop off halfway through the show before it picks up with the extreme ridiculousness of someone getting military-grade satellite comms equipment and a SUPERCOMPUTER and FUCK YEAR HUMANITY, it one one enjoyable ride, and sadly, one that seems to have faded away until I read some of the discussions.

Summer Wars: It’s probably a little superficial and boring, but it’s one hell of a ride.

“What about a Steam Service for Manga and Anime?”

There’s a whole load of mind boggling things to say about OneManga being one of the top sites for hip young people to go to today, but when ANN decides to act like a spoiled schoolkid and whine about how horrible the whole site is for making money off ads and not contributing to the creators, you start to think that these people are living in some kind of stupid bubble. I mean, it’s not like they’re sticking their own watermark on it and calling it their own, right? RIGHT?

But anyway, their whining and a few interesting posts on digital distribution and how Japan is averse to it, I started to look at something that has been working for quite a while and is touted as one of the miracles of distribution.

Enter Steam. It’s an application by Valve that allows you to buy video games online (without the need for icky CDKeys or DRM, if you so desire, kinda), view media, and surf the web (if you really wanted to).  It’s main function, I believe, is to become a one-stop game-launching application.

“But don’t we have a similar service for other forms of media, like, let’s say, Apple’s iTunes, you fucking idiot?” Well yeah, Apple’s iTunes did cross my mind. But do you really want Apple to control what you want to see? You’ll never get to see Kodomo no Jikan on your e-Reader, ever. Or Omamori Himari. Or some of the more mature-themed (by that I meant naked breasts and hardcore porn :3c) stuff you see in Japanese animation.

Hence the need for a Steam-like application for anime, manga and all the other related things. It’ll help allay the fears of the Japanese fear of piracy, plus whoever is willing to create and fund this, they’ll have to be willing to talk to the DOZENS of companies who may eventually want in to see what kinds of features they want in the app. For starters, portability and security.

I’m still wondering why no one has ever tried to implement Steam for anime. This thing could blow iTunes out of the water, if only in Japan.