speach tree

For those of you just joining this thread, click on the "anime/manga" tag in the column to the right, to find out what I’m talking about. I just wanted to throw up my work in progress, so bear with me as I edit this over the next few days. This is maybe the 3rd major anime convention I have ever attended in my 23 years of life on this planet. The first two times, I went to the Baltimore Otakon 2000 and 2001 (I don’t remember the exact years) with some friends during high school. I find it kind of interesting to mention a few comparisons between Otakon at the turn of the millennium and the New York Anime Festival in 2007. *Disclaimer: This exercise is obviously problematic, since: Baltimore and NYC are totally different cities. Furthermore, Otakon had already become an established event in the DC-metropolitan area by the millennium, whereas NYAF - according to Show Manager Peter Tatara - is only in its first year as such (there has been an annual New York Comic Con for a while...

As promised, one down a half-dozen to go. But first, let's define some terms. "Shoujo" is a genre of manga with some or all of the following: a pubescent or adolescent girl protagonist heterosexual romance heterosexual tensions including a.) unrequited love b.) jealous female or male rivals c.) pheromone-drenched young male eye candies in multiples of 2 or 4, or d.) all of the above high school or middle school uniform with slouchy socks (late 90s, early 2000s) elaborate, melodramatic eyes fireworks, beach scenes, girls in yukata, and other summer fare the conspicuous absence of homework Of course, I am dating myself. Before the 80s, you would have seen a lot more European white girls with some aquarium-sized glistening eyeballs in the shoujo genre but for some reason no one really cares about Isabella or Claudette anymore. OK so. As some of you may already know, I am currently translating (at non-unionized wages) a shoujo manga called 3-Ai, which is not the real name of ...

Remember how I talked about the imagery and Christian themes in the first 20 episodes of Death Note? Well now I'm going to talk about the second opening, which has a soundtrack that is much less pop than the first one. "Hey hey human sucker, Hey human fucker" is a refrain, which, along with "convenience Banzai human" sort of sums up the whole song, I think. But the imagery! So interesting! Doesn't the opening reflect more of the international audience of Death Note? Do I detect a compositional reference to the Black Panthers? Does Amane Misa finally turn into a porn star? Is there a Matrix allusion? And is it just me or does Light seem to really lose it in the end? Below are some frame stop times for you if you want to take a look at what I'm talking about. (Just look up "Death Note 2nd Opening"on youtube and you will probably find a 1min20sec video with corresponding frame-times): 0:00 - 0:08, "Death Note" in a bunch of different lan...

(for up-coming blog pieces, still in the works) Space-Cadets in the Classroom (Students who take up a lot of space) Differences between Wall St and Pearl St (Murry Bergtraum vs Economics & Finance) Black & Asian Segregation When Straight People Make Mangas about Gay People Comics/Animation & War Nanking, The Movie that Happened Because the Vice-Chairman of AOL Was Traveling in the Caribbean in 2005 Aaaaaaah I am so behind! Plus, I am going to volunteer at a huge anime convention this weekend, which means I'll be even more behind! WAAAUGH!