Okay, we’ve discussed how disappointingly clunky and QUALITY the anime adaptation of Minari Endoh’s manga Hatenkou Yuugi (aka Dazzle) is. However, I’ve found the series’ saving grace: the dialogue. Whether it’s an extended silly scene (like episode 6’s “Surname Poker” game, featuring way too many Suzuki), or in the middle of a dramatic moment, or [...]
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To congratulate myself for obtaining the use of the Nikon D40 DSLR, I shot a few random pictures which should prove interesting to those interested in how an anime blogger lives life. So it’s like, you know, a slice of my life! Haha! I’ve always enjoyed sneaking a peek into the lives of animebloggers from [...]
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Lavi, Crowley, and Bookman continue to fight against the giant Akuma and Tykki and are saved when Kanda and Marie arrive to help.
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Wow, this season of Shana is definitely shaping up to be pretty epic. The fight against Sabrac continues, and Yuji theorizes that Sabrac’s actually the whole city itself, and the form that Wilhelmina’s been fighting is only part of it. He proceeds to lay out a plan for Margery and Shana to execute, and with [...]
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One thing that I do want to praise this series about is the balls that it has to go really extreme. After the Boat-arc, for a minute I feared that Kaiji would try to stop the punishment of Tonegawa. Instead, Tonegawa has proven that he’s a real man this time, even though he lost. He [...]
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Don’t care. I also don’t care that it’s a year and a half old. This is pretty spiffy. I’d rather see Sakura-chan slit some guy’s throat with a survival knife, really, but this’ll do in the meantime.
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ANN has kindly informed us that the spring 2008 anime Nabari no Ou now has a promo online. Simply put, now I wish they hadn’t reported it. Nabari no Ou, which is based on a manga by the same name, has now lost a lot of my vague optimism and interest because the promo’s lame. The [...]
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Looking through one of the imageboards, I found images that have been tagged under an interesting category - “error“. It contains what one would call illustrations bloopers made by various artists and also some from animes. How often do you notice such bloopers? I only notice them while in the movies but often not in anime [...]
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Here are today's "really cool products" that I've picked out for you, out of the 30+ new items we've added to the J-List and JBOX.com sites today. Note that some products may be "not safe for work" but that all links will allow you to redirect yourself either to the J-List or JBOX.com websites. To see all the J-List products, check out J-List or the JBOX.com updated products link. Asuka Langley Witch Figure -- Neon Genesis Evangelion EX Sweet Witches Figure. Famous Japanese artist Okama has created this great figure, a remix of Asuka from Evangelion as a witch. She's so cute as she tries to stay on her broom, losing her hat and accidentally showing the contents of her skirt in the process. Rei Ayanami Witch Figure -- Neon Genesis Evangelion EX Sweet Witches Figure. Okama's version of Rei as a magical witch is also very cute, as she rides her broom sidesaddle and talks to her cute black cat. Totoro Retro Bus ~ Tomica Limited Collection *Preorder*. Here's a really esoteric item for the Studio Ghibli collector: a gorgeous die-cast replica of the old Showa-era bus that the family's father arrives on in the scene at the but stop. There's quite a lot of nostalgia for these old buses, and creating a toy version of the bus from Totoro is just fabulous. Preorder it now. Kiki & Tombo Propeller Bicycle ~ Tomica Limited Collection. Also, the fantastic Tomica figure of Kiki and Tombo on the propellor bicycle he built is in stock. A really special item for Studio Ghibli collectors. Watering Kiss Mint Gum, Meiji Pine Up! We can never resist selling Japanese snacks with funny names, and both Meiji's Pine Up! sweet candies (with real pineapple pulp inside) and the Gatorgum-like Watering Kiss Mint gum fit the bill. Piko Piko Hammer. Quick show of hands, who has seen Beat Takashi beating guests over the heads with this squeaking hammer? Now you can own one of these painless joke items yourself. Practical Japanese: Your Guide to Speaking Japanese Quickly and Effortlessly in a Few Hours. Here's a no-nonsense book to help you get a jump on learning Japanese. It breaks vocabulary down into chunks to make them easier to remember, and presents visual pictures too. KEN-DAMA ~ Traditional Ball Game Pen. In the "how cool is this?" section today we have a pen that has a real Kendama ball on the end for playing the famous Japanese traditional game in between taking notes at work or school. 80's Classic Hello Kitty Built-in Chopsticks Bento Box. Gorgeous retro styling on this bento box featuring Hello Kitty from the 1980s, with everything you need for a great bento experience: base section for rice, middle section for the okazu (that which you eat with your rice, i.e. your main course) and chopstick, built right in! 100 Tough Questions for Japan ~ Bilingual Book. We're big fans of the "bilingual books" that present content in both English and Japanese, great because you can compare the two and learn from both sides. This is a cook that asks 100 difficult questions about why Japan is the way it is. Lacquer-style Square Sake Cup with KANJI. Gorgeous square cup for drinking sake, restocked today. It's got the character for "happiness" on it. Genuine Tabi (Ninja Shoes). Remember that J-List stocks thousands of rare and fun items from Japan. One of the most bizarre are the "Tabi" split-toe boots that we carry that were worn by ninjas in ancient Japan. Chua Churam Figure by Alter ~ Chu Chu Idol *Preorder*. A fantastic new figure from Chu Chu Idol, a popular "H" game in Japan about a vampire who become a JPOP idol. (She sucks the blood of her manager to get power.) Preorder it now. Restocked Studio Ghibli DVDs. One of the best reasons we can think of to use a region free DVD player like our HDMI-compliant upscaling RJ-1000 is to watch the great region 2 DVDs that come from Japan. Today we've restocked the official Miyazaki-approved releases of Princess Mononoke, the highly recommended Ocean Waves, and the newest film Tales from Earthsea. DX Totoro Cushion Every day is better with Totoro in it, and we've restocked the Totoro plush cushions that will improve any room they're in. Pentel Handy Line S - 5 color set ~ Click Guard Marker. You know that we love Japanese pens around here, and so do our customers. Here's a set of five highlighting markers in Pentel's Handy Line S series, which are cool because they're "knock type" pens, which means they don't have caps, with the pen part living inside the pen just like a ball-point. Various Snack Items from Japan. Finally, some fabulous restocked Japanese snacks, including Green Tea and Milk Chocolate Meltykiss (!), Choco Ball in basic Caramel flavor, an elegant chocolate snack from Bourbon, and Chocolate Banana Parfait flavored Hi-Chew. Yum! Dengeki Hime Dec 2007. One of the best "H game" oriented magazines we sell on J-List, it focuses on the beautiful female characters in these games, hence the title "Hime" (princess). Fab new issue, with a separate art book for ToHeart Another Days, posters and more. HONOKA Maximum (Limited Edition) -- Honoka. Search all you like, but you'll have a hard time finding a more beautiful woman from Japan than Honoka, who looks fabulous in this double-sized limited edition photobook. The elegant and all-natural photos are just amazing, and we've never seen art and photography come together as well as this. New Manga Volumes Posted. The Japanese are not shy about making "ero" parodies of famous anime characters, and if you love the girls from Lucky Star you're going to want to pick up the new Ero Star. Also, see the new Enjoy Milky Heaven by Pon Takahanada, with 11 great stories of "H" including something called "Couch Potato Lovers." Kurumi Imari 1/8 Cast-Off Figure School Uniform ver. ~ Bible Black. Then feast your eyes on this gorgeous Bible Black figure of Kurumi-chan that we've just gotten in stock. The figure is totally cast-off-able, allowing you to remove her clothes and choose how you want to display her. Muhahaha! "Sex Style" Sake Bottle & Two Cups. You probably know about our wacky coffee cups and other items that demonstrate the traditional 48 positions. The newest release in the series are these incredible sake bottle and cup sets, which come in gorgeous boxes suitable for displaying, if that's where your tastes lie. Available in Frog, Panda and Skeleton versions!
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Star Wars meets traditional Japanese hand cloths? Oh yeah, baby. I want the one with R2D2 and the Hokusai wave and Fujisan. On the other hand, the R2D2 soy sauce bottle is pretty badass too. Both are available for purchase at Strapya (via
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Want to see the J-List team? We've updated the About J-List page to show all of our current staff, as well as some nice images from our home prefecture of Gunma to help you understand the kind of place we live in. We think that being able to see the Japanese and American staff members you'll interact with when you order from our site will add a new dimension and help bring you closer to J-List. "Wii" think you'll like the new page!
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Part of Peter's Unified Theory of Japan is that America is a country of idealists while Japanese are generally pragmatists. In many areas of society, Americans seem to reach for the stars, trying to attain great goals like total equality between the sexes and different races, holding down taxes down while guiding democracy all over the world, including Iraq. Japanese, on the other hand, seem to have a national joshiki, a "common sense" that all Japanese tend to share, which tends towards more realistic goals. While there are laws against sexual discrimination or harassment in the workplace, the roles of men and women are more clearly defined in Japan. For a family to be happy, the husband should be the daikoku-bashira (lit. "big black pillar") that supports the house financially, and so, the number of women who desire high-paying careers is much lower here than in the West. Kids should go to school to receive an education that makes them feel that they're a part of the larger society, and so there is no homeschooling in Japan. The ultimate pragmatic slogan in Japan is one you can hear quite often: sho ga nai, or "it can't be helped, so I guess I'll just do nothing." To be honest, it's kind of refreshing living in a society that admits that there are things beyond its ability to change. What do you think? Oh, and if you find you don't have enough common sense, there's a DS game to help you out. Just ten minutes a day!
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You never forget your first impressions of something. Although it was seventeen years ago, I still vividly remember my arrival in Japan, and how strange everything looked to me. Beyond the obvious "my, what a lot of Japanese people there are here!" thoughts that sprang into my mind or thinking that every house was a beautiful temple just because it had ornate kawara roof tiles on it, I remember not being able to take my eyes off the many vending machine I saw all around me, which were so clean and brightly lit. I'd prepared myself for difficulties in using Japanese to communicate, but I didn't bet on my English coming up short -- and yet there seemed to be all kinds of English words that I couldn't understand, like "fancy shop," which I now know is a shop that sells cute things like Sanrio toys and stationery; or "viking," which has come to mean an all-you-can-eat buffet. But just like the Japanese proverb sumeba, miyako translatable as "if you live in a place, it will eventually become like the capital city to you" -- or "home is where you hang your hat," as we gaijin say -- people can adapt to anything. Before I knew it, I'd not only gotten used to thinking of my strange life in Japan as "normal," I'd even experience reverse culture shock when I went back to the States.
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Last time I talked about some of the interesting discussions I've seen on Japanese TV shows, even about subjects that one might think would be difficult to debate openly. One of the topics on the "If I Were Prime Minister" show recently was whether Japan should try to be more self-sufficient in light of the food poisoning scare involving frozen Chinese gyoza dumplings that had been tainted with fertilizer. Although everyone thinks of Japan as an industrial powerhouse, its economy is quite geared towards agriculture, with fields squeezing out a crop of rice and of wheat per field per year, or growing other things like grapes or sweet potatoes or those delightful apple-pears. However, with a population half the size of the U.S. crammed into 1/25th the area, it's pretty much impossible for Japan to feed itself. The country is only able to produce 39% of its own food as measured in calories, and thus relies heavily on imports from the U.S., Australia, China and so on. Japan is so dependent on outside countries for its food that trends on the other side of the world can easily affect it, like Canada and Brazil moving away from producing soybeans and towards growing crops for biofuel, which hurts Japan's traditional foods like tofu, natto and miso soup. And yet, Japan's agricultural system is still built around small units, "mom and pop" farms in which the husband often works a normal job to make ends meet, or extremely small companies often operating with limited resources -- basically, the exact opposite of the mammoth agro-business firms you find in the U.S. It occurred to me that one answer to Japan's food quandary might be to take steps to allow more land to be managed by larger companies who would bring greater efficiency and increase production. For some cultural reason that is incomprehensible to me, this doesn't seem like a solution that has occurred to the Japanese, which of course might be for the better, of course, in the end.
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I’ll give you both the opening and the ending this week: You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video
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Ahh, Nova: the sketchy chain of English-language cram schools for business men and anyone else who feels like learning to speak fluent Engrish. Japan Probe reports that a Nova school is going to open in April– on the Aichi Gakuin University campus. Well, I’d say something about how I wouldn’t want to learn English from Nova [...]
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Production I.G’s English-language website has unveiled the staff and cast of Real Drive, their upcoming project with Shirow Masamune. The show, announced back in November, is a futuristic sci-fi series set to air in April. Here’s part of I.G’s plot summary (the full version is here: 2061 AD. Fifty years have passed since mankind developed the [...]
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Episode 3 "Hero: Perfect Hunter"The episode opens in 2008 as Wataru works on a violin, the bell rings incessantly. Wataru finally puts aside his work urged on by Kivat-bat to answer the door. It’s just a door to door salesman trying to get Wataru to subscribe to a newspaper, but he’s saved by Shizuka who scold’s him to be more firm with salesman. Megumi is talking to Shima at the gym about Kiva, Shima tells her not to worry, let Keisuke Nago deal with Kiva. Megumi protests and Shima asks if she still hates Nago. Wataru attempts to give a gift to the Kido the café owner, but stumbles over his words, and Shizuka has to intervene. Megumi complains that he’s useless and has to have a caretaker with him, but the store’s dog takes an instant liking to Wataru. Megumi asks how he plans to improve himself, he replies that he wishes to become like his dad, Otoya Kurenai. The scene switches to 1986, a man and woman are shopping when Otoya interrupts ruining the couple’s relationship. But then just as quickly he drops the woman he’d stolen away and picks another girl in her place. Then when Yuri shows up he drops that girl to focus on Yuri but she’s just there to collect her weapon that he’d taken from her the last time. Just then a Fangire attacks.I’m really starting to get into this show now with the laughs supplied by the unique self assured playboy father and the diligent shy son that requires supervision from a middle-schooler who turns into a hero. The transform sequence is pretty cool as Kivat-bat has to bite the hand that feeds it so to speak to affect the transformation. The Fangire costume design is much nicer than the early Kabuto generic worm design, the Fangire so far have all had a very beautiful stained glass appearance on a monstrous shape.Download the first five English hardsub episodes from the TV-Nihon website here.Screen shots of the other two episodes here.
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Wow, it only took ‘em almost 30 years: the Mainichi reports that Cospa is going to start selling Earth Federation Army uniforms from the original Mobile Suit Gundam– the Matilda-style grey jacket, white pants uniform. It goes on sale this June– which is also when a new Char cosplay will go on sale, too. It don’t [...]
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You already know our choices for the spring season. It is time for you, our readers, to tell us why we should blog a certain anime. Of course, we cannot give any definite guarantee . Leave us a comment, tell us why you want a certain blogger to blog a series and I can try [...]
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