A weekly look into American otaku culture

In what has surprisingly been the best piece of anime news to have come out the in past couple of months, FUNimation has announced that they have the rights to the Negima anime.

This came as a big surprise to me. We all knew that FUNimation was interested in the series last March when they had registered the Negima.tv domain name. After all, it seemed like a good investment at the time. “Love Hina” was a huge success for Bandai and Tokyopop with anime and manga sales respectively, and it is in my own personal opinion that it helped sparked the last boom in anime interest. Also, at the time the Negima manga was dominating the US sales charts and making a name for the new coming company Del Rey. So I think we could understand why FUNimation wanted dibs on this series even when it wasn’t even close to being finished in Japan.

But when the anime finally came out, the majority of fans all agreed that it sucked. Sure, the “Love Hina” anime just isn’t as good as the manga was because they had to take out all the raunchy material, but I felt that is could still stand well on it’s own. Negima, on the other hand, had a lazy animation and weak storyline, which pretty much left the fans nothing to look forward to with this adaptation. Sadly, it wasn’t until the last three episodes that this series really started to shine. It’s a tantalizing look and the potential that the show could have been.

So I really thought that FUNimation had backed out of the deal once the final product came out in Japan. FUNimation’s philosophy is that they want shows that have a good storyline, not ones that will make a quick buck for them. For the most part, I respect their logic. Sure, it does produce a large number of flops (like Kiddy Grade, Spiral, and even Kodocha), but man, they’re some of the best flops around, making them kinda cult classics among the anime community. But Negima wasn’t good, so why would they continue to invest in it?

But I’m still really glad that they are. There are still a large number of Akamatsu fans out there like myself who are going to support this series no matter what. A bad Akamatsu show is still better then most of the stuff on the market right now. So, yeah, I guess there’s still a lot of potential to make some money by giving the fans what they want.

Now I’m just waiting for FUNimation to finally announce that they have BECK, then I’ll be one very happy fanboy.

(PS, Inspired by Studio GAINAX, I’m going to now end all of my posts reporting how many DVDs and tankoubon are left on my “to watch / read” pile)

Here’s a couple of little bits floating around in the Anime Almanac this week:

First of all, remember how I went all moyism on us last month? Well, as the title of the post says, it came!

Click to Enlarge

Isn’t that beautiful! That had only cost me $7 per item! Now, that’s not much of a deal when you think about the manga, but when you thing about the art boxes and the Princess Nine complete collection… hee hee hee (^_^).

Then my roommate told me how people on some message board were talking about getting a free gift from ADV when they got their packages. I was like, “No, I don’t think I got one…” So I looked at what I ordered, and sure enough ADV gave me a free copy of a Generrtor Gawl DVD. Lol, if my roommate had never said anything, I would have assumed I ordered it for some reason.

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And speaking of ADV, that crazy Suck-Bunny loving producer David Williams has just trademarked “Jiggle Counter.” For those of you not familiar with this company’s great sense of humor, the “Jiggle Counter” is a little extra that ADV puts in their fan-servicey shows. It counts the number of times a character’s breast moves separately from the rest of her body. You can see the proud man’s accomplishments here!

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Also, ever since last week I’ve been getting a lot of traffic from my site with searches for “paipan” on Google. This could mean that I am either:

A) Helping out confused Negima fans.

or

B) Dissapointing a lot of perverts.

Either way, I think it’s pretty funny.

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And finally, one of my favorite readers has started up an anime blog with a couple of his friends. So I gotta give my shout-out to Os at Kono Soro. Everyone, check this group out and give ‘em some of the good anime community spirit! I’ll add you guys to my blog roll if you add me to yours, okay?

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Anyway, I am currently working on one of my detailed and in depth posts on how I think the anime market is about to change over here in the US. I’m sorry it’s been taking so long to write it, but as a full time student and part time office worker, free time is never available. But thanks for all of you guys sticking with me for the past couple of months. I promise, there’s still more Scott on the way for you!

There’s been a number of new blogs that have started up since I came around about half a year ago, but none has struck me so much as this new blogger by the name of Problematic. As a 17-year-old girl from Canada, she really brings a unique style and voice to this community. But I think most of all she just reminds me of myself when I started off with this whole thing. She’s extremely friendly, polite, and grateful to all the people who help her out, and it really does pay off with a great response from the readers. While she’s still very green, I really think she’s going to be a hit very soon. So I strongly encouraging you guys to check out her awesome site!

And Problematic, let me just take to the time to give you a personal hello and welcome to the blogging community. I’m sure that you already know this, but there are a lot of very nice people here who are always willing to help out in anyway that you want. Keep up the good work and positive attitude, and remember that you at least good one big fan over here rooting you on.

So last week while I was going on a shopping binge at Borders, I came across a new release from Del Rey called “Gotcha Gotcha”. The cover art looked nice and so did the description of the series on the back of the book. But the book was shrink-wrapped, so I wasn’t able to view the content at all. Because of this, I held off on buying the book.

So I’m asking you guys what to you think of this series? Cute characters? Fanservice? Good comedy? Is it worth getting?

I’d really appreciate anything you guys have to suggest!

ありがとうございます。　m(_ _)m

I always like to share in funny web comics about anime with the rest of you guys in the blogging world. Today’s VGCats not only pokes fun of Full Metal Alchemist, but also rips on another small obsession of mine, Harry Potter.

Enjoy!

…. when the translators are too bashful to tell you what they’re supposed to be translating.

Such was the case when I was reading Del Rey’s newest Negima release today. In one of the chapters, Negi gets into a pretty heated argument with Asuna. The argument ends when Negi “crosses the line” by saying to Asuna:

“Oh yeah? Well you have teddy bear undies, and you’ve got a paipan! Hah! Didn’t think I knew what I paipan was, huh? Well, I do!”

Well, I most certainly do not know what a “paipan” is, and considering that him saying this is the turning point of the whole volume, it must be very important! Fortunately for me Del Rey always puts translation notes towards the end of each of their books, so I just flipped over and found their little write up on the “paipan.”

Paipan- A term that has appeared more then once in the Negima! series, it certainly isn’t the kind of word that one would expect a well-brought-up young lad like Negi to be using. Most recently appearing on page 130 of this volume, the closest translation might be “shorn”… as in what one might do to one’s nether regions, were one so inclined. (It can also refer to those prepubescent who’ve yet to develop… um, certain secondary sexual characteristics.) Naughty Negi!

o_O?

What the-? Could they possibly be more ambiguous then that?!?

I spent a good 10 minutes re-reading over that description and looking back at the comic to try to make sense of it all. “… as in what one might do to one’s nether regions…”? Well, there are so many things that can be done to one’s nether regions, and as I went through all the dirty possibilities in my head, neither one of them seemed to match up to a thing that Asuna could have. Plus the way it was worded can also imply that one person is doing something to someone else’s nether regions. Again, that made more possibilities that didn’t fit.

And then there’s the “prepubescent” line that also throws you off. As a guy, what’s the first thing that comes to mind about what girl “develops” through adolescence? Why, boobs, of course! But what would Asuna growing breasts have anything to do with the whole thing? And so I pondered, and pondered, and pondered.

Then it finally hit me, and I thought to myself, “Now why the hell couldn’t they have just said that in the first place!” I mean, the book does have a 16+ rating and is shrink-wrapped on store shelves. Why couldn’t Del Rey just tell us instead of being so coy with this nonsense?

In fact, if any of you did understand what they were talking about from that description, then you understand the meaning of the word, “shorn”, which was their best translation of the word. But “shorn” is not a common word in English, and I couldn’t remember what it meant until I figured out what a “paipan” was. There is a very common sh-verb in the past tense that would have been the perfect translation. All they would have had to do was boldface it or put it in quotes to imply the innuendo.

The reason why I’m not saying what it means is because I want to see just how many of you can figure it out by yourselves from their description. If you really are fickled, just leave a comment and I’ll clue you in. Now no cheating, people, think long and hard about this. Besides, you might not like what you see if you go searching “paipan” on Google.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have just received my first spam for a porno web site written entirely in Japanese.

Don’t ask me why, but I feel that this is somewhat of an accomplishment.

Also, this little bit of news deserves to the title of “Anime WTF Moment of the Week” even if it is only Sunday. Enjoy!

So I finally got around to seeing the end of Negima. How fricken awesome was it! I’m gonna be honest, I had a lot of expectations with this series. Ken Akamatsu is my favorite manga artist of all time, and he’s the reason why I became the anime fan I am today. But I was pretty disappointed with the anime adaptation of Negima from the very beginning, and kinda dropped my interests in watching the series after the “Kyoto Arc” ended at episode 22.

But then Jenn IMs me the other day going, “Oh my god, did you see episode 23 yet?!?”

o_O? And as she finished watching the series’ final 3 episodes, she gave me a brief commentary on how sad and emotional it was. So I finally started watching it, and wow, it’s the most powerful thing I’ve seen since Air. First of all, the animation quality was wonderful, and if makes you wonder just why it wasn’t that good from the beginning. And then the story…. there was little hints about how deep and emotional the story could be with previous episodes like with the ghost girl, but then they just pull this wonderful twist out of no where. Sure, it a very wild and random, but man, I’m not complaining!

So mad props to you, Ken Akamatsu, for completely kicking ass again. Everyone, if you had given up on this series mid way through, I recommend watching it to the very end. The finally three episodes quickly made this whole thing worthwhile to me.