So I'm on my monthly trip down to Torrance's Asahiya to pick up my subscriptions to Newtype and Animage. Last year when their books were significantly cheaper, I would buy quite a lot of stuff from them. Bookoff is also in the area, so that was another plus. This year though, I'm pretty much caught up with everything I want to (in terms of comics). Plus, Kinokuniya is closer and now cheaper with their newest prices so that's where I usually get my stuff, along with online shops. I do try to make an effort and buy at least a book when I go down to Asahiya just to give them some business. It took a while to find something, but after wandering around the store for several minutes, I found this guide book.

I've actually heard of this as it caused some buzz among the otaku community when it was first released. I didn't think of getting it because it I didn't think it was important enough to put in my monthly book orders. But it would be something I'd buy impulsively, hence today.

The cover has illustrations on the rather large obi/dust jacket, but underneath, it looks just like any other guide book (see picture) to be less conspicuous. The book features sites that an otaku would most likely want to go in Tokyo. It has a very comprehensive and full-color guide of game, manga, video, toy shops, cosplay stores, maid cafes, and such in Akihabara (largest chapter), Shinjuku, Ikeburo, and along the Soubu and Yamanote subway lines. It's pretty scary how many establishments they highlight. In the later chapters, there's also a few descriptions of places for a single guy to eat and reasonably priced hotels to stay at after a convention. And as any guide book, it has maps of the city. It also has a few ads for Negima, Uta~Kata, and He is My Master.

I seriously doubt I'll take this to Japan when I go nor actually even go to the places they mention because it looks too over-the-top for me. But it's an interesting read, albeit ridiculous at times. Your "guide" around the places is the character on the right, the character on the left is just a dream.

So there you go, 366+ manga for this year. Like I said many times before, making that New Year's resolution of an average of one book a day was pretty dumb, but I was true to my words.

For next year, I'm making no promises. I'm definitely not going to make an artificial target for my reading and who knows, I may even read more. But there's a lot of other DVDs, CDs, and games that I had to sacrifice and postpone until 2005 because of comics. I need to get rid of those first.

As for this site, I'll continue in low-priority mode until February. I'll put up manga magazine reviews as it's a waste to let them sit around. However, for everything else like anime DVDs, manga, and games, I'm going to put on pause (or many just a very few updates). There's something that I wanted to do since last year, but do to time constraints, couldn't start it. January will be devoted to that. I also want to spruce up this site for the new year, so that's in the works too.

Anyhow, that's it for now.

Happy New Year!

And here's the leftover pile from 2004 that I'll hopefully have time to finish next year.

The Negima desktop accessories has been released and with it comes 11 new mascots. So add that up with the ones from Love Hina, it means a lot of RAM wasted on little cute icons. They give 5 mascots (Eva, Chachamaru, Ayaka, Yue, and Kufei) and you're supposed to play the game to unlock the other 6 (Nodoka, Chisame, Chiu, Setsuna, Konoka, and of course, Asuna). I've only managed to find Nodoka so far.

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1/1/05 Update:
I managed to get all the mascots and have updated the picture above accordingly. Just for future reference, you get wallpapers by playing the story game and defeating the 5 beasts, desktop clocks by talking to characters before starting class, and voices from just talking to characters in each room. The mascots are a bit more tricky:

Konoka: This is the hardest mascot to get. You have to go to her fortune-telling room and answer a series of 5-10 questions (I forgot how many). The questions are limited, but you get a different set everytime. The goal is to answer the questions correctly and get a good fortune. I think each response is assigned a score and your total score has to pass a certain threshold. Your fortune can range from a moster in the Library Island (bad), popular teacher (slightly good), principle of Mahora (good), an excellent mage (very good), one more which I forgot that gives you a very good, and finally, the teacher of 3-A (excellent, I think it was 3rd year but could have been 2nd). You only get the mascot when you get an excellent.

Asuna: Slighly difficult to get. As Asuna, you have to play 4 rounds of paper-rock-sissors with your fellow Baka Rangers, Ku fei, Makie, Kaede, and finally Yue. There seems to be a pattern with the earlier opponents, but luck ultimately prevails. You have to play all 4 rounds in a row, winning 6 rounds each without losing 6 rounds, to get Asuna. If you lose, you start all over again.

Setsuna: You get this by playing the Library Gollum mini-game from the mini-games menu (not during the story game). It's a rapid clicking, whack-a-mole type game, so it wasn't too difficult. Having played it many times during the story game, I just started it up at level 5 and beat it. There might be a certain minimum score to beat, but I passed it the first time I tried it.

Chiu & Chisame: You have to play the "Who is Fuuka and Fumika" reflex game. You get a vocal prompt from one of the twins saying "Who's elder/younger sister," or "Who's Fumika/Fuuka" or "Who am I" (if she uses "Boku" it's Fuuka, if she uses "Watashi" it's Fumika). You're then presented with two pictures and you have to click one within 1 second and pick the right girl. Most of the pictures show their hair, so it's easy to pick it out as Fumika, the younger one, has her hair in buns. The tougher ones are with face-shots where you have to learn it from just playing it. You have to get all 10 tries correct and maybe there's a minimum score too (~3500?).

Nodoka: Easiest to get. During the story game, go in the school house and take Kamo's 50 question quiz. You don't have to get them all in one sitting as it remembers what questions you answered and doesn't clear your record if you miss questions. However, the positions of the answers do change.
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The first edition of the software also comes with calendar cards that have the wacky versions of Negi's partner cards. They look quite nice alongside the other cards I got from the first editions of each character CD single.

As always, if you want those mascots, CD Japan has all the desktop accessories from Love Hina and Negima on sale.

I'm still trying to simmer down about what has happened the past few days, so what better way than to enjoy a nice movie in my living room. It's been a long time since I've turned on the AV system (hence no anime DVD reflections lately). Casshern has great visuals, the story is a bit lacking, but most of all, it didn't make me un-bummed! It's akin to accidentally watching a romance movie after breaking up. It just happened to discuss something that reminded me of what I've been emotionally fired up about.

Regardless, hopefully Dreamworks won't hack it up when they re-release it in the US. Now I've got two more bonus DVDs to go through for that movie. Someday...(they've got a making-of documentary that is almost as long as the movie!)

In the meantime, I'm planning to be less than 10 books behind by the end of the month in order to accomplish my goal that I set in January. That means I have to read 50 manga by Nov. 30th! Ouch.

As if I can't get enough of doing it 8 hours a day already, I come home to these little personal projects. It's manga related, but I'll give more details as I finish more of it. Estimated time of completion, probably Thursday or Friday.

What good timing! I was doing my manga rounds today and at the used bookstore, Book-Off, I saw the first/limited edition of Koi Koi 7. Since I have the other two LEs already, I allowed myself to buy double just to be a completist. Fortunately, being used, the price was cheaper than if I bought the regular edition new (only $4), so I didn't feel too badly about wasting money. I've updated the entry for the first volume and replaced the cover, but rather than having to flip there, here's a comparison of the two covers (LE on left, regular on right):

While I'm at it, here's the damage for today:

Kinokuniya:
Shonen Magazine (1 year subscription, not cheap)
Dragon Age (1 year subscription, not that cheap)
Dengeki Daioh (1 year subscription, not cheap)
(Alas, I decided to not renew my subscription to Young Magazine. They never featured Yuuko-rin anyway.)

Bookoff:
Koi Koi 7 LE
Ai Ren 2 ($1!)
DearS 1 ($1!)
Rayearth2 1,2

Asahiya:
Tsubasa 6 SE
Negima 6
xxxHolic 4
Sailormoon 11
Atashi n' Chi 1

Animegamers (special trip):
Rena Special Book (.hack)
Kurumi 9

A buddy of mine gave me an invitation to use GMail from Google. I'm surprised at how many people have already signed up for it. My first few choices for a username were already taken by other people, this includes my initial+last name@gmail, first.lastname@gmail, and firstlastname@gmail. Fortunately, I got my 3rd choice (firstlastname was just a test), which matches my .mac email. Ah well. I could have used jupiterstar@gmail.com, but I'll save that for when they open it up to the public. The current username I have now might be a little more hard to snag once everyone has access.

The evening started off with a meal at Little Tokyo, very fitting. As we were walking around though, I discovered some sad news. Nippon Books is closing and has a 50% clearance sale. That's two bookstores out of business in downtown LA.

After the meal, we quickly walked back to the concert hall. It's about 5 blocks between Little Tokyo. We got to the concert hall at around 6:55, 5 minutes earlier than the time stated on the ticket. We could have just walked in, but noticed that there was a merchandise table with shirts, programs, and something in a CD case. The light was damn long, but we waited. By the time I was at the front of the line, it was almost 7:20. The ushers were announcing that the concert was starting, so a lot of people ditched the line. There was only 5 people in front of me, so I managed to snag some goods.

The program is very nice, as it should be since it cost $25. During my time in line, they announced that they only had small shirts left. Sucks, but I really don't care for clothing. I was eyeing the CD. By the time I got up to the counter, it was revealed that the CD was just a case and it was actually just a calendar. I was about to leave, but I had already waited almost 30 minutes in line, so I bought some. $15 a piece.

So we go inside the concert hall. Our seats were third row from the front, about 1/4th of the way in. For the stage, the seats were spectacular. The only downside was that they had large screen projectors above the stage, which for us was a bit hard to see.

As everyone was still settling in, I looked around the room and spotted a familiar man with a mustache just entering the building on the opposite end of where we were sitting. Nobuo! Only when he walked to his seat did people finally notice him and he got a standing ovation. He was accompanied by a few people (family members?) and they were all dressed in traditional yukatas, tabi, and geta.

The concert started at 7:30 with the orchestra tuning, followed by Liberi Fatali from FF8. When the music started playing, I suddenly realized how horribly inadequate my home theater sound system is.

After the forceful intro (scenes from the game were shown on the screen), the voice actor for Tidus came out to MC. He starts off with the words "Listen to my story..." but to no avail. I don't think anyone really knew who he was. The only place I've seen him before is from the FFX International bonus DVD, but if I didn't watch that I probably wouldn't have known who he was anyway. He does a self intro and introduces the songs as well as the next three.

The next song was Zanarkand from FFX. Instead of having a mostly piano tune, it involved a lot of the orchestra. After that was Terra's Theme from FF6, probably the best song to be orchestrated. And the song to end the trio was Theme of Love from FF4.

After the intermission, James Arnold Taylor (Tidus) came back with some comments. It was also at this time that I noticed the little cue card guy in the front row. You would expect Tidus to have rehearsed his lines, but maybe he's just shy in front of the camera. He was introducing Vamo' Alla Flamenco but had to look at the cue cards to say it was from FF9.

The next three songs were Dear Friends from FF5, Vamo' Alla Flamenco from FF9, and Love Grows from FF8. All the songs were great, the first two featuring the guitar. I thought the guitar was a little soft, but that's probably because there's no mic to amplify the sound.

Intermission and Nobuo gets a standing ovation as he walks back into the seating area.

Tidus comes again and introduces the next three songs, Aeris's Theme from FF7, Not Alone from FF9 and Ronfaure from FFXI. Not Alone seemed to be a very strange choice out of the three.

Tidus then makes his final appearance as he introduces the last three songs. He cracks a dumb joke about being able to finally show people Zanarkand and bids his farewell. The next song was a medley from Final Fantasy I-III, and it sounded very similar to the medley in the Japanese concert. When the Chocobo theme started playing, people started clapping. That was followed by another medley, music from FF7 Advent Children. The music seemed very subdued and soft. Finally they end with the anthem of Final Fantasy.

About this time, I notice Nobuo and someone who I believe I've seen before at the door. At first, it seemed like they were getting ready for a quick getaway before the mob hits, but instead, Nobuo goes on stage with a translator and gives a little speech. He then introduces two other people to join him on stage, Hironobu Sakaguchi (creator, story), and Yoshitaka Amamo. When Nobuo first called them, everyone looked rather confused even though he had said their names. It wasn't until the translator said their names with an English accent that the crowd finally realized who they were. Reminds me of anime conventions when people laugh at jokes only after the translator has translated. They both go up there and give their little speech. There was one part where Yoshitaka kept going on and on and on. I would have hated to be the translator at that point, but she did pretty well for a live event.

There was an encore piece, One-Winged Angel from FF7. I stuck around for about 20 minutes after the concert as my friends were buying things. From the PA system, it sounded like they were broadcasting the press junket.

This concert is shorter than the first concert in Japan. The only new songs performed were "Dear Friends" which was the namesake of the show and a medley from FF7 Advent Children. The MC was terrible. Maybe it's his personality, but it didn't seem like he kept things interesting and was also reading off cue cards. The Japanese concert seemed much more lively where the voice actor for Tidus and voice actress for Yuna were on stage exchanging lively banter.

The crowds were in general better than what I had expected out of the gaming group. Most were well dressed, one guy was in full military uniform. From the concert CD, it didn't seem like the Japanese crowd made vocal cheers, only clapping. There were cheers after every song, but that's to be expected. One annoying girl was yelling "arigatoo gozaimasu" after the concert. It's supposed to be in the past tense, lady! But whatever, hecklers aren't as effective if they use proper English. I think the guys she was hanging out with were trying to ask the orchestra members if they would sell their sheet music. Of course the answer was no. But they still tried.

As a whole, the concert was incredible. That music hall is incredible too. If I wanted to listen to a particular instrument, all I had to do was look at them. Despite the minor annoyances of cheering and lines, it was well worth it.