Anime Nano- Nabe!!: Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere 2nd Season to air this coming Summer
- Chocolate Syrupy Waffles Blog: Inu x Boku SS 3: How To Succeed in Scoring Without Really Trying
- Interests of a Psychopath : By The Light
- Adziu's Small Corner: 마당을 나온 암탉 / Madangeul Naon Amtak / The Hen Leaves the Yard / Leafie: A Hen into the Wild
- Beta-Waffle: Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #9-12
- figure.fm
- Japan Times
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- Shibuya246
Wallpaper Gallery: K-ON! (OPs and EDs)
This month’s wallpaper gallery brings you a range of images taken from some of the opening and ending sequences of K-ON!. Specifically, I’ve gone through Cagayake! Girls and Don’t Say Lazy from season one, and Go! Go! Maniac and Listen!! from season two. I’m sure I’ll add wallpapers from Utauyo! Miracle and No, Thank You once I’ve got the appropriate source material, but for now you can check out the first four.
Anime: Code Geass Gaiden Knightmare Frame Design
There hasn’t been much news about Code Geass Gaiden: Boukoku no Akito (Akito of the Ruined Nation) since the initial reveal (check out the details and trailer in this post), but a new issue of NewType magazine includes concept art of one of the anime’s new Knightmare Frame designs. It was designed by Akira Yasuda, who worked on the Knightmare designs for both seasons of Lelouch of the Rebellion.
Figures: Chrono Trigger Formation Arts
Chrono Trigger, an RPG masterpiece developed by Square-Enix (then just Square) for the SNES, is one of my all-time favourite games. I’m certainly not alone in that regard, so it’s quite surprising that Chrono Trigger figures are so scarce. In fact, as far as I can tell this set in Square-Enix’s Formation Arts line of blind box/trading figures may well be the first. We can only wonder as to why Square-Enix, a company who’s no stranger to milking all sorts of merchandising out of their franchises, has taken so long to grace us with these, but in any case they’ve now rectified the problem and have thankfully done a pretty good job of it.
Japan: Osaka by Night from the HEP FIVE Ferris Wheel
Not only is Osaka by night a pretty sight, there’s a fairly unique way of taking it in available: from a ferris wheel on the seventh floor of a shopping mall. The HEP FIVE building in Osaka’s Umeda district is largely a fashion centre, but the top floors are dedicated to amusement with arcades and, yes, a big red ferris wheel that provides a great view of Osaka from 106m up at the apex. HEP FIVE is just a few minutes from the JR Osaka and Hankyu Umeda stations, and is pretty easy to find since it’s the only building with a ferris wheel on top.
Food: Some More Japanese-Style Cooking At Home
Here’s a quick look at some of the dishes I’ve put together over the last month or so. In this instalment you’ll see gyuudon, tofu and udon soup, chicken katsu and kakiage, my first attempt at mixed tempura and, for something a little different, a matcha (green tea) chiller.
iPhone: Custom Totoro Gelaskin
I had a white iPhone 3G and I was really hoping to grab the white iPhone 4 to follow it up, but with that version delayed with no specific release window I settled for the standard black version. A big part of that decision was the potential compromise offered by GelaSkins.com, who sell removable adhesive covers for just about every major gadget or device you can think of. I’m not a fan of putting covers or cases that add bulk or significantly change the aesthetic of the tech – especially with such a gorgeous piece of design like the iPhone 4 – but GelaSkins are, as the name suggest, a thin skin that can offer scratch resistance and augment the device without adding any bulk at all. Better yet, you can choose from plenty of existing designs (including licensed stuff like Marvel Comics) or upload your own images to create a custom design.
Figure: Momohime (1/8 Scale by Alter)
From Muramasa: The Demon Blade – a Wii game with a gorgeous hand-painted visual style – comes the possessed princess Momohime, now lovingly crafted as a 1/8 scale figure by Noritaka Fukumoto for Alter. I’ll admit that I’m yet to complete Muramasa but I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve played so far and it’s just such a beautiful game to look at, so when I saw the previews for this figure I was pretty quick to make a pre-order. It looked incredible in Alter’s official promo shots, but those can often be misleading as certain elements become too difficult to mass produce or, more simply, quality control isn’t quite perfect. As a figure collector, you come to expect those differences and, within reason, accept them. With Momohime, Alter have managed to deliver a work of true craftsmanship that has absolutely no trouble living up to its promise.
Wallpaper Gallery: Bakemonogatari – Suruga Monkey
For this month’s gallery I’ve taken a slice out of Bakemonogatari to bring you 95 high definition wallpapers from the Suruga Monkey story arc. Bakemonogatari has a great visual style that lends itself well to wallpapers, but the screen capture process is sometimes made difficult due to the often fast editing between shots that are a fairly distinctive element of the series’ style. Nonetheless, I’m pleased with how this gallery has turned out and it’s likely that you’ll see more Bakemonogatari galleries here over time. For now, I hope you’ll enjoy this one!
Wallpapers: K-ON! (Official Band Yarouyo ver.)
I was looking around for new wallpapers tonight when I came across the cover to the K-ON! Official Band Yarouyo CD. I loved the stark design and use of colour but the scanned image wasn’t really clean enough to use as any sort of wallpaper, nor is the layout necessarily ideal. Of course that’s no reason to give up on it, so I took to Photoshop, pulled the image apart, cleaned up and edited the pieces and put it all back together again to create wallpapers in a variety of shapes and sizes for use on desktops, iPhone, iPad and PS3. I’m really pleased with how it turned out! Of course, between these four versions you’ll probably find one that’s suited to just about any device you have in mind, so those labels are more like suggestions based on what I had in mind when I adjusted the layout. I’m more than happy for you to share these, but as I haven’t put any watermarks on these – I don’t like watermarks on wallpapers – I’d appreciate it if you gave credit and linked back here. Enjoy!
Loot: Anime Merch and More from J-List
After some delays caused by technical errors, I had a bunch of stuff from J-List show up at the end of last week. This order has been kind of a long time coming, not just because of the aforementioned delays (which were handled well by the J-List staff once I brought the issue to their attention, for the record) but because I’ve been eyeing off some of the items for a while, waiting to put them all together in a bigger order to save on shipping. I’m really pleased with everything that made it into the order, which covers a small cross-section of the pretty wide variety of products that J-List offers.
