tiring

I think this week I've been continuing on with the whole being a bit tired from last week.

I was gallivanting around all over the shop last week, so it's hardly surprising, I guess. I have done a few things - most notably I've been working on a new wallpaper. It's nothing hugely complicated or clever - I'm basically just vectoring out a to love-ru scan - but it's been nice to work on a wall proper again. Hopefully I'll get a chance to finish it this weekend.

I've also been reading a Terry Pratchett book called 'Thud!'. I started reading it on the train goign up and coming back from the thing last Friday (I like to read on the train, but reading manga gets you funny looks).

It's a pretty good one - there have been a few of his recently that haven't quite hit the spot, but this one was good. The only sort of down-side to it is that it's another Sam Vimes and City Watch book. Which isn't to say I don't like his Sam Vimes and the Watch books - I liked this one - but I've been wishing he'd focus a bit more on some other stuff. A lot of the recent books seem to be all about the watch.

One of the problems of this is that Sam hates magic, so some Pratchett's best characters (the witches and wizards) are deliberately side-lined, if not excluded all together.

Still, this one was good and I decided to go ahead and buy the other more recent ones I'd been holding back on... though not until I make a significant dent in my pile of unread books.

Did a little scanning last night and watch one of the shows I have left over from the last season. I also have one I watched last week that I forgot to mention on the old blog:

• Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu - very good. I really wasn't expecting much of this - the images I'd seen for it in the magazines had all suggested it a fan-service heavy rom-com, but it turned out it was a bit more than that. The idea is that the girl in it is a school 'idol', but really she's a nerdy otaku and the male lead accidentally finds this out. Now that could have gone either way, but for the most part it's actually quite good, although there's a couple of elements I'm not sure about. But it's certainly better than I was expecting.
  
• Mahō Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora - awesome. Now this one was also a bit of a surprise. I'd seen some images from it and I was really not looking forward to it because of the style. It has almost photo-realistic backgrounds - I'm not sure f that's just because they've been painted that way or they've processed actual photos. Now, I'm really not a big fan of animation laid over the top of photos, but once I'd kinda adjusted to the style what was revealed was a lovely story underneath. If I was to say it had a sort of studio Ghibli feel to it I think you'll know what I mean.
  

Megadeth

I've been listening to a lot of Megadeth recently.

This has kinda been brought about by a "grand project" I've been attempting (more on that later), the upshot of which has meant I've had all my Megadeth CD on my MP3 player, and hence can listen at work.

I used to be really into music, back when I was in A-level and at University. Interestingly it's another demonstration of how I'm slightly obsessive. I'd buy lots of CDs from new bands and obscure bands and stuff.

My main music of choice was heavy metal - specifically thrash or speed metal, by bands like Metallica and Slayer. My favourite was always Megadeth, though. I still think Countdown to Extinction is the greatest album ever made.

The reason I kinda stopped was a triple whammy.

Firstly, once I graduated Uni my interest just generally faded. My peers were less into music than I was, so there were fewer people to talk about it with.

Second, I got back into anime and manga in a big way, so a heck of a lot of my time was spent watching and reading that. Plus of course, my money went on buying then, rather than CD.

But the other key part was that Megadeth ceased to be. My favourite band was no more, and my interest kinda evaporated with them.

The reason they stopped was that Dave Mustaine (Megadeth has always been his band) had a severe arm injury and the prognosis was that he would never play again.

However, unknown to me, as I wasn't really paying attention any more was that Dave got better and eventually several years later he released a new Megadeth album.

Now, whilst I wouldn't say I was really back into music as such I have been rediscovering Megadeth, as well as familiarising myself with their newer albums, and I've really been enjoying it.

Drowning in Telly

I've been a bit indiscriminate with my telly watching lately.

I was trying to hold back and be a bit more selective, but I've kinda been watching a random crap. Unfortunately, this also means I'm getting a sizeable back-log of unwatched shows. There are a good couple of shows I've got sat on the PVR waiting to be finished.

But on top of that I know at the end of this month Lost season 4 will be turning up (on DVD - I don't have satellite), plus I'm pretty sure the last season of Battlestar Galactica is knocking about sometime soon.

Lost season 4 will be one of those things that always show me up as a completely lazy bastard. When it arrives I'll almost certainly sit and watch it almost non-stop. It shows that, if I really wanted to, I could plough through all my back-logs of DVDs, manga, books, games, etc, it's just that I tend to distract myself with rubbish and do things half-arsed.

But then every so often something like Lost turns up and I go through it solidly with total dedication until it's finished - probably in less than a week. So if I can do that with Lost, why don't I do it with other stuff? As I say, it's because I'm a lazy bugger.

I've not watched any of the new Battlestar yet, but I've heard good things, so I thought I should check it out. Unfortunately I think that means I need to get through 4 seasons, a mini-series and a couple of films, I think. It's a lot of stuff, especially when I've got loads of other telly stuff to watch.

I think I'm going to have to rationalise a bit. Plus I know some things are coming to an end. For example, both the F1 and MotoGP seasons must be due to end soon, plus there's some short documentary things that are near the end.

The trick is to not start anything new.

mags, hair and shopping

This month's newtype, animage and animedia turned up yesterday.

Two of them - newtype and animage - are absolutely dripping with pictures from the new season of shows and I'm very impressed. The other, animedia, is actually kinda rubbish. I sometimes wonder why I keep buying it - it's always very poor in terms of scans. But then it's not like it's reprinting other scans - if I didn't get it I wouldn't see those images. Still, as the anime magazines go, it's definitely the worst one I get.

I'm in desperate need of a haircut - my hair is really rather long and I'm starting to get that uncomfortable sweaty thing I get when it gets this long. Of course that's also a factor of being morbidly obese, but that's no reason not to avoid a haircut.

Looks like I'll have a busy w/end as I'll have to get a haircut and go shopping on top of a bunch of stuff I've got to do anyway.

I should also start hoarding for Christmas. I know chrimbalo is a long way away, but I like to get stuff like fozen food, tins and pasta all hoarded up well in advance, because shopping around Christmas can be such a nightmare.

I remember once going to Sainsburys to get some food one Christmas and the queues were so long I didn't get to the front of queue before my lunch ended. I ended up having to buy some manky sarnis at the petrol station on the way home :/. So now I like to stock up the freezer and cupboards well in advance.

lazy weekend

Well I virtually did bugger all this last weekend - only the "life stuff" I can't get away without doing, like changing the sheets and putting the recycling out.

I just couldn't really be arsed - last week was so intense with visiting Dad, having to do a whole bid in three days and then going to the SPSS thing on Friday, I just felt like blowing the entire w/end on nothing in particular.

So what did I do with my time? I buggered about with Civ3... I know, I really shouldn't have as I've kinda rekindled my interest, but I didn't want to do anything that needed me to think particularly hard. By which I mean I didn't want to do anything 'new', like have to learn a new game or pay particular attention to something. With Civ3 I can almost put my brain on auto-pilot.

Speaking of the SPSS thing it was actually okay. I mean, it wasn't really hugely useful but then it wasn't utterly useless either. Bloody uncomfortable seats though. And they tried to cram way too much in - it ended very late.

giving it the hard sell

I've got to go to a thing tomorrow and basically it's going to be a company spending all day giving me the hard sell - as in trying to make me buy their product.

I'd really rather not go, but the problem is I don't want to seem overly negative. It's free and I think my boss thinks it's actually like a mini-course or something. I don't want to have that thing of me just pessimistically going "I don't want to go, it'll be rubbish." I worry about doing that as in I'm not a "team player" or something.

I mean, it may be useful, maybe I am being overly negative, but I've a feeling it won't be much fun. It also seems like a rather long day. It's up in London so I have to put up with the train journeys, so I doubt it'll really be any shorter than my normal work day.

some new artbooks

I know I kinda promised I wasn't gonna buy any more artbooks until I'd scanned the ones I've got, but I couldn't resist, I'm afraid.

One of the things I got was the latest edition of megami deluxe (volume 11 I think it is). It's the usual collection of cute girls from recent megami posters, with a few clean animedia spreads thrown in for good measure. It'll take the usual age to scan, I'm sure :/.

The other two books are a bit more interesting - they're both for Toshihiro Kawamoto, who was the character designer for things like Cowboy BeBop and Golden Boy. They're retrospective books on his career - each covers 10 years, from memory, and they're quite interesting.

It's one of those times I wish I could read Japanese as the commentary seems like it would be quite interesting. One of the big surprises for me was how much Gundam stuff he did in his early career.

I'm considering not scanning these books - they're really quite nice, thick books, of a high quality and it would be a shame to de-bind them. Also, most of the stuff in them is not big spreads, and it's almost a "sampler" book. Some shows have only one or two images.

I've a strong feeling I'll leave them as-is.

I also received the latest issue of normal megami while I was away. There's some lovely posters in it, so I'll need to scan that too.

I did some scanning last night, actually. I'm into the books that have a lot of pics in them. Last night was the Nagasarete Airantou artbook, and even though I scanned nearly 50 pages I only got half way through the book, so I'll finish it off tonight, I hope.

I also watched some fansubs while I scanned of course:

• World Destruction - okay. I gotta say this didn't really do much for me. I mean, it wasn't actively bad or anything, it's just it felt a little tired and cliched. It appears to be based on a sega video game property, so maybe that had some impact, but it's a show I had little interest in.

return of the tris

Well now, it's been a while since I posted on here. As mentioned that's because I've been away on holiday--I went down to Devon to visit my Dad, as it was his birthday last week.

It was a pretty expensive w/end all things considered. My new car has really great fuel economy. I can get around 50 miles per gallon if I "eco-drive" it, but of course if you're having to do around 400 miles, that still means you're going to use about 8 gallons, which is a full tank of petrol and so costs the best part of £40 or so :/.

Then there's eating on the road - unless you pack a lunch, which I can never be arsed to do, you'll inevitably have to get something to eat (the journey is the best part of 4 hours) and prices in rest stops are never cheap - I must have spent about £10, total.

Then there's the fact it's his birthday, so I spent about £35 or so on gifts. Plus I paid for a meal at the local restauranty-pub place, which was about £40.

So, all things considered that's about £125. Not the cheapest of week-ends :/.

And speaking of expensive, I've come back and seen some annoying news this morning. I've been buying the individual volumes for ADV's releases of Welcome to NHK and Red Garden.

However, a few months back, ADV essentially went tits-up. They've not actually folded, but, from what I've read, what happened was they made a dodgy move with a backer/investor in Japan. That all fell through and (for some reason) they lost all of the titles they'd licensed during that period.

Which included NHK and Red Garden.

But then, Funimation swooped to the rescue, picking up the licenses. Now it's taken them a while to catch up with stuff (they also picked up distribution of all the Geneon titles) and the announcement they've made is that they're releasing both series as collected volumes.

I must admit I was kinda expecting that as most all of the stuff they've released that they picked up has been in the form of collected volumes (sometimes as "part 1" and "part 2" sometimes as the full series) but it doesn't make it any less annoying.

I wouldn't mind so much if either series had only been at the 1 or 2 volume stage, but both were 1 volume away from completion. Factor into that the fact that the number of eps per disk always starts higher and then reduces and it means that in order to get the last 3 or 4 eps I have to not only buy several disks I've already got, but I have to pay a huge whack for just those last few eps.

It's pretty annoying, and pretty expensive too.

birthdays and long week-end

It's my Dad's birthday tomorrow, so I'm going down to visit him this w/end.

He lives in Devon and I live in Hampshire, so it's a good trek--about 3 or 4 hours, traffic depending.

I'm actually going down on Saturday and coming back on Monday, but I'm taking Thursday and Friday off as well so that I can get some personal stuff done as well.

It probably means the bloggage won't get any updates for a while, as I tend to write these first thing at work. So I'll see you next week (I dunno who I'm talking too--nobody actually reads this :/).

my little angel

Well, I finished that re-cg I was working on.

You can find the finished product over at AP here. It's not a whole lot different to the preview I posted in the previous blog, mainly because I got sick of doing the wings.

I think it's probably my best vector work ever. I've used every technique I have at my command to make it and I think the results are spectacular.

The only problem is I'm not sure I can do it justice in a wall. I had a few ideas, but I dunno, I think I may wimp out of actually walling it :(. What makes this a special shame is that I very much doubt anyone else will wall it either :(.

I made an appeal for someone to wall it in the notes on the AP page and I'm effectively repeating that appeal here, I guess. I'd love someone to wall it. I can also make a wingless version available if you want to make your own wings in your wall--just give me a shout over at AP.

Eventually the vector will go up on my own site of course, but that won't be for a while.

And speaking of my own sites I uploaded the last of the previous batch of updates this last w/end. It was a review of X--ostensibly the anime, but also the manga effectively. Check it out here.

I think I mentioned it before on the blog. I struggle with CLAMP stuff and I sometimes fear it's because I'm homophobic on some level. I don't think I am, but, for some reason I can never pin down, I never really quite like CLAMP's stuff. I tend to assume this is because of their story-telling, but I dunno, everyone else seems to love their stuff, so I wonder if there's not something more to it

Well, that was surprisingly deep for the old blog :/.

I've been working on some new site updates - I've got a bunch of reviews done as I mentioned before, but I like to keep things a bit more varied, which is where things like the vectors and walls come in. It should basically mean my sites will be updated into the New Year at least.

will it never end?

Well, I was a particularly good little boy this w/end and I did a shed load of scanning.

In fact, I actually did a count at the end of Sunday and I'd done a total of 189 scans. This was across 5 artbooks... One of which actually reminded me why the whole scanning thing had pretty much ground to a halt: of those 189 scans, it must have had about 89 of them. In one artbook.

I mean, that's great--everyone who buys artbooks loves it when they're jam-packed with pretty colour pictures--but it also kinda makes the book feel like a chore to scan. I mean, with a book like that, you can be going at it for 2 or 3 hours and then think to yourself "How am I doing? I must be nearly finished." Then you count up how many scans you've done and got left and you find you're only half way through :/.

Anyway, the good news is that the artbook pile is at least 1/3rd, if not half as big as it used to be.

I've been continuing in my game of anime catch-up while I've been scanning. I'm hopeful that if I can stick with the scanning during the next few weeks I can clear the entire backlog of series before the new (October) season's fansubs really get going.

This w/end I watched:

• Special A - very good. Another from the plethora of shoujo manga adaptations that seem to have exploded forth this season. But this one is distinctly different. I mean, it's got pretty-boy style art and the premise is daft, like most shoujo stuff, but this is more of a traditional romance job. And I was actually quite impressed. It's not really new or original as such--I've seen just about everything here before--but it's got gusto and puts a nice spin on the whole scenario. And it's pretty funny too.
  
• Tetsuwan Birdy Decode - okay/good. It's got an interesting premise, I'll give it that. And it does generally feel like it has the potential to be quite good--the bad-guys are quite interesting, especially. But I dunno, it just felt like it lacked something. I think maybe it's because the whole Birdy character wasn't really explored much at all. I only watched my usual 3 eps and maybe it gets a bit more involved later, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.
  
• Koihime†Musou - okay. It's basically the same idea as ikki tousen--taking the whole "romance of the three (four?) kingdoms" thing and replacing the characters with hot chicks. And hot chicks means boobs, jiggling and lots of baths, obviously. Yes, it's a fan-service show, as you can guess. I dunno--it didn't really do much for me other than the t&a, though.
  
• Natsume Yuujin-chou - awesome. Yujin-chou means "book of friends;" the friends in question being ayakashi, which are like spirits. It's based around that whole thing of knowing someone's "true name" gives you power over them. This was really very good indeed--it's the type of show that only anime does. Partly that's because it's routed in Eastern mystic traditions like I say, but also because it baulks all sorts of traditional story-telling structures and just does its own thing.
  

Maybe I've gone soft recently, but the above shows and a few others recently have kinda restored my faith in anime a bit. I mean, I never really lost my faith, but a little while ago we had Gurren Lagann and Code Geass in quick succession and I dunno, everything looked a little less good (and, possibly more importantly, like hoary old retreads) by comparison.

These shows have confirmed that they can still produce stuff that's interesting and different.

nody blackered

I'm bloody knackered.

Couple of nights ago I had a really broken sleep--it took me ages to get to sleep and then I was suddenly wide awake at 4'o'clock and I couldn't get back to sleep. I probably only got about 4 hours sleep, which is no where near enough. I need a good 7-8 hours a night and getting less really fucks me up for a good couple of days after.

I've not been helping myself, though. There's been a bit of a situation at work where I've not been able to start a piece of work that really needs to be done as soon as possible. As such, I've been doing all this prep work so that it's "ready to go" and it's been driving me a bit potty, tbh--I keep working myself round in loops :/.

I've also been getting really stuck into this new vector I've been working on. It's almost become an obsession and is really eating away what little spare time I have. But I'm literally only a few tweaks away from completing it. Here's a preview:



I've also been doing some scanning of a couple of artbooks (during the week--I know!) though they were deliberately ones with only a couple of good pics. I also sampled another of the new anime shows:

• Sekirei - goodish. I struggled a little with deciding whether I liked this or not. It's got a huge heap-load of fan-service, which is good, animation was pretty good too, but--and I feel weird when I have to say this about a fan-service show--the plot really needed to get a shift on. One of those I'd probably buy but then sell on.

The only plan I have for the weekend are to get my Dad a b'day present and card, as it's his birthday next week. I'll probably do some more scanning, though, as I feel a need to lift that particular "burden" from my shoulders.

i hate when that happens

I think I mentioned a little while back that I was starting to feel the old walling bug gripping me again.

I've been working on a Soul Eater wall after I found the series to me quite enjoyable the other week. It seemed to have some reasonable scans that I got some ideas for.

I've not really been experiencing wallers block--it's not so much that I've been stuck for ideas, it's more like the ideas I've been having have been way beyond my ability. Previously I'd probably have launched into them anyway, struggled for months and than been disappointed with the outcome.

Recently I've just been not starting.

But anyway, I saw some SE scans, got some ideas and started. I actually started with a simple one where I was basically just recreating the scan, just to get into the swing of things.

And someone's beaten me to the punch :(.

Basically, this wall by halcyontwilight is what I've been working on.

I mean, mine's different, but I've been doing the same idea--recreated the scan.

It kinda takes the momentum out of me continuing. I mean, one of the reasons I've often picked unpopular series to wall is because I basically know that no-one else will use the scan before me.

I'm not actually a very talented artist and have only a few skills when it comes to photoshop, so I'm very slow. That makes walling popular series dangerous, as there's a good chance someone will use the scan first.

Of course that doesn't stop me using it; it's just I always like to feel there's something exclusive or individual about my walls. I mean, heck, they're never actually any good, so at the least they can be unique on some level.

Ah well, I'll guess I'll finish it, but it's just annoying. Especially when the other person did such a good job :/.

rise of the wooden cgi 'actor'

So this last w/end I watched Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

As it goes it was a big improvement over the first film. Origin films are always tricky--the FF's origin especially is a bit on the ropey side, so they didn't have much to work with. Plus when you read the long-running comics the origin stuff is often quite different to how the characters are in their "steady state".

This film the FF where much more like the 'should be' as it were. The Thing and Johnny Storm especially were pretty much spot on.

Plus Jessica Alba is smoking hot (though I still think she looks weird with blonde hair--she should be less tanned to make it look better, I think).

Anyway, although it was better, the film was a little disappointing if I'm honest. The problem was the bad guys.

As the name suggests, the Silver Surfer was introduced, but also Galactus. Both were very disappointing.

The problem with Galactus was really that he was underused. Plus, being a reader of Marvel Comics I know what he's meant to look like so the way he was depicted here was just a slap in the face--he wasn't depicted. He was basically just a cloud.

The reason for that was made clear on the commentary tracks--they're doing a silver surfer film, so they wanted to leave it up to them how they depict Galactus.

Plus, as I say, he wasn't in it enough. He's there at the end trashing a planet, but they made the mistake of not showing us the planet's inhabitants--it was all done from space. That means there was nothing to really connect us to the danger.

The Silver Surfer looked spectacular and was in it plenty, but he was totally wooden. They said it was one of them virtual actors, but to me he actually looked like it was done with animatronics. His face was just totally blank throughout and he hardly moved.

self-pimpage: chika

Thought I'd do some shameless self-promotional type pimpage today :p.

This last w/end I uploaded a new vector of the main chika from Dragonaut - The Resonance. Can't remember her name for some reason, but you can dl a psd or jpg of the vector here.

You can also grab a png version over at AP here if that format suits you better.

I used the girl in two walls, which you can dl here. The walls aren't exactly spectacular, I have to admit. The planet became weirdly oversaturated with too bright colours. I did a version without it, but that's ended up looking a little plain, unfortunately.

I was working on some site updates over the w/end actually, although they were reviews, rather than walls or vectors.

I'm trying to get a bit more back into walling, etc (more on that later), but I've got 6 reviews set up as updates, plus one more left from the last batch.

Here's a weird statistic for you - once all those seven are up I will have a total of 60 reviews up on my site. That seems pretty impressive... well, to me at least :).

scannerific

Well, as I said on Friday I didn't have any specific plans, but a lot of options. I basically went for scanning and got through newtype, animedia and animage. Given that it's the cusp of a new season that meant there were loads of spreads and pics--I did over 150 scans in total, and my back could really feel it.

I also watched a few things while I was scanning:

• He is My Master: pretty good. It's not from the new season but an older show I dl'ed recently. I've read some of the manga and it was an interesting adaptation--they've tweaked it quite a bit (they being Gainax, I believe). But it's still chock full of fan-service, which can only be a good thing.
• Himitsu - Top Secret: very good. I was a bit surprised by this. I didn't know anything about it going in and was very pleasantly surprised. I've got to say the animation is a little ropey, but both the concept and story are very strong.
• Antique Bakery: very good. This I was also surprised about. I'd pegged this as yet another BL series (more on that below), but it wasn't really. I mean, it had elements of that in it, but there was more to it than that.
• Golgo 13: reasonable. Now this I did have expectations going into--those being that it would be utterly awful. And as far as that's concerned I was surprised... but that doesn't mean it was good, just that it wasn't awful. It was cheesy as hell, but I dunno, there was a certain appeal, I guess.

I've never really thought of myself as being anti-yaoi or Boy-Love or anything, but I must admit I've been rather amazed by the number of series that have been BL series (or at least have had elements of it) this last season (since April).

I dunno if it's just that I've ended up watching those ones first, but rather than the usual surfeit of high-school romantic comedies / harem and other shounen focused series, this last season we seem to be drowning in BL and shoujo.

On the one hand I'm glad about that--variety is the spice of life, even if generally BL doesn't appeal to me, but on the other hand it's a little annoying. I mean, why the sudden surge? It's like they're all trend chasing, which is a little disheartening.

choices, choices

I've no particular plans for the weekend, but a lot of options.

The only thing I do have to do is clean my bedsit and do a bunch of ironing. Otherwise I can do whatever.

There's certainly some scanning to do--newtype et al turned up at the beginning of the week, plus there's all the artbooks that need seeing to, as always. It never ends, scanning. I mean only the other day I was trawling through otaku.co.uk looking for new artbooks and I found about a dozen or so I'd like--I've not even cleared the 15 or so that I've got debound and waiting to go and I'm already planning my next purchases :/.

In the old days I would have just bought them there and then, but I think I'm learning a bit more discipline. Chopping up your credit cards has that effect on you using them :/.

Loads of anime to watch too, especially with the new season rapidly approaching. I think there's something like a dozen shows from this last season that I need to peruse--that's a good few hours there and would tie up well with the scanning.

Plus there's also all the anime I've bought. I really need to get into those piles so I can get e-baying again and generate some more 'bonus cash'.

Then there's all these reviews I've got written. I've got about 7 reviews stacked up and ready to go. By my reckoning that should take trismugistus.com the best part of the way to christmas alone.

Then there's my old scans - I should process them, get scan-city.org on track, as it's a total waste of money having it sat there doing nothing at all :/.

Plus on that front I think I might have caught a bit of a walling bug again--I've certainly got a good few projects in mind. My big stickler on walling has actually been vectoring. After that blog a while back where I was saying I really love it, the flip-side is I'm a bit of a perfectionist, which means it takes me bloody ages to finish a vector.

Which reminds me, I've been thinking about getting photoshop cs3. Well, actually I've been thinking about getting the full adobe "image product", which means photoshop, illustrate (which is for doing proper vectors) and some other programs. It's the best part of £1,000, though :/.

Plus I should finish off the Company of Heroes expansion. I should really tackle some more games, actually. Again, partly so I can e-bay some of them, but also because the chrimbalo season is approaching and there's quite a few new games I have on pre-order. Plus of course gaming is fun :).

collected volumes

I've been getting rather annoyed recently with the western anime companies.

The reason is that they keep putting out "collected volumes" almost immediately after releasing the last of the individual volumes. And guess what--the collected volumes are of course a lot cheaper than the individual volumes. I mean, they are different--the collected volumes are often thin packs and so have only one cover and no inserts, etc, but it's such a total pain in the arse.

The collected versions hack the resale potential of the individual volumes. I mean, if I buy 6 disks for £14 that's £84. Maybe you'd hope to resell at a third, so that's £28. Well if there's a collected set that's only £30 or so, then that's never going to happen, is it? You'll be lucky to clear £15, which is barely the cost of one disk.

I mean, collected volumes have always been a bit annoying for that affect, but they at least used to give it a year-or-so. Now, you can have just received the last volume and you can already buy the collected version. It gives you no opportunity to resell at a decent price.

But it actually looks like it's going in a good direction. Quite a few series are just being released in collected format to begin with--sometimes as half collections, with "part 1" and then "part 2" of a season. This is obviously a total win situation for us consumers. The collected volumes do represent excellent value for money and of course even if they're re-released as a complete collection the resale isn't so horribly impacted.

manga, manga everywhere

I'm a big fan of manga.

Manga are Japanese comic books, if you're not in the know. Manga is accepted in Japan in a way that comics aren't in the west, so it's basically okay to read manga over there, and it's very popular.

In fact, it's so popular that vast quantities of it are churned out every week. The format is different to American comics, where individual books have fairly small page counts and are published on their own. Manga comes out in huge collected volumes, with up to a dozen independent stories running at the same time in each of these books.

The books are themed, of course. So they may be aimed at young men (shounen) or young girls (shoujo). But, to some extent, the content within that varies. I mean, there are constraints, obviously, but it doesn't mean the mag that carries naruto is all about ninjas, although most its series are action oriented.

The schedules of manga can be quite punishing as I understand it--they're monthly or weekly. The weekly ones have fewer pages, but both schedules mean greater output is required from the artist than in the west, which is why they have assistants. The assistants take on similar roles to inkers and colourists (manga is black and white, so they use screen tone--probably digitally nowadays) in the west.

They also put out what are called tankobon, which are collected volumes of the particular series. These are what get translated and put out by the western companies, like Viz, Tokyopop or Dark Horse.

Anyway, the problem with these for me is that the companies are often playing catch-up when they first start putting out a series. So in Japan, the Tankobon basically might come out every six-months, or nine-months, or yearly or whatever. But for the western versions they almost never pick them up at the beginning.

Partly, or course, that's because manga in the west is still relatively knew, and with all that output in Japan you might license a series that's already git 17 tankobon out. That means you've a huge "backlog" of stuff to put out.

So they pump it out--one every other month isn't uncommon for the hit series. That can make it a pretty expensive undertaking for me.

It also means that at some point they will catch up with the Japanese manga. So, unless the series has already finished there comes a point where they suddenly change to a six/nine/twelve-month release schedule, which is then really frustrating.

What this means is that you end up with the weird situation where on my manga list I have around 20 series 'on the go'; but on my anime list I never have more than 3 or 4.

I just can't figure it

I'd never really been in to figures.

Figures (or figurines if you prefer) are sort of like half-way between dolls and models. A doll has moveable parts and is pretty much meant for playing with. A model has to be assembled, but once finished is more for decorative purposes.

A figurine doesn't have moveable parts and you don't assemble it. It's pre-moulded plastic and is assembled and painted at the factory. They're basically only for looking at.

Which is pretty much why I'd never been into them. I make models (well, I used to--I haven't done any actual modelling in years) and used to get dolls when I was a kid (well, actually, technically they're called action figures (Star Wars toys, basically) but really they're virtually the same thing--dolls for boys). But that whole "you just look at them" thing about figurines didn't really appeal.

I say didn't because I have loads of them now.

I dunno what it was that kick-started it. I think it was partly because I love Ugetsu Hakua's artwork so much, and especially his designs for BakuTen, that I wanted to get a couple of the figures. They were pretty cheap as well, I seem to remember.

Then it just sort of snowballed. I got those first figures from United Publications, but one of the sites I use the most (and would highly recommend), cd-japan, has a big section of its site devoted to figures. They also send out newsletters each week with all the pre-order figures and I dunno, I liked the BakuTen ones so much I just sort of bought more.

I like them all and I don't regret any of the purchases, but some of them are pretty expensive. Obviously, importing from Japan isn't cheap as such anyway, but some of the figures can be the best part of £100. That's a lot of money for something that you just sit and look at :/.

Anyway, I mention this because my latest purchase turned up last week--Ringo Noyamano from Air Gear dressed as the "Masked Hentai"--and it kinda occurred to me that this figure has sort of stepped past that line of displaying the figures and looking at them. What she's wearing is beyond "skimpy" and into pornographic (hence 'Masked Hentai' :/) so where can I put it that it wouldn't raise more than a few eyebrows?

Not that I specifically care what other people think about me, it's more to save them the embarrassment of seeing it :/.