More Excitement!!!

Quite some time ago I mentioned that I had my e-mail read over Avatar: The Last Podcast. This has happened AGAIN, however, I wasn't expecting it this time and it made the shock much more extreme.
After hitting their 80th episode, Kellen Scrivens who hosts Animezing Podcast re-formatted the show and asked for e-mails requesting anything to be reviewed. About a week ago, I did, sending in requests for the FLCL anime and the Afterschool Nightmare manga.

However, apparently I forgot to mention WHICH manga series I wanted them to review.
Thus comes my embarrassment.
I quickly corrected the issue in a second e-mail and added a PS pointing out something:
I'm a girl with a unisex name, so it's not the first time I've had this issue. It was more sigh-inducing rather than rage-inducing if you catch my drift.

Look these podcasts up - you'll love them.

-Much luvz, Hideki

Tokyopop: A Final Goodbye, and the End of Manga

I started in denial: it was a prank. An April Fool's joke.
Then I was told once more a few months later and I knew it was true.
Tokyopop, the American manga publishing company, has officially shut down as of last month.
Tonight I was out to dinner with my family when we visited the book store afterwards. On my way over, I wondered what the manga section would look like after this "end". I was shocked at the change in the shelves I'm so used to seeing dominated with CLAMP series or Fruits Basket or Future Diary. Tokyopop volumes were slim pickings with far and few in between.

This is a great loss, in my mind, to the Otaku community. According to Anime News Network, Tokyopop was an pioneer in unflopped Japanese comics in America.
Not only that, but it holds a great deal of nostalgic sadness on my part: the first manga series that go me into anime and my current otaku life was Fruits Basket, one of Tokyopop's most-loved and best-selling series.

At the end of the day, my desire to see the logo above flourish in bookstores once again does nothing.
These days it seems like everything's ending: just as I've finished my school year, my brother has graduated middle school, Demyx Time released the trailer for its final episode, my remaining great-grandparent passed away recently, Borders closed and now this.
Things are changing, I regret to say.

- Much luvz, Hideki.

Falling Stupidly

The end of the school year is coming to the close, meaning one thing inevitably: finals.
In Dance PE we were instructed to coereograph (spelled wrong) our own dance to music. 30 seconds for a solo, a minute for a pair and so on.
The next two days will be our last regular days of the year before four hellish half-days. Our teacher, Ms. Howard, fearing we wouldn't have enough time to show all of the dances asked about three groups today to perform. When we have a final in Dance PE, we are videotaped so it's easier to grade us. I volunteered to work the camera today. however, there is one problem: I'm SHORT.
This camera was quite high on its tripod to see over the heads of students and onto the stage. It seemed like a good idea at the time to drag a metal folding chair over to stand on.
This, however, is not true.
The chair buckled.
I wobbled.
The chair closed on my ankles and toppled to the ground, knocking over the tripod and leaving a twitching Hideki on the gym's linoleum.
"Are you okay?" I heard someone say.
Groping for some vapor trail of my fleeing pride, I looked up to see someone's knees. It's odd how the more you get to know a person, the more familiar they become. For example, at this moment I identified my friend Sam solely on his jeans and shoes.
Despite the fact my feet had nearly been severed from my body, I almost threw that thought away to grin like an idiot.
"You really do care!" I wanted to say.
Yet again, Hideki shows her weird mind-set and freakishly low self-esteem: Instead of fearing for your own well-being, get an adrenaline jolt from the fact that you obviously don't annoy this person in question like you constantly think you do.
My ankles will recover, but they're a bit tender and I'm expecting a bruise in the morning.

On another note, I'm concerned for my bamboo plant.
On of its three stalks has turned almost completely creamsicle yellow, and various leaves have been developing veins of the same color for the past few months. This bamboo plant is important to me - aside from the fact I haven't killed it yet, it's a keepsake from entering high school. My mom bought it with me at Trader Joe's last summer as a gift for the occasion.
Fearing for my dear bamboo plant's legacy, I grabbed a glass candle holder filled with beach pebbles, scurried to the kitchen, and filled it with water. I snipped off the two sprouts from the yellowing stalk and stuck them in the pebbles, praying they might grow.
Hang in there, Bamboo-chan!!

- Much luvz, Hideki.

Resident Not-So-Evil

I recently asked my parents if I could buy Silent Hill: Homecoming. My father, fearing for my "pure young mind" (if only he knew...) suggested I "train" before diving into the world of psychological horror mixed with gore. Therefore, tonight we sat down to watch Resident Evil.

I come from a zombie-loving family. We chat over dinner about our "zombie plans" if there ever is the virus outbreak that the world now is obsessed with. However, Resident Evil wasn't up to my expectations.
It centers around Alice who wakes up on the floor of her shower with no clothes or memory and is thrown into the super-dramatic world of the Umbrella Corporation whose main base, the Hive, is below her mansion. Pulled into a top-secret mission, we discover as she regains her memories that were lost via nerve gas that Alice was employed to hide the entrance to the Hive with her fake husband, also employed by the Umbrella Corporation. However, the Hive's super-computer the Red Queen went brutal, releasing a viral weapon into the Hive and sealing it off. This turns the entire staff and population into zombies, essentially, and now Alice and her slowly dwindling team of gun-wielding bad asses need to shut the Red Queen down and return to the surface before they're closed in for good. Meanwhile, biological experiments are loose and after them.

Dad was a bit disappointed that I didn't enjoy the movie as much as he hoped. Don't get me wrong - great acting featuring kick-A chicks that can pull off wearing leather boots in a super-sexy dress while kicking the crap out of zombies and mutants is fairly entertaining. The cinematography was good, but was also the point where the movie screwed it up for me. Uber-dramatic cuts and flashbacks backed with a techno-beat soundtrack made it feel overplayed. I prefer my zombies more like The Walking Dead - more obviously rotting, first off. These guys were fresh. Furthermore, Alice and her buddies rely on guns and pipes and crap like that to beat zombie dogs' head in with no plan whatsoever. In a typical post-apocalypse society, you need a plan to keep yourself and others safe while looking for food, shelter, and other things. These guys had to throw together their non-existent strategy in an hour, slapping a band-aid over zombie bites only to have a cool army chick turn around an bite you when Alice needs help fighting off the giant mutants. The story was too fast and tried to play off it rather than the characters. Not everything was wrong - the Red Queen's little girl British voice was super-creepy and perfect for claiming "you will all die down here" and screaming "kill her now!"

Maybe I'm picky, or maybe zombie thrillers have just evolved to a higher state since Resident Evil. It was a good shot that hit the target but missed the bull's eye.

- Much luvz, Hideki.