“Supplementary” because it’s not from an anime or manga (or game), rather it’s from the dreaded Real Life. Not that this particular Cat-based money box is much of a rarity – they were a moderately common sight on UK high-streets over the Christmas period, and they’ve been the Crunchyroll daily deal on more than one occasion. What is perhaps more shocking than seeing them is the fact that I don’t actually own one.

This particular example was spotted at the May London MCM Expo, the a-few-times-annually-in-various-places UK comic convention, which for the most part is just an excuse to buy ludicrous amounts of stuff, cosplay, or both. Actually, as a first-time attendee, the cosplay was initially a little overwhelming – it’s not like I’ve never seen people cosplaying IRL before, but being an early-attender, I was getting to the ExCeL at the point where a good 60-70% of the attendees where dressed up, and that was kind of boggling to me (even when being “dressed up” amounts to simply throwing on one of those Naruto Akatsuki capes). Not that I have a problem with cosplay, mind you – although I may not be inclined to say any differently if I did. At these con situations, they not only outnumber you, they have weapons. Not a good mix, really.
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I think I’m going to be sounding like a broken record here, reiterating something that I’ve said in a previous post, but there’s nothing like being stuck on a train for three hours to focus ones mind towards writing something up one has been meaning to for a while. Funnily, in this case, I’m writing up something that involved my last three hour train ride somewhere, but on that occasion I didn’t drag my laptop with me – oddly enough, I figured being sat-up all night wouldn’t result in a productive state of mind.

Well, okay, that wasn’t necessarily funny.

Anyway, at the beginning of May, around the bank holiday weekend (or the Royal Wedding this year, for a reference point that might have a smidgen more relevant for the non-UK crowd. Clearly the actual date would be better, but that’d involve opening a calendar), the Sci-Fi London festival occurs, sporting a bunch of events and movie screenings. Part of that for a while now has been an all-night Anime movie marathon.
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Except I don’t really usually make this kind of end of year post, meaning that this is less of a token post than it is an anomaly.

It’s been a weird kind of year for me anime-wise. I feel like I’ve seen a lot of stuff, but I’m not really sure that’s actually the case. I mean, the likes of Kurogane talk about having seen some 40+ shows, and I know for a fact I’ve not seen that many (at least, not that many from this year). Sure, I’ve seen a fair amount of older shows on home media formats, but I doubt even that would make up the difference.

No, in actuality, I’ve been watching a lot of anime these last three or four months, whilst the first half of the year was pretty barren. I don’t think this is anything to do with the quality of the shows airing during those periods, more just where my mind was at the time. In addition to that, with the anime events at the BFI back in May, Scotland in October and at the Leeds Film Festival in November, I’ve certainly seen a hell of a lot of anime movies theatrically this year (Actually, I’ve just seen a crapton of movies theatrically in general).

But, hey, it’s certainly been another year of anime. I don’t really think it’s necessarily been any better or worse than any other given year in recent memory, even though we are in a still downturn in terms of the number of shows being produced. I think my biggest disappointment of the year is that Sunrise have been in some regards quiet. Of course they still made those Gundam Unicorn OAVs I’ve not got around to watching, the Gundam 00 movie and a few other bits and pieces, but at the same time they’ve not made any of the kind late-night otaku fare I’ve tended to get far too obsessed with in the last decade. If it wasn’t for the fact that it ended with what felt like a clear set-up for an OAV series they didn’t sell well enough to fund, I’d say that it probably explains the whole tone of last years SoraKakeGirl – somewhere between a loving tribute and a scathing mockery of everything Sunrise was in the 00’s. Kind of an “out with the old, in with the new” thematic purge, if you will.
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Merry Christmas, y’all. Because, you know, I feel the inclination to at least throw something together to post today. I would call Milky Holmes the Secret Best Show of the season, but given that I’ve sat through several discussions about how awesome the shows last episode was the last couple of days, I don’t really think it’s quite so secret. Also, when I say “sat through”, I really mean “ignore”, since I’ve yet to watch it myself (waiting anxiously for the Crunchy stream tomorrow…).
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Hey, it’s certainly been a big news weekend this week, and no news has been bigger than the announcements from the big show.

By which, of course, I mean iDOLM@STER 2. This is, of course, not surprising to anyone, given that they essentially announced last year that they’d be announcing details of it this year, but it’s still kind of cool to see. Less cool is that my NTSC-J 360 is still somewhat on the broken side. Guess I’ll have to get that replaced at some point.
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