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:
A few days ago Scott Spaziani kindly invited me on to the first episode of his Otaku in Review podcast to discuss the best, worst and most overlooked anime shows of 2009 – something I’m really grateful to him for, not just because it was a lot of fun but because it also got me out of having to write one of those ‘review of the year’ posts. Yeah, I know. I’m a lazy bastard.
Fernando Ramos is Editor-in-Chief of Anime3000.com. Hailing from beautiful San Diego, California, his incurable addiction to cartoons has led him to his current residence of Saitama, Japan, where staying up late winter nights editing articles only reminds him that SD would never get this cold. An avid photography and video fan, he also produces occasional videos and he also writes the photography/rant column Japan Jumble for the site. Find him as Saitamarama on Flickr and HelloNavi on Twitter.
A bit off-topic, but I know lots of you got a kick out of the Totoro cupcakes my better half made earlier in the year. Well, she’s been at it again. My birthday is Christmas Eve, but we tend to celebrate with friends a few days early for obvious reasons – so this weekend she magically produced these amazing looking Pac-Man cupcakes. Enjoy the photos – and yeah, they did taste as good as they looked.
It’s not even Christmas yet, but for me 2010 has already got off to a good start. January 1st sees the publication of my story Havana Augmented – a tale of globalization, celebrity gamers, augmented reality and non-existent mech battles. If you have an interest in video games, science fiction or anime then hopefully you’ll enjoy it – you can check out a brief extract below.
Fancy writing something for the site?
So far this has been strictly a one man show, but this January I’m off on my travels again – a couple of weeks in Thailand this time – and rather than leaving the site without content for a fortnight I thought I could get a few guest writers on-board. The brief is easy – you should have something to say about anime, manga or some other aspect of J-Culture, and at least *some* previous experience of writing online. This site gets a minimum of 30k visits a month, so it’s potentially a good way of giving your work some exposure.
The name Natsuhiko Kyogoku is probably unfamiliar to most anime fans, but the novelist has already had one of his works adapted – Madhouse’s 2008 series Mōryō no Hako – with a second, Loups-Garous, being adapted into a movie by Production IG and due for release in 2010. An expert in Japanese folklore tales and yōkai, the supernatural creatures that inhabit them, Kyogoku-san is best known in Japan for his award winning mystery novels. Unfamiliar with his work myself until now, I was intrigued when US publisher Vertical Inc sent me a review copy of his debut novel – and the first to be translated into English – The Summer of The Ubume.
I was stupid lucky enough this Friday to make the 400+ mile round journey up north to the Leeds International Film Festival for the day. Given the length of the journey and the insane price of train tickets here in the UK that might seem a bit excessive to catch a couple of movies, but the festival’s anime weekend was being kicked off by an unmissable double bill. First off was Mamoru Oshii’s lost, experimental classic Angel’s Egg (more on that to follow), being shown in the UK for the first time in over 20 years, but the real incentive for me was to see the UK premiere of Momoru Hosoda’s latest blockbuster Summer Wars.
Christmas is still weeks away, but I seem to be getting in the festive spirit already, and thanks to Manga Entertainment UK I’ve got a sack full of goodies to give away to one good little boy or girl. I’ve not even had a chance to check all these gifts out myself yet, but I have taken time out from checking my list for a slightly OCD inflicted second time to cut and paste this press release:
It’s hard to walk down a street in urban Tokyo without being reminded of the ever-present earthquake threat. Large signs on nearly every street notify you of emergency procedures and direct you to evacuation points. While it is undoubtedly drowned out by the background noise and visual blur for the average Tokyo resident, for a tourist it can seem quite startling or disturbing at first, and feel like health and safety overkill. Until, that is, someone points out to you that experts predict there is 70% or higher chance of an earthquake measuring 7.0 magnitude on the Richter scale hitting Tokyo in the next 30 years. It’s a terrifying situation for an urban population that large, and one that forms the basis for Studio Bones and Kinema Citrus’ eleven part series Tokyo Magnitude 8.0
