Oh my days.
Okay, let’s just cut to the chase. What exactly is the Otaku: man up hashtag all about? Good question.
It’s about a few things. It’s about a flimsy, non-existent manifesto. It’s about a pointless, ill-conceived philosophy. It’s about angry, knee-jerk rational debate. But mostly it’s about BOTH shits AND giggles.
‘But wait!’ you say, ‘There’s a manifesto?’ Yes. Yes there is. A completely non-existent one:
That’s right folks, February 28 is the First Annual Global Makoto Shinkai Day, organised by the wonderful fansite Cherry Blossoms Falling. Plus, controversial anime steaming site Crunchyroll will apparently be offering all the director’s movies available for free for those 24 hours. Good option as a last resort, but really if you can try and get your hands on some DVDs or even Blu-rays if you want to check out his beautiful work for the first time.
Yeah. After resisting for years, I’ve finally folded to the demands from some readers and set up a Twitter account. As if I needed anything else to distract me from getting some writing done. Anyway, the link’s below so go ahead and add me (or ‘follow me’ or whatever the correct terminology is for this one, I lose track) and find out what I’m thinking about/doing. A lot of it will be about anime. Some of it won’t. Some of it might even be interesting. Ahhh, the suspense…
…which is on 28th February, apparently. At least according to Makoto Shinkai fansite Cherry Blossoms Falling, who are organising this (probably less than official) event. According to this post:
In order to celebrate the works of Makoto Shinkai we’ve decided to throw a Global Shinkai Day. We’ll spend 24 hours watching Shinkai’s films, chatting during the movies and having discussions and contests along the way. We hope you will be able to drop in and join the party/conversation
I fucking love this story.
Although really, you do have to feel sorry for the guy. Daisuke Enomoto, the multi-millionaire executive of one of Japan’s leading ISPs Livedoor, paid Space Adventures $21 million to travel to the International Space Station and to be the first tourist to take a walk in space. Sadly he failed his physical, and is now trying to sue SA for allegedly misleading him. Harsh.
Whilst surfing over the weekend, I stumbled over a quote from sci-fi author Ken MacLeod. Now, I haven’t read any of MacLeod’s stuff for years, and it never struck me as being amazing, but this quote (apparently from his novel ‘The Cassini Division’) hit a chord with me.
(The technological singularity)…is the rapture for nerds.
Genius. I’ve been searching for a way of summing up my discontent with contemporary singularity theory, and all the time MacLeod had hit the nail right bang on the head.
I was procrastinating preparing to do some work today by clearing out my office/studio/spare room, when I found myself taking the above photo. I was emptying a drawer of the usual flotsam of modern life, when I realised it was subtly different. Maybe it’s because I’m weird, but instead of the usual collection of random badges, elastic bands, paperclips and the tops off lost biros, this little pile included:
Someone has too much time on their hands…
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Ureshii Anime have posted an amazing piece detailing the long process they go through in creating one of their excellent fansubs.
