Kyoto Animation

Hello everyone. By now I think anyone reading this has probably heard the news, 5 days ago, on July 18th, a crazy person set fire to Kyoto Animation Studio 1's building, throwing gasoline everyone, even on the people, hurting 35 person and killing 34.

Everyone reading this probably already knows about it, but I wanted to make a post about how much KyoAni affected my life.

The first anime I saw from KyoAni was either Lucky Star or Haruhi, I actually don't remember in which order I watched them. But both of them were really influential in my life. I'll start with Lucky Star since it was clearly the one that inspired me the most, and the one I watched the most often too.

Lucky Star is really really good. It's pretty episodic, so you can just watch any episode any time and enjoy it, you don't really need to watch it every time in order. I used to describe it as a like a Simpsons episode, pick any episode, it's going to be funny, you're going to have fun. But Lucky Star was also the first inside view into real Otaku life that I saw. Konata, and Patty to a pretty big extent too, probably helped shaping the Otaku I am today. I re-watched it in the plane while coming to japan for my first trip, to note which shop were important to visit in Akiba, used it to prepare mentally to the Comiket hell. My first Seichi (holy sites) that I did a pilgrimage to was Washinomiya, the Temple were the Hiiragi sisters work, and where the Toori that Kagami is dancing in front of used to be (rip). I idolized Konata and Patty as being the perfect Otaku all my life, and also got influenced by them in my daily life, though, I don't have the money to do the "buy 3 of everything" thing that Konata does. The series is one of the main reason I moved to japan too.
Considering how important that series was to me, it's no wonder that the first doujins I made were about Lucky Star. I met a lot of great people in the Lucky Star fan community, people that I consider my friends now, that were also devastated by what happened 5 days ago.

Haruhi had a less direct influence on me, but it was just my favorite anime at that time. The story was very well made, the animation was great. The voices were awesome. I've often joked about how Haruhi is the true goddess for Otakus. I've wore Haruhi's logo on me for many years. and probably would have done for more if stuff actually fitted me (the hoodie I had was self printed with the print on thing that were in the DVD boxes). It's also what made me become a super fan of Hirano Aya. So while it didn't have a direct effect on my life, this work touched me a lot, and I still to this day, think it's one of my favorite anime. The movie being also in my top of all time movies. Nagato was my Waifu for a very long time too, she was my first Dakimakura. She's still my second favorite character all around. And ... while saying this right after this incident might seem bad, I still think that Haruhi S3 is the sequel I am hoping for the most out of any series.

I love K-On!. I did a full post on this already so I won't spend too much time talking about it here, since another post on K-On! is actually coming soon. But you know this is a work that was very important for me too. actually got me into drumming. Yui is so cute. Ritsu is so cool!

A Silent Voice was such a great movie, it brought me to tears right there at the theater. It was the best movie of that year from my view, and comes about at the same place as the Haruhi movie in my favorites. I have not yet done a pilgrimage for it, but I'm still planning to do it in the near future.

Of course there's more, I loved a lot of their other shows, but I just wanted to talk about the most importants to me.

Last week-end to pay our respect to the fallens, we went to the site of the arson, and prayed. There was a big media presence, of course as Gaijin we got interviewed. But everyone was pretty respectful, and the solemnity of the moment was respected by everyone.

I don't like to see people fishing for the deceased names on the internet, Kyoani was a studio that poured love into their work at every level, and all the lives that we're lost were equally as important. I do hope the studio can get back on it's feet after this terrible incident, and wish them the best.

Comiket 86!

Here the comiket 86 post that should have been done 3 days ago!

From August 15th to the 17th, at the Tokyo Big Sight in Odaiba, the 86th Comiket was held.
As always, There was a crazy amount of people (total attendance of the week-end was 550,000 persons) and as always, it was way too damn hot!
For those who don't know Comiket... I've explained it before so go read there.

*This part of the post might be good information to anyone getting their hands on a circle ticket and who don't know how things will work with them)
This time I was really lucky and got my hands on a circle ticket (circle tickets are given to the members of the circles that will sell goods at the comiket so that they can enter earlier to set up their tables. Sometimes they have too many tickets so some people give it to their friends or sell them). So since I had a circle ticket I tough I wouldn't have to line up at all at first. While walking past the big lines outside I felt really happy to have this ticket. I had one worry though. I wanted to use this ticked to go close to the Corporate booths so I could get hard to get items faster. But would they let me go there? on my ticket, the booth number was in the eastern hall, and the corporate booths are on the western halls. Also a lot of blogs around said that people using these tickets to line up earlier was frowned upon.... well I don't know if that used to be true. but that's clearly not true anymore.

When you arrive at the TBS door with your ticket, they just take it away, so now you're inside, and you can walk anywhere. So I just followed up the directions to the corporate booth, and then I saw... that there's actually a fucking lot of people using those tickets to line up in advance for corporate booths, as there was already big line ups inside the big sight.

Shaft line, at about 8am, 2 hours before the oppening

This is the line I was in, at 9:30, 30 minute before opening.

This made me realize how many people there are, and how useless it is to just "come early". Comiket is crazy.
This is a picture of the top of the outside lines, seen from inside:

The ticket in the end was a great help, In 30 minutes I had already done 3 corporate booths, and that's probably before people who arrived at 7am (1 hour before me) outside, would even have entered the halls.

After the intensive shopping, I met my friend at the cosplay area. She was cosplaying Haruhi, and was cute doing it as always.

This picture is when I realize I got burned pretty badly by the sun on that day,

On day 2 I went with another friend, It was his first comiket, and he's a touhou fan so he came with me on the touhou day.
He said he enjoyed it, and I'm sure he enjoyed it.... as much as you can enjoy it.
Comiket is fun, but it's a really hard event so you kinda hate/love it at the same time.
I was also supposed to meet my other friend who was cosplaying again on day 2, but couldn't because of bad rain timing, and being stuck in a line to ship my stuff home for 2 damn hours (I got out of that line 20 minutes after the end of the event, which gave me the opportunity to take this picture)

Empty Comiket seems so weird O.o

For day two we got there kinda late (11am is the perfect time to arrive if you want to get inside without doing any line up, anytime before that you'll have to wait) and got stuck into that line up after shopping, so I didn't even have time to take cosplay pictures... but I got a picture of one of the 4 areas before it started to rain.

On a side note, there are 4 cosplay areas in Comiket, this is one of the less crowded ones. The 2 closes to the entrance are so crowded (especially the one in the garden) that it's almost impossible to move from one cosplayer to another when taking pictures.
You literally have to push your way through. It's annoying, and exhausting, both as a photograph getting pushed, and as someone trying to move through.

On day 3 I went alone, and had a little less shopping to do.
So I had time to enjoy it more, and check more cosplay and take more pictures.

Here's some of my favourite cosplay pictures of the week-end, you can see the links to the albums at the end of this post.

Matsumoto from Downtown

My friend as Haruhi

Black Hanekawa

Nagato Yuki, this is a Auto-Awesome gif created by google from a couple of pictures I took

Sadako from the Ring

Ui and Yui from K-On!

Jibril from No Game No Life

Persona

Bakemonogatari

Kill la Kill

Windows XP, thank you!

Tamako Market!

Not completly sure, maybe Conan?

2 sides of Hanekawa

Niku

CCHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

Day 1 cosplay pictures: (Google+/Picasa)
Day 3 cosplay pictures: (Google+/Picasa)
Day 1 Google+ Story Version
Day 3 Google+ Story Version

Finally here's a picture of all my C86 loot, including also the stuff I bought for a couple of friends oversea.

And that concludes my Comiket 86 report.
Hope you had fun reading it.

2010

Thinking back on 2010, Lately it's been sucky, but when I think about it it really wasn't that bad of a year...
I've had the greatest experience of my life, going to Japan, enjoying the summer comiket, Akihabara, Maid Café. I've also had good time with Elisa, even if it did not last long. Anime north was great, G-anime sucked but oh well, what do you expect...

This year was bad on the love side, I mean I did have good time with Elisa, but it was at the start of the year, since then everything went bad...
It was mainly a bad political year in the land of the Quebec's Anime community. Lot's of hypocrisy, lots of lie, lots of useless and baseless little wars... I just don't give a shit about that anymore.

Made good friends, and good enemy...
Lots of good music got released, lots of crappy games too.
Lot's of awesome Anime, and the best Anime movie of all time.
I guess I'm complaining for nothing,
Let's all hope for an even better 2011! (Japan again I hope :D)

Suzumiya Haruhi no Shoushitsu

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.
The last movie from Kyoto animation, in the Haruhi Suzumiya series. It got out in Japanese cinemas February 6th 2010. Mazui subbed it a couple of days ago so I was finally able to check it out.

I'm a big fan of Haruhi, I've bought every Novel out in English so far, bought the special edition of the first season's DVD.
Then Season 2 come out, Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody was awesome and really got my hopes up... but then... there was... Endless 8... 8 time the same episode, slightly changing angles and clothes... over and over again... I understand the principle of it, it's time recursion it have to feel like a long time, and it had to feel boring so we felt what Yuki felt... but 8 time is just way too much. The idea would have been great if it would have been 3 or 4 episodes at most. Maybe they wanted 8 episodes because a 8 sideways if the infinity sign...
Anyway, Haruhi franchise took a big drop after this, the remaining episodes of the season 2 were good but not good enough to excuse the endless 8 fiasco.

However, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, is so awesome, that if put back the Haruhi franchise even above what it was after season 1.
The acting of the Seiyu is perfect, the animations are simply wonderful. Unfortunately, the version I saw had a pretty bad image quality since it came from a Camera rip, but, even having to deal with the eye cancer it can cause, it really worth it to see an animation of that quality. The story by Nagaru Tanigawa is so deep and complex, leaving you with that "wtf" feeling that a good show gives you, while giving you enough answer to actually not become a "we're just fucked up" show. Without going into too much details, the plot surprised me, which has become a very rare thing from any movie or series. It was excellent and the development of the characters was also done masterfully.
I haven't read that part of the novel yet since it is not out in English as of the time of this posting, however I've read on a forum that some parts of the story that would have been needed were excluded from the movie. I felt the movie was complete in itself, even if it left some unanswered questions, but there is still 6 more books to cover after that so it's only normal that a lot of questions are unanswered.

It's a must see for any Anime fan, and a 'you will die if you don't see it' for any Haruhi fan.
10/10.

Also...
Nagato is my Goddess. I love her.
Praise Nagato!