Monday, August 15, 2005
	| First| Prev | Next |Last | Parody Strip #20 "Bokusatsu Tenshi Tsunami-chan" | First| Prev | Next |Last | "August 15th" by Akira (2005-08-15) I really need to start practicing drawing comics again. I lost all my skills in one year. It took me quite long to finish this simple strip... Nothing fantastic or funny, but here is a comic strip after a year of silence/hiatus. :) I went to a video rental store in Yokohama yesterday and finally had a chance (or should I say guts) to borrow Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan vol.1. I must say it was interesting and funny... ^^; I read a novel version months ago, but seems like this type of bloody slap-stick goes well with animation (visually). It was funnier than the novel in most cases (they skipped a couple of jokes because of time constraint, I assume). I really like how Dokuro-chan cutely swings and dances (of massacre) in the OP with the deadly Excaliborg. Dokuro-chan was really cute (just like Tsunami) and that song "Bokusatsu Tenshi~~" is stack in my head... Ahh...

	Tuesday, August 16, 2005
	"Light Novel" by Akira (2005-08-16) Light Novel" is term they used to define a novel like "Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan". First volume of "Dokuro-chan" light novel had four episodes (total of 250 pages) and the first anime video covered the first episode of a novel. It only took me less than two hour to finish reading the first volume of "Dokuro-chan". It's really a "light" novel. "Light novels" are read quite often among Japanese teenagers (very very popular). There was a news that young Japanese teens don't read novels anymore... I guess rather than reading heavy classical literatures, teenagers prefer reading these light novels instead. Light novels can be read in few hours. They are filled with manga-type illustrations of a famous illustrator and has a very catch a cover illustration. Novels are written mostly in dialogs and it's extremely easy to read. It costs about $5 and (in my opinion) it's a half way between manga and novel. Theexample of famouse light novels are: "Maria-sama ga miteru" series - Read by girls, but some (or should I say "a lot of" otaku men read them too. I'm not brave enough to touch this novel yet... "Boogie Pop" series - One of the classic light novels. There are more than ten novels out already, and I read most of them. I never though each episode of "Dokuro-chan" was 15 minutes long though... (I though I was borrowing one hour worth of anime ;_;) Borrowing a 30 minutes long tape with 300 yen was... worth it? Hmm...

	Wednesday, August 17, 2005
	"Enter the Moe" by Akira (2005-08-17) I'm pretty sure a lot of people know about "Moetan", since the book is pretty famous even in US (I remember it was introduced in Megatokyo's rants before). It's an educational book of "learn english with a cute girl and examples of otaku english sentences". The book is filled with useful sentences like: "My younger sister is cute, but she is an android the Professor made (an example I made up)." I can imagine majority Japanese students are studying with this book for their college entrance exams... ^^; While I was searching through the web today, I found this "Moe-C"... It's an educational doujin software of "learn C-language with a cute girl with program examples and questions"... This parody of "Moetan" was sold in the "Comic Market", but I missed it completely... (sob, sob) These days, more and more books are filled with "moe". There are: Learn Japanese law with "moe" - I guess many of young Japanese lawyers are reading this. Learn linux with "moe" - I guess this was what Konstantin was looking for? Learn tanks with "moe" - Tanks + girls with boots, necktie, and tight pants are what men want. learn stock with "moe" - Wall Street people should read this to understand Japanese market! What we are missing is "cecome a martial artist with moe", "become a doctor with moe", and "become politician with moe"... Sigh... what's is wrong with Japanese people these days...(including myself)?

	Thursday, August 18, 2005
	"Starry Night" by Akira (2005-08-18) Today, I worked on the JAVA program which creates a starry night PNG image randomly ^^; Now I can use this drawing program as a screen tone of night scenes in my future comic strips :) Continuing the topic related to "Moe-tan"... "TAN" is added to the name to make things (especially cute girls) cuter. Afghanistan drawn by TIMAKING is interesting, since he made MOE characters out of countries of: Afghanistan Pakistan Uzbekistan Tajikistan Kyrgyzstan Since all these countries end with "TAN", they are "MOE" characters. You can read his comic strips by clicking on "WEB-COMIC" on the top menu and then clicking on the "Afghanistan" banner on the left (comic strips are in Japanese though...). There are 26 episodes to "Afghanistan" with detailed rants of Afghanistan history. Currently he's working on "Pakistan" (There are four comic strips, but he hasn't updated in a while). His "Afghanistan" webcomic was made into a comic book. There was a 2-ch news that his computer got infected by "Kintama" virus, and his computer content information was leaked onto a net. It seems like he has download many illegally copied manga files. I hope he doesn't get into a trouble... --;