When I first started blogging about cooking meals from What Did You Eat Yesterday, someone was telling me about how he just can’t have the time or the chance to cook it because the ingredients were hard to find. I suppose that raised the challenge for me to find recipes in the series that were not difficult and were fairly easy to recreate in places without Asian groceries.
In this recipe, I try out Shirou’s dinner after an interesting day at the Tominaga’s.
Yesterday was such an odd morning because it started out as a really hot day and so I prepared a really cold breakfast I learned from What Did I East Yesterday. I was hoping this breakfast would keep me cool, but as soon as the rain poured, the cold breakfast was not seemingly.
But that doesn’t mean this wasn’t good eats though! It’s a very simple breakfast with the warm intention of putting a smile on your face.
Fujojocast is back for the new year!! In this show, my comic nakama, Yue, joins me as we look at the 2014 Kono Manga ga Sugoi award (This Manga is Amazing!), 2013 Comic Natalie Awards shortlist, and Kono BL ga Yabai 2014 (This BL is Dangerous!).
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
OP/EP: Life by Fujifabric (OP of Silver Spoon season 2)
In this show, we talked a lot about the winners such as  Sakamoto Desu Ga? (But isn’t that Sakamoto?) and Ansatsu Kyoshitsu (Assassination Classroom), some of our favourites like Smells Like Green Spirit and Gin no Saji (Silver Spoon), and some titles we are looking forward to like Bokura no Hentai and Tsukikage Baby. Hope you could listen in and hopefully you guys can read some of these amazing manga as well!
I’m also happy to announce that we’re in ITUNES now, so feel free to subscribe!
It’s another year for Manga Taisho (Manga Award) where some of manga’s most influential critics select a number of titles to choose the best of manga released last year. It’s been a yearly tradition of sorts for me to check this award out since I’m a lazy fart and I really don’t have the time (or money) to take risks on titles I’m not exactly sure I’m ready to read. So looking at these lists always leave an impression that they’re good since they’ve been listed by judges of this award. And they compose of critics, manga artists, and editors who have the experience and the knowledge on what makes an amazing manga. And that’s always a good, isn’t it?
This year didn’t have as much nominations as the previous year but it’s a good list nonetheless. Here’s a little rundown on these manga nominated for the award.
I’d like to think that I read a lot this year but I’m not exactly sure if I did. In the last year I’ve been gorging on texts that I think I had around forty books, mostly academic, in my bibliography. Was there time for manga? I always wish there was more time for manga.
I did try to read some manga this year and this is the list of my favourites that I have read. I honestly wish I read more. Again, this list is not based on whether it was released this year but are based on titles that I managed to read this year. And I read a couple of awesome ones this year. Here’s 13 awesome titles from 2013.
One of the things I dreaded when I moved to Australia was how I’m going to weed my precious manga collection. By then, my collection has blown out of proportion and to choose which ones to part with tore me apart. Quite literally, if you ask my heart.
Painful as the process was, it had to be done. Thankfully, my uni’s Japanese department was willing to adopt some of them. And to fill the void of my lost manga, I turned to ebookjapan.
Ebookjapan is a repository of Japanese digital reads: from novels, anthologies, to comics. The entire site’s in Japanese and only distributes Japanese language texts. It’s quite useless for those who don’t speak moon runes, but it is a treasure trove for those who can. Also a great learning tool for those studying Japanese.
I think there’s some of us who felt that a part of us died when Jmanga announced that they’re closing shop. I really liked Jmanga and I enjoyed the convenience of their service. But as with things digital, the idea that what I own disappears with their sites just sucks a lot.
Other manga apps (like Viz’s manga app) is available only to US and Canada. I tried purchasing digital editions here in Australia with little luck. Vertical digital editions can be bought in Australia via Amazon’s Kindle service so I’m thinking it’s okay elsewhere. You can also purchase DMG and Sublime books via Amazon.
That leaves a lot of manga left untranslated. I’m a little fortunate since I can check ebookjapan for Japanese titles. But that leaves a lot of English readers who have little access to manga. So when Crunchyroll announced that they’re working with Kodansha in publishing some fan favorites in English via their website, I was excited. Totally excited!
Comic Natalie releases another set of videos in their features section, Power Push. This time they tasked Natsume Ono and Rensuke Oshikiri to draw some illustrations of each other’s characters and wow… well… it’s always nice to see you favourite artists at work?
Well there’s the fact that Ono draws on this large tablet. Not sure if that’s a CINTIQ but wow. That’s just… Imagine if she drew her BL with that! So large and up close.
Either way, it was such an interesting exchange. Watching the videos also made them think how they thought so much of each other’s characters and how, for Oshikiri particularly, it was hard to capture the handsome and erotic appeal of Ono’s style, while Ono found it difficult to draw a girl. But both tried hard and did well, I think. The two seem to have a large appreciation for each other’s works, with Ono as a fan of Oshikiri’s High Score Girl and Oshikiri challenged by Ono’s style.
The challenge’s in promotion of Ono’s upcoming release for her Big Gan Gan comic, Acca. A new volume of High School Girl is coming out soon as well. I haven’t read Acca yet, so I’m looking forward to that book coming way.
You can also download wallpapers of their exchange in the Natalie page!
This is an NHK documentary called Osamu Tezuka: Sousaku no Himitsu. It was done in 1985 and it looks at the man’s life, work, and contribution to Japan. If you didn’t know the amazing of Tezuka, then see a glimpse of it in this video. Fortunately, the uploader shared it with English subs too!
This guy has done a lot for manga and has inspired quite a number of people to put their dreams and fantasies in panels. For girls comics (shoujo manga), a lot of female artists have shared that Tezuka’s Princess Knight (Ribon no Kishi) was an inspiration for them to draw girls’ comics. Although, I’d probably leave Sapphire in a class of her own as Tezuka has had his own hits and misses with female representation.
Nonetheless, seeing this made me really understand his amazing contribution not just to Japan but to comic art as a whole. I believe we did a Manga Moveable Feast on Osamu Tezuka a few years back. If you feel like reading up a little more on him, you can check out our Tezuka MMF archive.
I just saw this link randomly in my twitter dash late last night and couldn’t find who I got this from to give proper credit. But wow, a documentary to see Osamu Tezuka at work! While I have a vague idea how he does it (his life work tells a lot), it’s still nice to see the god of manga move around and show his craft.
This probably goes around the line of other awesome video of manga folks drawing their craft. I… should possibly post those here soon-ish.
So gather 5 girls in skype to talk about Kyoto Animation’s and mayhem ensues.
Well… we tried to behave.
Kyoto Animation’s summer offering, Free, just ended last week and while our feels were still fresh, I gathered some friends to talk about their thoughts and emotions about the series.
With me are some friends from tumblr: Kat (batgirls), Taka (takanye), Airin (icecreambat), and Nozmo (junjouprince). And we spent a good time talking about abs, olympics, Australia, and this series just exceeded our expectations.
In case you guys haven’t caught up to speed, you can watch Free! in Crunchyroll! Then listen in on our podcast and share your feels.
Note: I apologize for the awful recording quality I have. ;__; Made a mistake with the microphones and so yeah… :< Sadness. Will fix that in the next podcasts. But do listen in! The girls sounded awesome though.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
OP: Taste the Satisfaction (Free Soundtrack, Ever Blue)
ED: Splash Free (Free Soundtrack, Ever Blue, Free! ED)
00:00 – 2:17 Introductions
2:20 – Expectations of the Anime
6:20 – When did your expectations of the anime change?
10:00 – High Speed and Haru
15:00 – Favorite characters
18:00 – Rin Matsuoka and his amajing
21:00 – Free! charas as shounen chara stereotypes
23:00 – “There’s no canon ship here but friendSHIP”
27:00 – Did it have to be Rei?
28:00 – “It had to be Rei”
30:00 – Rin talking to hobos & the Australia experience
38:00 – Fears for the last episode
40:00 – “I just want Rin to be happy”
41:00 – In defense of Rin Matsuoka
47:00 – Free!’s potential after the first season
54:00 – “It sold itself more on the friendships than it did on the sport”
58:00 – The Free!Boys 5 years from now
1:05:00 – The betrayal of otaku and an anime just for us
1:16:00 – Free! breaking expectations of anime usually aimed towards fujoshi
1:18:00 – Expectations for upcoming fujoshi titles (e.g. Meganebu!)
1:22:00 – Thank you ladies!!
This was so much fun! I actually didn’t imagine that I will last until episode two. But I suppose that’ll get things rolling and I’m starting to get more ideas for the podcast.
So, do you want to join me for the fujojocast? Do you have an idea for the show? Don’t hesitate to e-mail me and if schedule and time permits, we can talk about it in the next fujojocast! Or you might receive a stalkery e-mail or message from me as well.