It is very tempting to buy anime. I am currently saving for a house and so have had to severely curb my spending, which means that I frequently gaze at all those shiny, shiny anime DVDs like a poor Victorian orphan with his nose pressed against the glass panes of a shop window, staring longingly at the toys that can never be his, hoping that some kind gentleman will take pity on his plight and, mayhap, adopt him into his family where he will win over all with his earthy charm and grow to become a made man who is accepted in respectable society.

Whilst this sometimes happens to adorable urchins I have quickly discovered that it is less likely to do so for 30 year old bearded men in trenchcoats. In fact the only gentlemen that approach you are the HMV security guards who ask in polite but firm tones that you stop staring longingly through the window as it is unsettling the staff.
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Last year I went on holiday to Japan with my friends Tom and Amy. Our original plan had been for a 3 week holiday to cover both Tom and my 30th birthdays, in which we would spend a week in Sapporo or Sendai, a week in Tokyo and a week in Osaka. However, finiancial constraints led to us scaling it back to just 14 days in Tokyo over the first couple of weeks of March, with numerous trips to nearby areas to enable us to see more of the country. We were on one of these trips when the earthquake struck.

For most of my life natural disasters were something that happened to other people in distant lands, experiencing one first hand made it clear how lucky we are that Britain is - for the most part - a geologically stable land.
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Back in 2010 the anime world was left reeling by the shock death of director Satoshi Kon. Posthumous plaudits poured in for the celebrated auteur whose filmography demonstrated real quality over quantity, and who sadly died with his final film unfinished.

Kon was one of a handful of truly visionary directors who could command full control over the projects they direct, his success allowing him the freedom to create some truly unique and influential films. He had reached the point where he could be mentioned in the same breath as Hayao Miyazaki, Katsuhiro Otomo and Mamoru Oshii, and during his long career he worked with both Otomo and Oshii on the likes of Akira, Patlabor 2 and Memories.
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Yep, I'm all signed up and have my badge and have had a very strange morning so far. It seems that Warwick Uni was hosting some kind of youth football thing, so there's been massive numbers of footballers around the place this morning.

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I've kind of missed all of the buzz about K-ON!. It was one of the popular anime series that kind of passed me by, I knew the basic premise but little more so I was quite looking forward to checking it out.( Read more...Collapse )

The first part of Casshern Sins has been one of the standout anime releases of the year so far in my opinion, and I was waiting for the follow up with baited breath!

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Our current competition has been running for a little while and is due to end next Monday, but the prize is a good one so I thought I'd post it here to make sure no-one misses out on a chance to enter!  This time round we have a model of the Going Merry pirate ship from the excellent anime and manga series One Piece up for grabs, courtesy of our good friends at www.neonmartian.com.  The model is this one:



It's already pretty rare so this is a great opportunity to pick one up, check out www.animetion.co.uk/competition for more details.

Competition open to residents of the UK and Eire only, closing date 28th March 2011.

Cheers,
Rich.