May
22
A very sweet summer
Filed Under Gastronomic, News, Seinen, Series Updates, Slice of Life | 2 Comments
For me, summer has come to an end, but for everyone else, summer’s just about to begin. Particularly this season, a couple of tastefully sweet mangas are either being animated or is being enacted into live action. And I say you shouldn’t miss them. And no, it’s not because they’re BL (actually, only one of them is) but it’s because for those who have a sweet tooth, it would be great to finally see, in full motion, how some of the sweets featured in these mangas were made. Because of series like Antique Bakery and Andou Natsu being animated, this summer is more than just watermelons.
To start with, we have strawberry shortcakes coming from the cast of Antique Bakery. By now, everyone knows about Antique Bakery. A lot of girls started professing eternal support for Fumi after reading this series. And boys pretty much got the jist from their girl friends and is relieved that at least the j-dorama didn’t make Ono gay. However, once Toshokan Sensou ends in July, Fuji TV’s Noitamina slot will be featuring Antique Bakery. And yes this time round, Ono will be gay. I will not go at length on how much I’m excited about this. I think I’ve mentioned it before already, but yes, expect to see some care in the creation of really yummy pastries from them. The detail Fumi places everytime Ono whips up a desert always made me hungry. I have to make sure that I have a cookie with me while watching this series. I think my tummy will be crying the whole time if I didn’t.
On the other hand, I am just as excited for Andou Natsu. It was announced last week that they’ll be bringing out this yummy manga about an aspiring pattisiere who eventually dedicated her craft to the creation of okashi or Japanese sweets. I first crossed this manga when I was reading Big Comic Original (blame Pluto). It really didn’t leave a great impact to me then, but somehow fate wants me to read this manga that when I asked my teacher1 to send me a manga of his choice as a recommendation, he sent me Andou Natsu. I know Karl loves his food mangas so I know that this has got to be something that he has sifted through the lot. And surprisingly, this manga is more than just sweets, but it also speaks of the preservation of the trade of Japanese sweets, one craft that is slowly losing out to the likes Antique Bakery (lol.)
Yes, I love Andou Natsu because it shares to us readers something that we can definitely find only in Japan (or if you’re lucky, at your local grocery). Okashi is a delicate trade of making sweets using ingredients that are indigenous to Japan. So some of these okashi are your mochi packed with sweet an, colored in naturally edible dyes, made painstakingly with much dedication and brute strength, and perhaps served fresh every day.
What is great about the story is it’s not just about a girl trying to get in the trade, but rather, just like the girl, it raises your level of awareness on how the sweets were made and the lengths that people are doing in order to protect their craft that is slowly losing to Hersheys and Meiji chocolates. More than that, the manga has a nice warm feeling to it wherein the characters nurture not only their associates in the store, but also the nearby community that supports and patronizes their sweet.
These two great mangas may not have big cook-offs and shining dishes, but their sweet tales is something that’ll make you think how life is more than a box of chocolates. My sweet tooth will definitely be spoiled this summer.
- I’m forever grateful, Karl-sensei!! [↩]
May
14
Congratulations to Ishikawa Masayuki for winning for Moyashimon!! Finally, they notice the genius of processed foods and the power that bacteria has in our favorite foods!
The 32nd Annual Kodansha Manga Awards has just been announced and Moyashimon got an award for Best General Manga. It also won the grand prize for the Tezuka!! Yay! I’m not so sure if the anime played in its popularity or at least exposure, but a lot of interesting things did happen to the manga last year so it’s quite amazing that way. :3
Another personal favorite of mine won. It’s called Kimi ni Todoke and it won for Best Shoujo. I’m not so sure if it’s licensed yet, but yeah, this is another great shoujo story and I hope it gets translated in english too. Its story is similar to The Wallflower without being too repetitive and stubborn. Its delightful without containing too much drama from shoujo mangas.
Manga awards are a great way to find titles outside your usual haunts. Some people are always iffy about award-winning mangas because some think it’s for those with sophisticated tastes and all that. However, it would never hurt to understand why it was shortlisted or why it even won for that award. I was a Naoki Urasawa fan and was pleased to see Pluto win for a Tezuka before. That same year, there was that shortlisted manga named Nodame Cantabile that got me curious. After checking it out, I was blown away with Nodame’s insanity. That experience convinced me that there’s a greater world out there other than those deemed as ‘popular’. So don’t be afraid to check these mangas out if you can. It’d be quite an experience. :3
So for a short quip, congratulations to Moyashimon for winning the lot this year!!
みんな！かもすぜー！
Apr
23
Yotsuba and Danboard, the environmentally friendly robot, wants to remind you some environmentally friendly tips that otakus like you and me can do to make the earth breathe every now and then.
- Turn your PC off tonight. Make it rest. Someone will still be seeding those torrents tomorrow.
- Got some old issues of Shounen Jump or Ace lying around that you just bought for knack but never read? Tear them up to pieces and use it as bed for your cat or dog.
- Reuse all those amazon and yes asia boxes. You can store all your undisplayed figures and outgrown mangas there. lol.
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Stand up from your desk and have a walk at the park. Turn off your PC while you’re at it.
- Use a bike going to work pray that somewhere in between your home and work, you go into a time slip.
- Don’t use your aircon for a day and give some lovin’ to the earth by opening your window for fresh air.
We otakus can take a part in saving the environment despite our dependency on technology and material things. It’s the least that we can do before some alien further destroys our earth and we go to an epic journey of finding a way to get rid of them.
Apr
15
Again, another interesting thing popped up in my e-mail again. This time, it’s from Laura Hale and she’s co-maintaining a site called fanhistory.com. Now I really thought that it was all for naught, but it seems to be quite an interesting site on the history of online fandoms and how they were built. They have a short preview on how the fandom was born. And it lists almost all writers in fanfiction.net. Yeah, even feeble writers who haven’t written since 2002 *cough*. And it’s even more fun because it even lists like prominent fandom places, such as, in my case, the aoshimisao mailing list, an ML for rabid Aoshi x Misao fan. Of course… on the side even I enjoyed a bit of BL with Aoshi x Saitou, but in my heart of hearts I loved Aoshi and Misao.
I think their effort is as gargantuan as wikipedia itself so if you know one or two things about your fandom, feel free to make entries. If you want to… (lol) update your author profile (SERIOUSLY! IT’S BOUND TO BE THERE!) then go ahead and scribble it down and write the fanfics you have written that’s not in fanfiction.net. Or change your history altogether and place a different fandom profile for yourself. Even add a few info for those who are curious. lol. If you’re not there, adding yourself wouldn’t hurt, would it?
It’s quite nostalgic browsing through the site. I’ve been passing it to friends and it’s like “OH GOD! THOSE WERE MY FANDOMS!? WHAT WAS I THINKING THEN!?” lol. My generation of anime fans have seen how the internet and fanfiction has totally shaped anime fandom as we know today. So much has changed back then and even the community feels slightly different. Fandom History might be able to at least grab a bit of the old days back and make us ponder on how silly and innocent we were back then. When we were like what… crazy 16 year old kids!?! lol.
Apr
11
All for knowledge!
Filed Under News | Leave a Comment
I got an interesting e-mail from Dirk Haas, a Belgian psychology student at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. His research is about how people around the world view Japanese animation. Now, he is in dire need of Asian respondents. So if you guys live in Asia (or maybe you’re an Asian living abroad), please give him some help and answer his survey at www.toba.lu/memoire.
The thing is, you guys need a really good connection to view it. Those with dial-up connections might as well give up. But those with DSL or Cable or Broadband net, as long as your torrents are not running to get this’s season’s latest anime, take a shot in taking this survey.
I took the test earlier today and it turned out to be quite interesting… I’d like to see how this research goes all out. :3 If you guys have any questions about the research mail him at this address. Good luck Dirk!
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Otaku Champloo is...
a small serving of bittersweet manga bits by a manga addict named Khursten.
She currently digs mangas about boys who live to be men. -
Feeds are Good!
