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.

THE iDOLM@STER SP Producer's Guide

Today is April Fools' but I'm not going to do any joke, because is not a tradition in the Spanish speaking countries (our "prank day" is December 28).

Yesterday I bought THE iDOLM@STER SP Producer's Guide (Enterbrain, 1995 yen).

Since this is my first iM@S guidebook, I can't compare with the previously released ones, but I feel that the contents are a bit lacking...

The first part consist in character profiles, with a nice pic of each girl.

Lovely Takane.

After the description of the game mechanics, the book is divided into each idol.

"Idol upbringing" and "Tension management" sections are only a brief advice for each.

And each girl have a complete list of the Communication events. It doesn't give the correct answers but an explanation of the event. Includes if the event gives an e-mail or not.

For each girl is included a photo with every costume, and includes an accesory list:


At the end there's a couple of interviews, one with iM@S staff and the other with the voice actresses Imai Asami (Chihaya), Nakamura Eriko (Haruka), Shimoda Asami (Ami-Mami), Numakura Manami (Hibiki), Hara Yumi (Takane) and Hasegawa Akiko (Miki).

Tezuka Manga Museum in Takarazuka

Since I'm almost over with my holidays, in the past few days I visited several places that I didn't visited until now: Nara, the Osaka Castle and yesterday I went to Takarazuka.

Takarazuka's main touristic atraction is the Takarazuka Kagekidan, an all-female musical theater with strong yuri overtones because women play both male and female roles.
Sakura Taisen series is heavily influenced by the Takarazuka Revue, as well as several shoujo manga like Ikeda Riyoko's Versailles no Bara and Shoujo Kakumei Utena.

The Takarazuka Grand Theather.

An statue near the Takarazuka Grand Theather entrance representing Oscar and André, from Versailles no Bara.

Cherry blossom on the street to Takarazuka Theather, the Hana no michi.

But the main reason for my visit to Takarazuka was Tezuka Osamu Manga Museum.
Tezuka Osamu is often called the "Father of Anime" and "the God of Manga", so as an anime and manga fan one should, at least once, make a courtesy visit to his museum.

A statue of the Phoenix from the manga Hi no Tori in the entrance.

Details on the lampost.

Concrete handprints and footprints of his most famous characters. In the photo, Atom (Astroboy).

The museum is not as cool as the Ghibli Museum and it's rather small, but I spent a good 3 hours inside.The first floor contained an elaborated reception hall with a Tezuka's self portrait in mosaic on the floor and a stained glass panel with Tezuka's characters in the ceiling. I'm not sure if it was allowed to take photos inside; except for a few places, there was no sign saying that it was prohibited but none of the visitors was taking any, so I sneakly took just a few.

Stained glass panel in the ceiling.

Painted tiles on the floor.

Also in the first floor it's the permanent exhibit, with manuscrits and originals despicting life and work of Tezuka and a screening room displaying a 20 minutes documentary about him.

The basement floor is a little animation workshop oriented toward children, so I briefly looked arround and left.

In the second floor is the temporary exhibition room, right now displaying the early works of Mushi Productions, Tezuka's animation studio, with an exhibit of settings, cels and storyboards for Tetsuwan Atom, Jungle Taitei and Ribbon no Kishi.

There is also a bunch of statues: Leo (almost not seen in the photo), Atom, BlackJack, Sapphire and the pretty much unknown in the west Sharaku and Unico:



The rest of the floor was a book display of Tezuka's first editions books, a little and expensive cafe and an also little and expensive shop.
In the shop I purchased:

A shitajiki with Sapphire from Ribbon no Kishi, Atom aka Astroboy from Tetsuwan Atom and Leo aka Kimba fom Jungle Taitei. Incidentally, those are the only Tezuka's animes that I watched; I watched the first 25 episodes from Tetsuwan Atom (the 2003 remake), and long, long ago I saw both Jungle Taitei and Ribbon no Kishi, but only vaguely recollect.
In the case of Ribbon no Kishi, I recall that the Spanish version had the most bizarre and unfitting ending of all times: an 80's styled band of girls and a retarded kid dancing and singing in an scenario, that can be viewed in YouTube. In spite of that, the song was catchy.

And a keychain. They didn't had the iconic Atom, so I picked Leo from Jungle Taitei because we share the same name.

Sadamoto's Carmine

Yesterday I received Carmine, the latest artbook of Sadamoto Yoshiyuki.

When was announced, I decided to not purchase it because was way too expensive (13,000 yen) for the little extras that offered: an outer case; a cd with the pics of the book; 2 posters of Rei and Asuka; 2 reprint pictures and Sadamoto’s talks with Hosoda Mamoru (director of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars), Tsurumaki Kazuya (director of FLCL and Top Wo Nerae 2) and Anno Hideaki (director of Evangelion).

When I read in EvaGeeks that this limited edition included the contents from the previously released artbooks of Sadamoto, I hurried to order it on Amazon.co.jp.

To afford that step price, I canceled my preorders on Rei & Asuka Maid version by Kotobukiya (;_;) but the worst of it is that Carmine doesn't contains his previous artbooks and was just a misunderstanding from EvaGeeks people...
It was odd that the official page didn't said anything about any compilation, but when I read that info I taked it as true because that would explain that extremely pricey tag...

The book itself is nice. Is the 3rd atrbook by Sadamoto and 10 years had passed since the last one was released.
The first one was called Alpha, was released in 1993 and was focused in his main work at the moment, Fushigi no Umi no Nadia. Also it was my first purchase on-line.
The second one was Der Mond, released just in the popularity peak of Shin Seiki Evangelion, in 1999.

This book contains his main illustrations for Evangelion (mostly the DVDs covers and the color pages from the manga from volume 5 onwards), the promotional material for The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars, the covers for the .hack games (both the first series and G.U.) and his works for the rest of Gainax productions (FLCL, Top Wo Nerae 2 and just 2 pics for Fushigi no Umi no Nadia). There's a total of 102 pictures.

Since the artbook came with a CD with the pics, I can upload some of it without taking crappy photos.





I'm happy with the artbook because Sadamoto is my favorite character designer since 1993, but the problem with the book are the "extra" contents. Let's see:

-Hard cover and outer case. Pointless addition. And since I have space problems both here and in Spain, I rather prefer a softcover version...

- 30 pages of Sadamoto’s talks. Again pretty much pointless, since I'm buying an artbook and not a magazine. More useless if you don't even understand Japanese

-2 reprint pictures. Sounds cool, but are just 2 illustrations from the book printed on card stock. Again, pointless.

-A cd containing the pics of the book. More useful than the previous ones.

-2 posters of Rei and Asuka. This is the best extra, but even with it, it doesn't explain the over-priced set. I can't take pictures of them because I want to keep sealed until my arrival at Spain (to make sure that they don't bend during the trip) so I put a pic taken from Eva Kinkyuu News blog:
Carmine will be released as a "normal edition" later this year for about 3,000 yen, so I can't recommend this "limited edition" even if you are a hardcore collector like me, because 10,000 yen are wasted...

Chara☆Mel 8 & MELTY BLOOD Guidebook

Yesterday I purchased Chara☆Mel magazine and MELTY BLOOD Actress Again Kouryaku Guide.


I purchased Chara☆Mel because the extra dvd contained a CANAAN preview, but it just contains a few seconds of previously unseen material. I uploaded it on YouTube:

The magazine contains a few pages with info about it. Is scheduled to air this summer.

There's also a few pages for Idolmaster SP, specifically Hibiki.


Until today, I bought every single MELTY BLOOD Guide Book released, mostly for the in-game cuts than the strategic/movelist part.
I was hoping for Dust of Osiris (the new final boss) full body pics and dialogue portraits, but her cuts are missing. I supose they are waiting to release in another guidebook (Ichijinsha released 3 different guidebooks for Act Cadenza...)

At least it have all the endings:

Idolm@ster Break! Volume 1

As I said in the March 4 entry, I wanted to buy the limited edition of the manga Idolm@ster Break! by Fujima Takuya because it contained download contents codes for iM@S SP, but at least in Kyoto, was already sold out when I tried to buy it in the release day.

Yesterday I received the copy that I purchased using Yahoo! Auctions + Shopping Mall Japan (and spending way too much in the process).

The extras were another Weiβ Schwarz card and two DLC cards: Blue Cross Pure (a Cute&Girly type dress) and Dakko Neko (a hand accesory). In the photo Azusa is wearing both, but is not really visible (is hard to take a picture of a moving tiny screen...).

The story is the stereotypical fanservice harem story: random 16-old-guy must work surrounded by girls of about his age.
Fujima is also the author of the manga version of Negima!? Neo, the spin-off of Akamatsu Ken's Mahou Sensei Negima and both the setting and the drawing style reminds me a lot of the only Akamatsu's manga that I read, Love Hina.
I expected a far worse manga, but I think is good enough to purchase the second volume when available.

The main cast. Ami & Mami, Azusa, Ritsuko and Makoto show up only in the extra 4-koma, joking about their absence in the manga.
The rival idols Hibiki and Takane appear in the last panel of the manga, so they will appear a lot in the next volume.

Iori playing her tsundere part.

Random page. The girls are wearing the new SP casual wear.

Now I'm playing iM@S only about an hour each day because I'm studying for the Japanese placement test that I'm having on April 3 at the university. My holidays are almost over ;_;