...

I thought a lot before making this post, because I didn't know how to put things in the simplest way possible, finding the right way to say things, especially in a foreign language, is never easy, finding the right tone, not upsetting anyone without sounding heartless, all of that is hard, which is why I don't find a lot of posts about it in anime and generally Japan oriented blogs I suppose.

It happens this is a Japanese pop culture oriented blog so I will continue on my topic. It doesn't mean I don't care for other people, and not only people in Japan but in other countries hit by a tsunami and/or in danger of being it by tsunamis or aftershocks because I do care but I also know I cannot do anything but hope for the number of casualties to be the lowest possible and for the situation not to become worse.
I also wanted to pinpoint a fact that seems important considering all the hate going around but I couldn't care less if I don't have animes/mangas/anything before a while, as long as the PEOPLE behind it are ok, even if I don't know them personaly. (as a sidenote, people I know personaly and are currently in Japan/around the Pacific are safe, I checked on them first thing after the news)

Which is when I come to the main point of my post, which is to share a list of Japanese Personalities and their statuts after the earthquake, it's being constantly updated since yesterday and gathers as much informations as possible for now.

Since I don't know what to add I will leave it at that and just continue to hope.

Of fandom and interesting goodies

You probably know it by now but when it comes to goodies and weird interesting stuff, Japanese are really good at it, just see all the places where Hello Kitty have been put and you'll have an idea of what I'm talking about, also, since I've seen it, I'm dead set on getting that Pacman necklace /shot
Anyway, it happens that I'm currently into a very crazy fandom (with crazy, but wonderful, but very crazy people <3), mainly Durarara!! and it happens that this serie has crazy stuff.

First were the fragrance dedicated to each one of the main characters, obviously not my favourite but it would be so easy if I could have the same favourite character as everyone. Then again, it saves me money.
So, what I was trying to say is that they re-released the bottles, much more tiny, and as a set.

Isn't it cute?

Wait a bit because there's better, they're going to release a cake, a birthday cake, for each one of the previously mentionned characters (then again, mine happens to be forgotten, but well, we don't even know his given name, I can't hope to know his birthday can I? ^^)
Obviously limited edition, have a pic!

All of that to say that I'm definitely doing one of those for Izaya's birthday, definitely /shot
And you can find the stuff on this website.

A bit of music

I have no idea if this is a trait common to all anime bloggers but I do find it hard to find things to write about, especially since I don't review episodes, I tried, but I happen to be just too lazy and there are times you just have no idea about what you could say.
If that's the case for you too you need to find other stuff to blog about, this blog has a topic, and it's harder to stay on topic than to babble about everything like I do on LJ. Anyway.

Today's topic is music, I love music, and music related this season has been a blessing with two of my favourite composers ever taking parts in two animes I love, mainly Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika with Yuki Kajiura and Gosick with Nakagawa Kotaro.
However today's topic is not about them, though it's an idea to keep for another time, today is about openings and endings.
I find myself to be extremely hard to please in that field, as a result out of an average 10 animes I watch every season, meaning at least 20 songs, I find myself liking only one quarter of them, at best.
This is my Wnter 2011 season selection. Or phrased differently, the only ones I like.

[Beelzebub] Group Tamashi - Dadadada

[Gosick] Too lazy to look and there's no full version yet anyway.

[Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika] Kalafina - Magia

[Dragon Crisis] Horie Yui - Immoralist

Kuuki's history with anime

You may be surprised, two posts two days in a row, such an achievement considering my tendancy to blog once and then forget it for weeks, or maybe I'll just stop posting tomorrow alltogether, anyway if I'm blogging today it's because of Nopy's project : my history with anime. 
What is it you ask? 


Easy, the project is to make you write about how you discovered anime, when, with which serie and everything that has to do with your personnal history with anime. The interesting thing is, when you read about everyone's story, that everyone shares similarities all over the world but somehow every story is different. 


Anyway, all of that to say hey hello, I'm jumping on the bandwagon but when I was 3 this was airing on TV :

So I am indeed a victime of Sailor Moon as well as millions of other people in the world. In the same TV show aired things such as Hokuto no Ken, City Hunter, Cat's Eyes, Dragon Ball and so on. Unfortunately, when I was 3 the show stopped airing due to political pressure "this is too violent, it shouldn't be broadcast to kids" and stuff like that, but somehow these are still vivid in my memory, 19 years later, they made a great impression on the little girl I was (and no it didn't turn me into a violent girl, or so little ^^)
Later on, throughout my elementary school/middle school/high school years there were some timid attempts at putting it back on TV so I saw Captain Harlock, Captain Tsubasa (somehow, it seems less original when you put these names together), Cardcaptor Sakura, Pokémon, Digimon and Gundam Wing. 
Everytime it made a big impression on me, but well the internet didn't exist and I live(d) in a tiny village, I watched what was on TV, bought a few toys related to them and that stopped there I barely even knew the word manga though somehow I knew about the yakuza (don't question this, ever, I always had an interest for the underground and hidden things in general ^^)


And then came the internet. 
As strange as it may seem I discovered visual kei first, through a CD given away with some rock magazine I bought at the time, I listenned to it and liked the song, looked it up on the internet, found more bands, more songs, thought they were great to study on since I didn't understand the language. 
The more I dug into it, the more I was interested in Japanese culture, started to look at the fashion pics, then discovered the cosplay pics and somehow asked a friend of mine which manga she'd recommend for a newbie to read. 

She said I would love Death Note and that I should definitely read it. I did. I loved it. Marathoned the manga between two studying session for my graduation exam. I was 18 years old. 
After that I got interested and started to read the most popular stuff like Naruto, One Piece and Bleach, well the mandatory things for all manga fans because they were the most accessible things on the French internet. 


Then I discovered OneManga and it marks one really important turning point in my fangirlism. 
It was awesome, there were so many different manga on there, so many genres, and it was so active, I was in awe. 
There was one problem though, English, yeah that was the time I realized the world was much easier for English speakers. My level wasn't horrible but it still took me more than 5min for a single page when I need mere seconds for a page of a French book. I thought, screw it, I'm too lazy to look for all these manga in French, there's a high chance they're not even translated, I'll learn English even if it has to kill me. 
In the next months I read pages and pages, slowly, very slowly, until I gradually became faster and faster. 


One day I was looking for a new manga to read and came across the word "mafia" on a summary, that's the second turning point, this day I discovered Katekyo Hitman Reborn and I didn't even know what the hell that was about. 

I loved it, not a single manga I read before made me fangirl as much as this one did. When I had finished to read everything I thought : NEED MOAR. 
Looked all over the internet, found a message board, they had pretty pics and goodies, and they seemed to have a lot of fun. I had good memories of online communities before it turned into a battle so I joined and tried again. I loved it, then started to watch the anime. 
That was my first involvement in an online anime community, I met people, we recommended stuff to each other and I started to realize that animes were airing weekly. 
At the same moment I had a few penpals and my English was getting better and better, good enough to write it without much thoughts. 


One day, after browsing the internet looking for something I came accross LiveJournal, some stuff were member locked so I joined and joined some communities. That's the third turning point. 
Then I slowly discovered a few more things, got interested in following anime weekly when 07 Ghost started, I was so happy, it was one of the first manga I read on OneManga so I started to dwelve into streaming websites, trying out other on going series. 
In the meantime I started to be more active on LJ, I just didn't follow communities I started to write in there, in English. Started to buy figures, started to buy mangas, discovered the goodness that are seiyuu, made more and more friends from all over the world thanks to anime and progressively became fluent in English and my brain transfered all fandom activities to English. 


At this point in time, nearly 22 years old, I can say my anime addiction lasted all my life, I'm blogging nearly daily on LJ since 1 year and a half, I have so many mangas I can't even count, fandom taught me English, fandom brought me friends I wouldn't have known otherwise and it even recently gave me the push I needed to start writing again. 
Damn, that was quite the long post /shot

Prepublication in France

You may or may not know (or care) but I'm French, as French as one can be (if you except the fact that I do blog in English, am blogging about Japanese things and that half of France think I'm German, indeed ^^).
My point was just to show you a bit of what happens in France in terms of manga publishing, today's topic is : prepublication.

You all know it, but, aside from a few mangas, all of them are published in various magazines before being published in legitimate books. Most popular is of course Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump, but well the purpose of this article is not to tell you how mangas are done, if you want to know about that go read Bakuman.

As I was saying, prepublication magazines which is supposed to be a Japanese thing are starting to produce little babies and spread throughout the world, if I recall correctly there's an American Jump but since I've never got my hands in one I can't talk about that experience, what I can talk about though are French BExBoy and the newest one Akiba Manga.

First, these are the only experiences I know of, at least in France, so yeah, it's still rare. Second, I shouldn't even compare them since they're VERY different. Now you know about let's dive.

I'll start by the nearly 2 years old BExBoy, a "creation" of Asuka

You may have guessed judging from the cover, this one is yaoi, as I don't care much about yaoi I read only when a kind soul lend it to me, which like, happened once in my life.
This one is based on the Japanese BExBoy and it features mangas already published in Japan and translated to French, mostly as a teaser of the future releases of the editor, they publish a few chapter and then if you want to read what's next go buy it. Except for Viewfinder, which is apparently running in the magazine since the very first issue (I'm still wondering how the hell no one ever complained their children are reading this, more often than not there's no special warning or anything and it's fucking kinky, more than most thing, hentai and yuri included, I ever read)
On the other hand this one is really thick, nearly as thick as a Jump, it's definitely worth your money if you're a girl into yaoi that is.

Now the big one, or the most Japanese one as you may say, and this article is already pretty long, well I hope you'll bear with me. This one is called Akiba Manga and has a special website you can find HERE. This one is edited by our own version of Square Enix, meaning they're everywhere, games, magazines, original mangas, translation of existing mangas, music, figures, an anime and now this.

This one is closer to what you can see in Japan, original mangas and then people vote for their favourite manga which will continue and apparently if one is last 4 months in a row it gets cancelled and if it lasts long enough it'll be released in tankobon format. Simple, especially since there's only 7 series, but it also means the chances for something getting cancelled are extremely low.
But I like that, makes the user feel  involved in the process. They also publish photos of the mangaka's desks and interviews on the website, it's totally a marketing strategy but it works.
As for the quality of the mangas themselves, all of them are collaboration between a French story writer and a Japanese mangaka, which I like and dislike at the same time, don't really know how to explain it, but there's something disturbing, like they just asked them to draw to say "Hey it's Japanese buy our magazine" you see what I mean?
Anyway, there's a lot of different genres, well shonen, seinen and shojo (or so they say but well it opens on a suicide scene so I don't really know about this), the drawing styles are all very diversified too (see the website for this) which is something I really appreciate.
Don't really know what to add, the cover is pretty, glossy, not a lot of text, emphasis on the (gorgeous) Hime, they also added a small "manga review" part, half of them dedicated to their publications (not that they're bad, don't misunderstand but well, come again for an objective review), there are articles on Japan too and recipes.

All in all I will continue to read because despite everything I like these mangas and I want to support the idea, if only to get more magazines with more specialized content. And because I'm totally supporting Agent Suicides /shot

[Facts]Beelzebub

Sometimes, as you probably already know it, Japanese come up with weird things in their animes/mangas/games and well in pop culture in general.
I don't catch all references, far from it, but it happens that I'm French and that Japanese apparently love to twist around French language and various other French things.
This season appears to be pretty rich with such occurences so let me start with the one I thought to be the most funny.
The culprit is Beelzebub, Ryuuhei Tamura's Jump serie recently made into an anime. (The name of the serie itself is a reference to mythological stuff but I'm not sure if you're interested in that ^^)

Anyway, as I was saying Beelzebub has a particular character named Alain Delon, have a pic below :

From there, nothing more memorable than the fact it does indeed sound French and it would be forgettable if another fact didn't come in consideration, mainly that Alain Delon exists. In the real world I mean.

And this is how he looks like :

He is/was a pretty popular actor so if you're interested, as usual go check The Wiki article

Winter Season 2011, 1st impression post

Since I'm that lazy you'll have a bundled first impression post, aside from my lazyness the obvious reason is that some shows already have their second episode and at my speed you probably won't have a first impression post until the third episode would air so I don't see any use in that.
Anyway, shall we start?

- Dragon Crisis : Why do I start by that I have no idea because it honestly has been pretty unimpressive and unoriginal. I mean you can do more interesting than a young boy rescuing a young girl who happens to be a dragon, rare treasure his cousin has been dying to discover, and who happens to be, oh so by chance, to be targetted by some evil organization?
It still managed to interest me enough to prompt me to watch the second episode, I mean, it ended with what seemed to be a mad scientist arriving at their appartment in a fucking helicopter, talk about random events.
Thankfully I'm not watching this for the plot, I wasn't expecting anything and I didn't get much so everything is fine.

- Onii-chan etc : Wasn't watching for the plot either, and I wasn't expecting anything, and I was so right. Dropped. Aside from the voice acting there's really nothing to save and I may be a fangirl but even Toyonaga Toshiyuki can't save something with bad music, bad character design, bad animation and bad plot.

- Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica : I honestly was about to drop after the first episode, but I was strong and continued because Kajiura Yuki is my music goddess and Shaft one of my favourite studio. It happens not to be as bad as I thought. I still can't deem it the best anime of the season, definitely not, but I'm at least a bit interested, even if I don't like the character design and the main character annoys me to death, the blonde looks like she's hiding something, thus I'm curious.

- Level E : Something I didn't intend to watch, I'm definitely curious about the alien and the voice acting is good. It has a dark atmosphere and some funny/ridiculous moments.
I can't say whether or not I really did like this, so as a matter of fact I'll have to keep watching to find out.

- Kore wa Zombie desu ka? : Another one I didn't want to watch, I'm fucking glad I did though, don't think I ever laughed that much at an anime, I won't say anything not to spoil the jokes but just go watch it's ridiculous.
There's one thing I fear though, which is the second episode. I'm not sure if they will be able to keep up on that level of crazyness in the long run.
But I sure do hope they do because this first episode was beyond awesome.

- Beelzebub : Another ridiculous thing, pretty fun, and I somehow have a huge crush on the delinquant type of characters, I'm in heaven with this.
For this one my fear is the usual Jump thing, meaning, fucking slow animes and neverending fights. Please do something else.

- Gosick : Led by another one of my music god, Nakagawa Kotaro, I started this. I'm happy I did. It gives a nice, dark atmosphere, the main girl is not annoying, I'll be even ready to call her cute, the main guy on the other seems to be some generic weakling but he's not.
The plot is interesting, it went smoothly from a school setting to a closed-space murder to a ship setting Umineko, in 2 episodes.
I like it quite a lot.

- Starry Sky : Honestly, there's nothing really interesting going on there if you're not a fan of the game, you just get to "know" the characters, watching for the seiyuu anyway so I don't care much, and it's 11 minutes long.

- Hourou Musuko : Was expecting a lot from this, wasn't disappointed, it's a bit confusing at the beginning because all the characters look the same but it goes better really quickly and it has an interesting artstyle.
I'm curious about how it'll continue.

- Fractale : Was curious about this too, I feared some kind of un-understandable psychedelic stuff, yet it's easy to understand.
It feels calm and peaceful, the same kind of feeling you get from Ghibli movies, and yet it also feels like Orwell's 1984, and trigger a case in your brain which actually makes you think about the world we live in and such. A great one. Gotta hand it to NoitaminA to come up with such intellectual stuff.
For now tied with Gosick for the first place in my heart. Though both are really different.

Fall season 2010, final thoughts

This anime blogger should definitely do what she said she would, anyway, I'm too lazy to make a huge long ass post about each one of the Fall season 2010 anime I watched so let's just re-use what I did before and hope my next post won't be in 3 months.
I will do a first impression post for the Winter season though, once I'll have watched the NoitaminA things.

- Togainu no Chi : Eeh, no not really. I mean it was cool to see them move and talk and all but there's nothing else to it (if you're not into staring at Shiki, and even if you are I'm sorry but it's poor).
The animation has been weird all along, thank you for showing the rainy sky during the Shiki vs. Akira fight, thank you for the pinkish fluo blood, some people said the only good thing was the music, I don't think it's bad but I won't say it's enough to save the show.
In the end, thank you for transforming the wonderful seinen I was waiting for into a half assed tragic friendship/love story anime where fights become secondary and focusing on some of the most annoying male main characters ever made.
Next time you want to animate a yaoi game, either focus on the plot and if you really want to put some BL in it, please, go all out instead of imitating a shoujo.

- Tegami Back Reverse : Still on going, I sense some fillers though.

- Shinrei Tantei Yakumo : The last episodes made me forgive everything, leaves room for a second season though and it probably won't happen. Well at least things are resolved from the time being.
The girl in ove is at least not annoying in this, Yakumo is funny to watch but the coolest character has to be detective Gotou.
Guess you can't do anything against the power of experience (read I have a fetish for old men but it's a secret)

- Hyakka Ryoran Samurai Girls : Nice art still, it evolved into something with a plot, a bit complicated and actually less interesting with it. And I don't like the main guy, the fact that all the girls are all over him despite him not doing anything is beyond me.

- Hakuouki II : I think I've been trolled, such an ending was totally unexpected but I think I liked it.
Other than that well, the cheesiness almost made me puke, not to mention slightly OOC Hijikata.

- Bakuman : Still on going, slow as hell, I suggest you watch the anime before reading the manga because the adaptation might be too good.

- Arakawa Under the Bridge x Bridge : AWESOME. Even crazier than the first season. I suggest you watch this if only for the last episode, aka the fight between Sister and Maria, and also to have the chance to hear Takai's OP

- Kami Nomi zo Shiru Sekai : Don't know. Liked bits of it but disliked others, I can't even say what I liked and what I disliked. Will watch the second season anyway

- Kuragehime : I'm in love with this, it's really, really cute and the characters are all adorable, they're adorable because they're weird. I want more of this and I'm definitely going to read the manga.

- Otome Yokai Zakuro : One of the best anime of the season and probably the biggest surprise, a wonderful collection of EDs, a wonderful collection of seiyuu, traditionnal like music, some romance perfectly integrated in the plot. A favourite of mine.

- Panty and Stockings with Garterbelt : I feared the jokes would go down, they didn't. Wonderful ending, the troll like of ending, can't wait for the second season.
Liked the animation, made me laugh, liked the characters, Brief surprised me, Panty and Stockings did too, really loved the music video and the transformation scene is beautiful.
/brb, hunting cosplays

- Star Driver Kagayaki no Takuto : Still on going as well. Plot appears, the rest start to get old after 13 episodes

- Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru : Worth watching if only for the School Festival episode (or you can just check the song) Sometimes gave off some Bakemonogatari vibes but very briefly, forgettable, probably impossible to marathon though

- Oreimo : Surprise there, never intended to watch, was drawn by the plot, was kept by Kuroneko (I have a crush on Kuroneko) and I have to admit that I was curious to see what would Kirino torture her brother with next.

Other things which ended :
- Denyuden : How could this even be considered an ending?
But otherwise really nice, lots of good characters, fun, not a single annoying character, seemingly twisted ones who care, seemingly nice ones twisted and evil, good seiyuus, good plot, nice battles, no really one of my favourite thing

- Shiki : You liked Higurashi? You will like Shiki, except Shiki is much better and waaay easier to understand.
It has some very, very disturbing scenes though and no censorship, at all.
The characters are all interesting, the plot is as well, the only thing I'm wondering now is how they will continue after this.
Guess I'll know when the French releases of the manga will have caught up.

- Nurarihyon no Mago : Typical Jump stuff, meaning neverending battles, but it has Yôkai, good seiyuu and interesting plot. For the next season, just please, faster.

The Full Moon Slightly Chipped - Iwasaki Taku

It was a long struggle with myself but today's edition of Music Week End will NOT be a character song, nothing even sang by a seiyuu, be proud of me, that probably won't happen often.

Today's victim is an extract from Kuroshitsuji II's OST, which is, pardon me for my bluntness, MUCH better than the OST for the first season, though the composer is still Iwasaki Taku. Go figure.

Song is The Full Moon Slightly Chipped, I chose it for the voice, this girl has a FUCKING beautiful voice, and I can't seem to find her name, I NEED to find more songs from her.
And the music is beautifully sad, combination of the two makes me cry. (there's a conspiracy to make me cry these days) Anyway, enjoy my lovelies.

Lovey Dovey Prattle of an evil Boss II

I know I've been away for long, just when I promised myself I wouldn't back away from this blog I did. I'm so sorry.

Well, on the other hand I haven't done much lately, just went out everyday, which is hard on me, I need preparation time and then time to recover and in the end, I do nothing at all during the day.
Then little brother was home, he left me depressed and full of hate for myself and all my inspiration was drained. Should. Not. PAY. ATTENTION.

I went to a lot a of parties too, karaoke and just going out between friends, some of them not turning quite right and I had problems with sleep.

As a result whenever I had a little time I desperately tried to update my fics, which I never did in the end since I had no inspiration left.

Good things happened though, some of the parties were great and funny, I've seen and fangirled with Aka-chan, plus I now own my first Nendoroid, say welcome to Kana-chan aka BRS.

BRS I by ~CiNgLee on deviantART