The last season of anime is possibly one of the best in recent memory, few shows, but what shows there have been included some right gems! Level E with it’s fantastic plot twists, and Hourou Musuko (aka Wandering Son) which is quite possibly one of the best (yet incredibly underrated/outright written off by some people) slice of life shows ever made!

I’m sure you’ll agree that the first thing you notice is the beautiful watercolour artwork, it’s refreshing to have an anime that isn’t afraid to try something different style-wise, and I’d say it’s paid off nicely.

The basic premise of the show is that the main character likes dressing up as a girl and we follow him and his friends interactions with each other. Sadly the majority of viewers simply turned off after the first few minutes because of that plot (clearly their insignificant shallow minds couldn’t cope with anything other than fanservice, fanservice, explosion, fanservice). But frankly the show’s premise is another breath of fresh air, a departure from traditional anime trap fare with a show that portrays the characters and their feelings in a much more realistic manner.

As a slice of life show it does what it says on the tin; we follow Nitori-kun, his friends, family, and all of their ups and downs for a few years of their school life, you do end up becoming attached to all of the characters by the end. However if I were to pick one downpoint I’d say it does at times feel a little too fast paced with the occasional time jump and a lot of characters introduced at once in the beginning,a full 26 episodes for the series would have been much better. >_<

It’s currently available on Crunchyroll for most of the world (with some rather dodgy at times subtitles: namely in the first few episodes consistently getting the various characters school years completely wrong, which made some of the relationships between characters really confusing… his sister and her friends are in the year *above* him, not below, lol). Oh how I hope for a blu-ray release with English subtitles (however we all know it’ll sadly never be released in physical form anywhere outside of Japan)

Any non-shallow minded anime fans that don’t watch anime just to consume copious amounts of shite and fanservice should certainly give it a watch!

I’ll end the post on the best girl in the show……… Anna!

I’m sure by now everyone’s heard about Anime on Demand, a new UK streaming service designed to rival the likes of crunchyroll. Lets see what the pros/cons are of each…

Anime on Demand:

http://www.anime-on-demand.com

Pros -
-Has Steins;Gate

Cons -
-Has a bunch of shows crunchyroll is already streaming to the UK
-*Much* lower video quality than crunchyroll
-Is behind crunchyroll on the shows it shares
-A site that’s pretty terrible to navigate (current shows are where?) and is seemingly just AnimeNewsNetwork with a horrid red skin

And just to illustrate, a screenshot from one of their 720p videos:

(click for fullsize… lol, compression. Heck, even the player itself is full of compression artifacts, fail much?)

Crunchyroll:

http://www.crunchyroll.com

Pros -
-Better video quality
-Has *way* more shows, including an impressive back catalogue and an ever increasing drama section (though admittedly few drama gets licensed for the UK)
-Site doesn’t cause eye cancer

Cons -
-Doesn’t always license everything for the UK (no doubt they would have streamed Steins;Gate to us if AnimeOnDemand didn’t have it, seeing as they’re streaming it to pretty much every other country in the world)

And again just to illustrate, two screenshots from a similarly dark scene on an anime on crunchyroll:

(Left = 720p, right = 480p… both of which far better encoded than Anime on Demand’s 720p stream. *facepalm*)

Why oh why is anime on demand licensing shows that Crunchyroll is already streaming to us (or was planning on streaming to us)?!!! It makes no sense, no-one in their right mind would pay for something from one company that they can get for better quality from another.

Not to mention the use of AnimeNewsNetwork’s entire backend (for video streaming, account management, and providing forums) makes them seem *INCREDIBLY LAZY*, it makes it look like they’re just in it to make a quick bit of cash (lol, as if that’s ever going to happen… less than 200 subscribers was it?) rather than providing a service that is actually any good.

So frankly, unless you’re desperate to watch Steins;Gate legally in the UK i’d suggest you keep your money in your wallet (or continue giving it to Crunchyroll) until Anime On Demand improve their service somewhat.

After a long 3 year wait, finally a release date for the 10th Haruhi novel! A supposed simultaneous “worldwide” release on May 25th 2011 (not entirely sure what “worldwide” means considering the official English release won’t be anywhere volume 10 by May next year, but oh well).

Also メリクリ etc.

Hyper Japan was last weekend; a 3 day Japan convention in London, food, drink, anime, Lolita, cosplay, singing… I think they had all bases covered!

It’s easy to compare it to the London Expo as they’re very similar, both essentially trade shows as opposed to traditional anime conventions. Hyper Japan however focused entirely on Japan and leaves out all of the western Sci-Fi stuff, this led to what i’d easily consider the best guest and event lineup of any UK anime convention so far (obviously apart from Momoi at Ayacon ). Despite its relatively small size they managed to get from Japan: Goodsmile company, Nico Nico Douga (with live broadcast), Bushiroad (complete with Weiss Schwartz cards with English translations), a whole host of Lolita brand’s, Lolita fashion model Misako Aoki, and the cast of as yet unaired Milky Holmes.

For our relatively backwater country in regards to the usual guest fare we get that’s pretty damn impressive!! I hope either the London Expo takes note of this event and improves, or this event continues to run and get bigger and better each year (maybe something to even rival the Japan Expo in France?). DEFINITELY A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION, WELL DONE GUYS!!

Obviously it wasn’t without it’s downsides, namely: promotional material using photos of Japanese cosplayers without crediting them (their banner made it look like they were guests too, lol)… but they’ve since rectified that, translator not knowing the names of the people she’s translating for on stage, and the massive leaking roof everywhere. Oh and that they didn’t really make it clear (or seem to know themselves) that the Milky Holmes anime hadn’t actually aired yet, the PSP game isn’t out until December, and that this will pretty much be the first roles for those seiyuu (this lead to some odd questions from the crowd such as “Do your parents watch every episode?” …uhh, lol), I think their promotional material over-sold the group a bit “Already a TV anime & video game sensation in Japan”, haha. But those are just minor details, it is rare we get such a lineup in the UK, we should celebrate it!

And a brief summary of what we did there:

Day 1 Friday:
After wandering around a bunch of dodgy back alleys in what’s pretty much the brown area on a UK monopoly board we found the place in an abandoned warehouse (ok, not quite abandoned, and not quite a warehouse, but it felt like it, lol). There were absolutely no queue’s at this point, all we could see was a side door and some stairs going up and we were left thinking “is this really the entrance?”, after confirming with the people on the door that this was in fact the entrance to Hyper Japan and not some kind of criminal hideout we ventured inside. Instantly made a beeline to the Goodsmile and Bushiroad booths, got myself a copy of the Black Rock Shooter anime, and bought the Milky Holmes PSP single. The staff at the Bushiroad booth  decided they wanted a photo of us as we were the first to buy anything from them (they certainly employ people that fit every kind of moe there, lol… especially the small Nodoka-esque staff person that was always sat at the back). They said they might upload it to their blog, but it seems they got far more exciting photo’s from later that they uploaded instead.

Walked around the rest of the booths, the 3D TV’s weren’t very good, guy trying to sell me a DIY sushi kit with the line “it’s boil in the bag rice!”, that’s surely a bad thing? lol Oh, and briefly spoke to the guy running the Terracotta Distribution booth (does he run the company? I don’t know… but he was presenting the Big Tits Zombie screening the other week), they seem like a really decent company, genuinely look like they enjoy their Asian films.

Wandered around a bit, met everyone else I was supposed to that day, bought an Acchan photobook that I wasn’t intending on buying, and then got interviewed for the Nico Video live stream thing (whoever said they wanted to marry me, I hope you were at least female? lol)

Left for the day after that as there didn’t seem to be much else going on.

Day 2 Saturday:
Got there same time as the day before, only this time there was a queue and it was long (10 mins long is longer than zero, lol). Suddenly cosplayers, thousands of them.

Basically we got straight to securing a spot for watching Milky Holmes, so that meant sitting through 2 hours of Lolita fashion talk, which i’ll admit was kinda interesting, there was some discussion of various Lolita brands, talks from the Editor of Kera magazine, Misako Aoki, mini fashion show, and a demonstration of hair styling from a Japanese lolita hair stylist (don’t remember the name, sorry whoever you were!!).

And there we go, front row seats for Milky Holmes, after a short introduction from the guy in charge of Bushiroad they came out! The first song seemed to be some kind of theme song for the company, anyone know what it was called, or if it’s possible to buy it anywhere? Sadly the crowd weren’t particularly animated, so we just settled for polite clapping while seated, lol. After their first song they were introduced, and asked a few questions from the host guy, and some questions from the audience (yeah, notes for the future Hyper Japan: make sure your staff know a little bit more about who they’re introducing/interviewing!!). They then handed out glowsticks, demanded everyone stand up, and sung the Milky Holmes PSP song that was on the CD… crowd a bit more active this time, lol.

After that they finished. Only 2 songs.

But after that they got changed and walked over to the Bushiroad stand where they stood and handed out business cards for their characters and posed for photos.

Also caught Misako Aoki walking around and got a photo with her. ^_^

(@CDevil4 also in the picture)

After that we all left to get food.

Day 3 Sunday:

I stayed at home as I thought I’d seen everything important, BUT I MISSED JONATHAN ROSS!!! He turned up and walked around on the Sunday apparently. *disappointed*

Yes, definitely a great event. Hopefully it’s a sign of things to come and it’ll be bigger next year!

And so starts my hopefully not too long (depending on how you define “long”) report of the event!

Left work on day -1 and headed straight into London to meet up with @ptom98, @RadioHexi, and @MorningTime (yeah, I know I don’t need the @’s outside of twitter, but hey ho, i’m gonna roll with it!), before getting a coach. After waiting for a while in the bar at Victoria station, ptom and Hexi eventually turned up, followed by a round of strangely coloured highly sweet alcoholic pitchers. Morningtime’s train was delayed so we headed off to the coach station, and eventually he joined us. ^_^

After we all got on the coach we cracked open the rest of the booze and enjoyed our little party bus (still disappointed we didn’t go by ferry though). Eventually got to our stop in Paris several hours later (now Thursday… “day 1″), and somehow had to find our way to the hotel. The airport staff were highly friendly (not) in pointing us to where our free shuttle was supposed to be, so after asking several people and failing we eventually had a confusing conversation with some taxi drivers who agreed to overcharge us by a significant amount (40 euros) to drive us to the hotel that was 10 minutes journey away.

Arrived at hotel, the plan was to check in, dump our bags and head straight off into Paris where the first Morning Musume signing session of the weekend was. Sadly the highly friendly (not… this is going to be a running theme btw) hotel staff said no we couldn’t check in until later, and no we couldn’t leave our bags anywhere. Thanks. -_- But luckily the rooms to the hotel all had keycodes instead of keys, and @CDevil4 saved the day and let us dump our bags in his room!

Off to get a taxi to the signing session now, the again highly helpful hotel staff told us that they couldn’t get us a taxi and to go back to the airport and get one. Eventually we did get a taxi from the hotel, and made our way through some heavy duty rush hour Paris traffic. I’ve gotta say the French seem to have no concept of road safety, and the roundabout around the Arc de Triomphe felt more like the streets of Bangladesh with motorbikes almost driving over the top of car bumpers, and accidents at every turn. But anyway we eventually arrived there at 9am… somewhat later and somewhat more hungover than everyone else that had been queuing since midnight, lol.

(a very appropriate car sign for French traffic, no idea what it’s actually supposed to mean)

Got in the line, ptom and Hexi went off to get food, by the time they got back the security staff had closed the line and refused to let them back in despite protests from us, and some helpful French people that were next to us. Uh-oh! I eventually negotiated swapping me out of the line and Hexi into the line (since I’d already got autographs at AX last year, and Koha wasn’t there). To be honest we were all too far back in the line anyway to get the signing tickets, they only had 150 available and we were already 200+ people back.

Anyway, me and ptom walked off, and through the power of magic (if anyone asks, yes it was indeed magic, absolutely definitely 100% magic, nothing shifty at all ) us two got to watch the signing from close up, and MorningTime and Hexi got to get stuff signed, result! One amusing thing from watching the signing was seeing Mittsi pull funny faces at us, it started out with me and ptom just waving at her in-between her signing people’s stuff, and she’d wave back, then after about the 5th time she just started pulling faces at us every time we waved.

After that we all made our way to the convention centre by train (by *very* hot, and shoddy train… again wouldn’t have been out of place in Bangladesh). When we got there I was expecting a long queue to get in, but it was just a long walk around barriers, the queue was pretty much non-existent.

For me it was straight off to watch the Kirarin Revolution question and answer session with An Nakahara, sadly it was of course translated between French/Japanese, but I think I managed to understand enough Japanese to figure out most of what she was saying (got zero of the French, lol). At one point she was very praising about Koharu when asked about her role in the anime. And there was also an amusing point where the audience was asked whether they preferred Seiji or Hiroto (and of course it was like 85% for Hiroto, me included), she smiled. ^_^ It just felt good to be in an area surrounded by so many KiraRevo fans, i’m pretty sure you could barely cobble together 10-20 of us in the whole of England/America, let alone hold an entire event for it here!

After that I lined up for the raffle for that afternoon’s Morning Musume signing, and I ended up pulling a winning ticket! HAPPY☆彡

Grabbed some food, met up with everyone else, and through some equally shifty methods more magic, ptom also won a raffle ticket for the signing! Everyone happy!

My plan of action for this signing was to see if any of them from that breakfast remembered me. First one up, Ai-chan, she looked at me, said bonjour, I was about to say I was from England, but then she instantly said “Ah! The English Koharu fan from Anime Expo?”… followed up with “I remember” in English. Ahh so happy to be remembered, lol! Gaki, Eri, Reina next, didn’t say too much to them, just thankyou for the autographs (they all said bonjour, lol). Got to Sayu and told her she was cute (again? I forget…), she squirmed in her chair acting embarrassed and said thank you in an incredibly cute way, lol, almost like being told she’s cute powers her up or something, she loves it, lol. Next was Mittsi, told her I was English and went to AX, and she responded with “I remember you”, and same with JunJun next (though I had to mention AX, English, and Breakfast before she said she remembered), and Linlin also said she remembered pretty quickly. All in all I was very pleased with that! ^_^ I shall just imagine one of them sent a message to Koharu telling her her mad English fan was in France, lol. Ahh~~

(ピカピカなポスター！)

And that’s pretty much it for the first day, we went back to the hotel, got our stuff, checked into our rooms, showered (oh lets not get started on the showers shall we… doors that don’t close, leak water everywhere, doors that have windows for easy viewing, and some sort of strange hole in the middle?!), got food, met up with @PaulElliot (I forget your twitter name >_<) and then ended up in next door’s hotel bar drinking what they had left of their beer (tap ran out after 1 pint, bottles almost out). This hotel incedentally was supposedly the hotel that Morning Musume were staying at, we didn’t see them at all though, but potentially did see some of the other Japan Expo guests walking around (or at least people that looked like other guests, lol).

Oh, and that bar had the best seats ever for a bar… giant bean bags! I think all pubs should replace their seats with giant bean bags!

…after that we all went off to sleep, Day 1 over!