Christmas presents

Just a brief entry to list my X'mas presents: the Studio Ghibli movies Tonari No Totoro and Gake No Ue No Ponyo.

I'm a big fan of Ghibli movies, but for some reason their dvd releases in Spain have been troublesome (for example Totoro was released this month in dvd format for the first time).

When I was in Japan in 2007, I visited both their studio, located in Koganei, and their famous museum in Mitaka:

Ghibli Studio

Ghibli Museum

Comiket 76 coverage - Day 2

The second day was still very female oriented, but with some stuff like Touhou and Umineko that is popular among males as well.
Like the previous day, I woke up at 4 AM to take the first Yurikamome train and started the queue at 5:50.

The guy in front of me was wearing a Yuyuko hat. A lot of people was wearing Touhou related products...

First of all, I went to the corridor with the circles doing Capcom games stuff. I have a weak spot for old school Capcom games, specially their 2D fighting games.

potsu (circle Shouyu) works. I bought all the doujinshi that she had available; the older releases Ai Wa Makai Wo Sukue, Kurayami Bijin, Makai Tou No Meikyuu, Aoiki, Kairo Kouri, the new release With Floss Silk and a Morrigan mobile phone cleaner.

Random page in With Floss Silk.

I discovered her works when by chance I visited her blog, and I liked her style a lot (specially the colored ones). She is focused in Vampire/Darkstalkers series, specially Morrigan and Jedah. I wanted to visit her booth also in Comiket 75, but I was unable because Shiki bath towel was sold out when I arrived in the first day and I did again the queue in the second day.

Tetsu from circle Kimuchi works: Cho Rakugaki 2009 Haru released in the past Comic 1 and the new release Cho Rakugaki 2009 Natsu.

Random page in Cho Rakuragi 2009 Natsu.

Another author that I discovered by chance when I visited his blog. He is focused in Capcom games with special predilection with Ingrid, but he also draws from several series like Touhou, Culdcept or even TYPE-MOON. His drawing are truly gorgeous, but sadly his doujinshi are just a compilation of drawings from his blog... Again, I wanted to visit his booth in Comiket 75 but I was unable to do it.

My next stop was in the East halls 1-2-3 zone. It was so massively crowded with Touhou fans that the people in the horizontal and vertical corridors were making turns in order to move... After 15 minutes of struggle I managed to arrive at Black Sheep Symphony booth. There I greeted EvoSpace that was alone at that moment and I bought:

A shooting doujin game with TYPE-MOON characters, Type-A.

Then I went all the way to the commercial booths and I stood in the queue of Rondo Robe, that I skipped in the previous day because it was very crowded. After about an hour, I managed to buy the only thing that I wanted:

A casual Saber clear file and a telephone card.

After that I wanted to talk again with EvoSpace, but I was scared to return to the Hell on Earth that was the doujin game circles (sorry Evo, I really wanted to talk with you again!) so I headed to the hostal to recuperate.

In the train, I managed to take a few pics of the giant 1/1 Gundam that is displayed in Odaiba:

Not so great photo, but I'm not a Gundam fan anyways.

Comiket 76 coverage - Day 0

Sorry for the lack of updates. Unpackaging my stuff is taking way more time than I expected and I'm slowly getting used to my "normal" life.

I'll begin with my Comic Market 76 coverage with a day 0, the day I left Kyoto and arrived to Tokyo.

The first thing I did once in Tokyo is visit TYPE-MOON headquarters located in Asakusabashi (a district near Akihabara).
Is not a well known fact, but the official name as a company is not "TYPE-MOON" but "Notes". For example, in the Kara No Kyoukai movies they appear as Notes in the credits.

Notes logo in the Kara No Kyoukai DVDs

And the building is this:

Notes is located in the non-labeled windows.

Is a bit anticlimactic, but after my visits to Gainax Studios in Koganei (Tokyo) and Leaf/Aquaplus main HQ in Yodogawa (Osaka), I somewhat expected something like this.

After that, I went to Akihabara. Since it was the previous day to the Comiket, it was crowed with people from all over Japan that comes to Tokyo for the Comic Market and takes the opportunity to visit Akihabara.

In K-Books I bought:

Emiya #0 was released in the Comiket 66 and sold in the Rondo Robe booth (Geneon Entertainment). The CD contains 13 songs from the Fate anime, including the remix of EMIYA that gives the name to the album.

It also contains a T-shirt (in the pic appears the rear side, in the front it only says "Unlimited Blade Works").

Die Lorelei was released also by Rondo Robe in the Comiket 67. The CD contains 4 songs; Die Lorelei (Illya's theme song), Elfe, Fever (Taiga's theme song) and the instrumental version of Memory (Saber's theme song).

It also contains 2 stickers and a handkerchief.

And at the end I fell to the dark side and bought Weiß Schwarz trading cards.
I bought a THE IDOLM@STER Trial Deck and 2 packs of Fate/stay night Booster Pack:


Weiß Schwarz, unlike Lycèe, uses mostly official art for the cards and that was a big plus for me. The rules are pretty easy, and is also easy to make an effective deck without much effort.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann - Lagann Hen

Yesterday the Aoi matsuri was held, one of the main festivals in Kyoto.
I went directly after classes to Kamigamo-jinja, were the parade ends, but it was already late when I left, I did a train exchange in Kawaramachi and a 40 minutes of walk... At the end I arrived just in time for the closing moments:

After that, I went to a Japanese theather for the first time, to see the movie Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann - Lagann Hen.


Contrary to popular belief, anime is not a popular genre in Japan, and every anime except the main stream ones (One Piece, Meitantei Conan...) are considered way too otaku-ish. That is why most of the anime is airing between 11 P.M. and 4 A.M, because is not targeted toward "normal people".
Anyway, what I wanted to say is that Gurren Lagann is airing in only one cinema in Kyoto, and where only 14 persons, myself included, watching the movie...

With the trailers you can see that you are labeled as a geek for watching this movie: the new Evangelion movie, Summer Wars (directed by Hosoda with designs of Sadamoto), the new Star Trek movie and Transformers 2.

When you purchase the ticket, they give you a Stamp Card, and if you get stamped 3 times they give you a random film strip from the movie. It sounds tempting, but you must go to the cinema 3 times (1,500 yen each, and this being the "reducted fee" for university students) and the chances of getting a lousy strip are high (for the record, the strip that I got from the limited Evangelion Movie dvd was from this scene).


The movie itself was gorgeous. The EPICness in the series was high, but in the movie reaches another whole level. Unlike the previous film, fewer scenes are directly recycled from the TV series. There are several changes in the plot, some of them quite important.

It was really great and the last 30 minutes of the movie were one of the most memorable moments in anime history.


And now a few screenshots from the movie. HEAVY SPOILERS AHEAD!!!:

In the movie Simon sees the transformation of Nia just after this scene.

Nia got several ecchi poses here and there, and even clearly visible nipples at one point.

EDIT: Here, I found a pic of it.

Dai-Gurren Dan members before the last battle.

Kamina and Kittan in the "awakening of the dream" part. The Dai-Gurren Dan members survives the battle, but Kittan still dies.

For the last battle, almost every Gurren Dan member gets his/her own Tengen Toppa and shows it in a minute of glory. In the pic is Nia's Tengen Toppa Sorubaania (ソルバーニア), that I think the correct romanized name is Solvernia.

Gurren Lagann last form, the bigger-than-ever Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, that resembles a blue Kamina with red cape. To get an idea of the size, those white dots in the background are galaxies.

Random Japan

On Friday I began with the classes, so the blog wouldn't be updated very often until I get the dynamics of the classes again.
As expected, I ended in the level 3 group. The main focus of this level is speech skills and vocabulary, and we will have a vocabulary test of about 20 new words daily... in the level 2 we had test every 3 days so is quite an increase.

Anyways, since I don't have anything new to write about, I'll upload a few random pictures that I took during the past 7 months:

Iga region of Mie prefecture, a very rural place.

Shop selling tanuki statues, also in Iga.

The Glico man in Ebisubashi bridge, Osaka.

Osaka Castle.

Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion, in Kyoto.

The Kyoto Tower.

Maruyama Park, Kyoto.

Togetsukyou bridge in Arashiyama, Kyoto.

Another pic in Arashiyama.

Nara Park, with wild deers freely roaming around.

Toudaiji Temple in Nara.

Inside is the Daibutsu, a 15 meters tall statue of Buddha.

Purchases in Den Den Town

Pretty busy week.
Last Friday I had the placement test, on Saturday I went to Hiroshima (photos of the trip in a future post... or not) and today I went to view cherry blossom in the most famous spot in Kyoto, the Philosoher's walk.


On Thursday I went to Osaka with a fellow exchange student from the university. It was his first time in Osaka, so I showed him the otaku shops of Nipponbashi area.
While talking with him, he remarked that I indistinctively use "Nipponbashi", "Den Den Town" and "OtaRoad" to refer to pretty much the same area, but nitpicking the matter, that's not true.

"Nipponbashi" is the name of the bridge that crosses the Doutombori. Going south, down Sakai-Suji street, you find "Den Den Town" (electric town) from Nipponbashi 3-chome through 6-chome. There's a few otaku shops there (Gundam's, VOLKS Showroom, the two shops of K-Books, Animate, the main branch shops of Super Position...) and the rest are electronic shops and videogames shops like Super Potato Osaka.
"Ota Road" is the parallel street at the west side of DenDen, and is almost totally focused to hobby related stores: Melonbooks, Kotobukiya Shop, Gamers, Toranoana... and a few maid cafes.

First we went to Mandarake Grand Chaos, located in America-mura (NW from Nipponbashi).
I went to the buy-back counter to sell some doujinshi that I brought from Spain. Sometimes I buy from Yahoo! Auctions doujinshi lots, and among the stuff there are things that I had already bought. I sold 7 doujinshi (one from King Revolver, one from Crazy Clover Club and the rest from Shoujo Hyouhon, one of them containing a Takeuchi collaboration), Tsukihime Shiryoushuu (most known as White Book) and Maikaze's Touhou anime. I earned 9,800 yen, most of it coming from Touhou dvd (6,000 yen) and Tsukihime White Book (2,500 yen).

I purchased a Fate/stay night shitajiki (for 105 yen) and Ok Zwei, a Mai-HiME doujinshi from circle Twinzito that contains a collaboration by Kikuta from circle King Revolver. I think that now I'm not missing anything from him, but everytime I say this, an obscure and hard to find collaboration appears...


After that we went to OtaRoad, stopping at several shops. In Toranoana I bought:

Milk Hunters 5 by circle KuroYuki. Milk Hunters is a series of doujinshi based in the first and second seasons of Pretty Cure, where Nagisa, Honoka and Hikari are abused by a fat and ugly otaku...
I have the Milk Hunters 1-4 compilation, but the 5 and 6 seems very hard to find.

In Melonbooks building, after a brief checking on the 1st floor, we went to the second floor, that usually avoid because is the girls section, but to my surprise now a Lashinbang shop was opened there! I didn't check it all because we were short of time, but in my next trip to Osaka I want to buy a couple of goods there. I purchased Kara no Kyoukai Gengashuu Kessaku Sen 1 for 10,000 yen.

It was very expensive for a 2nd hand book, but since it was a C74 exclusive is very hard to find (only 1,000 were made). Nodaways, I was expecting to pay that much for it in Yahoo! Auctions, so it was a good purchase since I'm avoiding proxy bidder fees.
It contains key animations from the first 3 Kara no Kyoukai movies, but unlike the regular books (that I pictured in the C75 loot entry), this book is in full color.


Our last stop was K-Books. I bought:

Street Fighter Artworks Ha. Released a few days ago to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Street Fighter series. Contents wise, is similar to the previous Eternal Challenge (that commemorated the 15th anniversary), but with the new illustrations of the past five years.
Unlike previous books, is sorted by artist and not by games.

Akiman, one of the legends from Capcom's earlier period. Sadly, he left in 2003.

Bengus, now known as CRMK. The guy who defined the main Street Fighter II cast and created from scratch the Darkstalkers/Vampire cast. Until he left in 2006, he was my favourite artist at Capcom.

Nishimura Kinu. When Bengus left, she became my favourite.

Shinkiro. Formerly an SNK employee, I didn't got used yet to seeing his works with Capcom label.

Edayan. Sometimes I find some of his drawings a bit ugly, specially the girl's noses, but most of the time his works are great.

Ikeno. I don't like his "realistic style", but is the main one in SFIV... I prefer his cartoonish style better (like the pics in the photo).


Bonus photo. Capcom Main HQ, located in Osaka. Was my first stop in my first trip to Osaka.