Reamed tenfold

botchii's a hungry MFer.

That's the name of the approval bot of MiniTokyo that either announces that I have been given membership, or (more frequently) if a submission I sent to MiniTokyo has been deleted. What surprised me the past few days was that out of about 14 submissions (monochrome and color scans) that have been submitted to Minitokyo, only four of them survived the first 24 hours of being posted.

Actually, one of those four is still going through the first 24 hours of being posted. Now, let's be honest: the moderators at MiniTokyo are looking for quality submissions that have been uploaded and deserve to stay on MT for the long haul. On MT, I am known as Hachiko, and on AnimePaper, another site I frequent, they know me as jsalazar.

As Hachiko, I have been a proud member of MT for over three years, and I have seen members come and members go. But based on the bad news from that hungry botchii, I have made a startling, yet eye-opening discovery: Galaxy Angel as a manga is not providing consistent excellent hi-quality scan opportunities. Contrary to the submissions from Galaxy Angel 3rd Volume 2, Volume 4 is proving to be more miss and less hit. The only ones the mods on MT are looking for to stay are full page monochrome sketches, and color scans that feature the characters shown in the full.

Regardless, as of now, I have posted over a hundred scans on MT, to go with a wallpaper and several doujins, and a bevy of credits that followed. But I compare to the process at MiniTokyo to an American Idol audition: only a select few can go through to the next round, while the majority will be sent home.

Not that I have any complaints about a majority of my recent self-scanned monochrome submissions being removed. The last thing I want is botchii to munch up my entire gallery of contributions to MiniTokyo. All the hard work..eaten, eaten.

Bloody hell.

Anime Expo 2007: As a fan, this is one of your best weekends.

Haruhi, the SOS Brigade, the Galaxy Angels, Death Note crew, ORESKABAND, and all the other good fixins packed in one weekend. I'm only in my second year staffing at Anime Expo, and I am very excited to help out the attendees from June 28 to July 2. There will be thousands upon thousands of people who will showing up in Long Beach, California.

I knew that this year was going to be the year of Haruhi Suzumiya, and lo and behold, she is here. Aya Hirano, the voice of Haruhi (as well as the voice of Konata Izumi from Lucky Star-could it be their year next year?), as well as Minori Chihara (the voice of Yuki Nagato) and Yuko Goto (the voice of Mikuru Asahina), are coming down to the Beach to greet their supporters of the SOS Brigade. There will be Haruhi plushies all around. Get to the exhibit halls fast, and get yours...quick!

I am personally hyped about this year's edition, because we have Yuuna Inamura, the voice of Apricot Sakuraba of Galaxy Angel Rune (GA II), rolling over to the Long Beach Convention Center next Friday. Yes, my friend, there are Galaxy Angel supporters here in the USA, and Rico is starting to warm up as a possible contender for Saimoe 2007. All four of them will be doing some autographs. I hope to get one from any one of them.

The ska band ORESKABAND rolls in, and companies like Bandai and Toei are coming down to the Beach as well. Eisaku Inoue, of One Piece fame and other classics, is another Guest of Honor. Tetsuro Araki, the guy behind Death Note, is going to be here, as well as pop sensation Anna Tsuchiya. And Bang Zoom is coming down to help out at AX Idol.

Also, there will be some Otaku Parliamentary Debates. Wonder if this is a alternative to the debates for the presidency. Heheh, this will be fun to watch.

And of course, Masquerade is going to be highly competitive. Oh man, I'm going to have to bring a ROCKSTAR pack with me just to be hyped up about it.

Spring Break Sketch Suite Part 3

I prefer to draw using pencil. That means most of my drawing are sketches. I like it that way. I have no qualms about thinking outside of the box. For example, if Apricot Sakuraba let her hair down and wore her older sister's headband, I imagine her looking like Kaede Fuyou from Shuffle!.

Spring Break Sketch Suite Part 2

I like playing the guitar. Even though I can't get the licks right, and that I prefer to play the drums (I can't afford a drum set yet....sob sob), I like to draw girls donning guitars.

Spring Break Sketch Suite Part 1

I love Jimmy Eat World. Not for the trademark song "The Middle", but more for the song "Get It Faster," from the same album, Bleed American. This fueled me to draw a set of sketches for Spring Break.

Keep in mind this is an exclusive, away from my usual site on CSULB's server. Just for those of you who like to check out BoBA.

Weird dream, but a colorful one.

This was one of the few dreams I can remember in full.

The dream started with the Moon Angel Troupe going on another of their missions, Milfeulle was hanging on to a ladder connected to a truck that Vanilla was driving. The truck was passing through a boggy swamp that was 6 foot deep of mud and water. She almost lost her grip, but when they got to the other side, the ladder lowered so Milfie could land.

So the team went to this house that had another of the lost technology tidbits they were looking for. Forte, Ranpha, and Mint were searching one room, Vanilla (with Normad) in another, and Milfeulle was looking in one room, where she stumbled on a large pink, cute, bag. Hey eyes were turning to stars, and she was madly blushing, because it was the cutest, most gorgeous looking bag she had ever seen. So, Milfeulle was about to touch it, when…the bag swallowed her whole! Save for a flower from her headband that the bag spitted out.

The bag had grown eyes and a face. Indeed, Milfeulle (as the bag) was pouting, saying, “Nande~~~!? Why the heck am I inside this bag?” So she opened herself to find some appendages. She used a scissor and pliers for arms, and two scalpers for legs.

Soon afterward, the bag swallowed everyone else, and it turned into Ranpha wearing a gorgeous, long-flowing yellow dress, and she was wearing high-end lipstick. She was about to be engaged to this hot guy that the was talking to-her “dream guy”-but the lost technology was about 6to be destroyed, so she kissed the guy and whispered as tears flowed from her eyes, “I’m sorry.” She vroomed like an engine, spat out a little bit of blood that turned into a shadow impression of Ranpha dancing in her dress, with a ribbon underneath, and blasted off, going through the guy and killing him in the process, and blasted through the roof off the house.

From there, Ranpha exploded, turning into her and the other angels flying their respective frames, and the ending credit of that scene was the original Galaxy Angel game logo, with the Moon Angels’ emblem, accompanied by the anime series’ typical fanfare music.

In this dream, I watched all of A, AA< st="on">Vatican, on Via Fiorentina, whatever that was. But GA in the Vatican? Unbelievable.

The final part of my dream was that me and the other members of my fraternity were climbing up and down this large jungle gym. One part of the course had me go through a hole, crawl through a gauntlet, and go out the other hole. Unfortunately, I couldn’t squeeze through the hole (due to my large size, perhaps), so I went out a bigger hole to the side. The others were laughing. At the end of the course, we tied pink paper ribbons, each ribbons with our favorite maxim, on to end of the jungle gym. A large number of pledges were waiting for their first event on their road to being new members. We would lead the way.

And thus ended my dream.

World, ease your mind and Kananize!

My mind's been eased with reading Galaxy Angel. And that, I think, is the power of seeing the art of the greats in shoujo manga. From Miho Obana, to Arina Tanemura, to Naoko Takeuchi, to Kanan and between, the best mangaka create characters that are immortal in appearance, memory, and character. It's those characters, and their development into something special that make them unique.

Kanan's rendition of Galaxy Angel (which is different from the Galaxy Angel anime for a few obvious reasons: continuity, character development, and the type of storyline that mixes comedy with drama, romance, and great art) is no exception to this rule. I have all volumes of Galaxy Angel 3rd (or Galaxy Angel II) to date, as well as all 5 volumes of the first arc so far, and I love how she molds the hooks with the uniqueness of the characters. The scenes with little of text are the best parts of the chapters for a number of reasons (mostly, having to do with graphic design ideas for your sites), and after my iPod charges up (it died just a few hours ago; I had to get over to campus to charge my iPod, iMilfeulle, up), it's off to a few more rounds of scanning before stuffing up at Round Table.

Wings are the type of attribute that I have embraced to most of my recent drawings. I like how Kanan draws the wings on Milfeulle. I gotta try doing some tone one of these days; she's a cut above a number of other mangaka, but in the league of Arina, Naoko, you know, the Bishoujo Mangaka Masters...If the plotline in the manga follwed in the anime, I know that GA as an anime would have been in the top 30, instead of the middle of the top 100 list by Anime News Network. Maybe top 20, even.

And that's why Sailor Moon, even though it's seen by people in North America as a mere stepping stone for those who were first exposed to anime and manga in the 1990's, is in the Top 30. It doesn't have the strongest following, after ending its run nearly a decade ago, but the impact it had in blazing a trail for the bishoujo plotline (led by a certain pigtail-and-bun immortal in a fuku and her company of soldiers doubling as a princess of the past and queen of the future) makes it a memorable one.

If only Galaxy Angel's anime plotline followed this, using what Kanan came up. At least my mind is still at ease before Big Thursday comes rolling in less than, I don't know, 40 hours.

Buy backs are love.

I am so glad I was able to buy back my Management textbook. I got enough money to buy a new set of headphones that replaced the worn-out ones I had for my current iPod, which I call iMilfeulle. (I call my SLVR with iTunes iApricot, and my current USB iNano-Nano, all Galaxy Angel characters.)This new set of headphones is from this company called Skullcandy, and it's called GIs. This headphone set was designed for those who want the best out of their headphones. It's much better, and more stylish and versatile, than the other ones I currently have. It's cooler than those earbuds, and easier on my ears.You can see these headphones, plus the many other Skullcandy logo stickers I posted around the Beach, on my updated gallery at SeiyaUsagi.net

(Note: you may have to register to view it.)