Densha Otoko is over

I've finally watched the last episode of Densha Otoko. My reactions are pretty much demonstrated by this guy:
BENOIIIIIIIIIIISSST! I wrote a longer sentimental comment in ADTRW which I don't feel comfortable sharing on my site, but yeah...the general gist of it was that I cried like a little girl. Please please please watch this show for the good of humanity. When you see this horrible group of outcasts band together, it is such a good feeling Your faith in people will be restored.

Second, let us discuss Akiba-Ou Senshuken. Thanks to a particular goon, many of us have managed to see this gem in Japanese television: a quest to become Akiba King! This thing is seriously funny and also often infuriating (jealousy at awesome prizes). Where else do you see a bunch of otaku fighting each other to get to the top of a greasy slide, for a Rei figure and a chance to match sound clips to seiyuu? Except the best part of this was OMG SURPRISE APPEARANCE BY ACTUAL SEIYUU!

INOUE KIKUKO, DOES SHE TRULY UNDERSTAND WHAT'S GOING ON THROUGH THIS MAN'S MIND? Appearances were also made by Aya Hisakawa and Ai Shimizu. In the final runs of the first round, where the one to make it up to the slide got to stand next to her, the look of determination when the hardcore Ai Shimizu otaku was really something. He did manage to scramble up, and Ms. Shimizu gave him a personalized call message recorded on his cellphone as a prize.

Next up, they go to various Akiba maid cafes where they do a variety of things. Maid cafes, if you are not familiar with them, are basically restaurants where the waitresses dress up in maid costumes, call you goshujinsama, and fulfill your horrible anime maid fantasies. Sounds pretty seedy like a maid whorehouse, but actually it's kind of cute and relatively innocent considering the clientele are basically nerds. They will also call you oniichan if you ask them to.

In one challenge, they had to identify the incorrect part of 5 maid uniforms. Only cosplay otaku got it right. Later, an even harder challenge involved them sampling random drinks and then trying to find which maid cafe it came from. Only two otaku made it to the final round.

The final round involved giving random girls a "moe" makeover. The two finalists drew numbers from a box, and matched them to the corresponding girl. The winner would be the one who could make their assigned girl the cutest.

One guy got pretty lucky with an easy task.

The other did not.

TASTE THE DESPAIR!!

AAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!

However, the guy stuck with ganguro girl happened to be cosplay expert otaku, and he ended up doing a pretty decent job with her. Linked in case you plan on watching this and do not want to spoil it. The results from the other guy were pretty weird too. He knew people would be less impressed at his transformation compared to making over a fucking GANGURO, so he had to go overboard on his girl. We ended up getting to see his creation, a "nekomimi meido imouto." Wow.

Definitely a lot of fun, and also very educational for aspiring otaku. If you have ever called yourself otaku proudly, seriously, most likely you are just an attention-whoring moron that most people hate. You do not deserve the prestigious title of otaku until you can match up to even half of some of these guys. Ai Shimizu otaku was hardcore man. In the invade your room" part, he did the concert dance without even looking! And next time, ask yourself...do you have Marimite costumes in your closet? Because they do.

Posted by Paranda at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)

Komugi Z volume 2 now out

Yay. Random Momoi-Komugi cosplay picture party!



This is a good week.

Posted by Paranda at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

We Love Katamari

Oh yes, yes...yes!!! I dropped by the GameStop today to grab my copy, and I can't wait until I actually have some time tomorrow to start working on fantastic star building. It should have come out yesterday, but my local store didn't stock until 3PM today. The GameStop guys are kind of huge jerks if you ask me, because when I asked earlier that morning if they stocked "Katamari" yet, the tattooed man behind the register looked like he wanted to gut me and feed my decaying carcass to the pigeons. What the hell? I don't know, maybe it's because he is getting asked that a lot, but you shouldn't take it out on a customer. Especially when it's your own damn fault you didn't get the game shipped on the day it was supposed to be out.

Anyway, We Love Katamari is the sequel to Katamari Damacy which came out a while ago. I have included pics of my copy to make you jealous in case you tried to buy it and found that it was sold out (I was lucky. Grabbed 1 of the 2 remaining). For those who are unfamiliar with the series, the general concept of the games is to roll a little ball around until it becomes a huge ball..a really huge ball. The controls are so simplistic: you just point the analog sticks in the right direction and that's it. The game's story mode also features weird art and fun characters that make it a blast. Oh, did I mention it is cheap? The first one sells for 19.99, and this second one which is only going for 29.99 when it is easily worth 40+. That's so low you should probably buy both if you haven't tried the Katamari franchise before. Since I have not actually tested it out the sequel myself yet, I will refrain from writing more comments. Visit the site: http://katamari.namco.com/

P.S. I like namco. They make lots of fun games...though I was surprised to see that hey are also responsible for the Yumeria PS2 game. I guess that's sort of a good thing because Yumeria is cute.

Posted by Paranda at 9:27 PM

TSUKUNE-CHANNNNNNNN

Because I just watched it, and I felt like making this gif.

Also, Momoi-san is getting lazy because Tsukune-chan sounds way too old at times. Compare with her Mii voicework in Popotan.

Posted by Paranda at 11:07 PM

Blah. Random entry.

Items of concern this week:

- MORITA-SENPAI!!! I like Honey and Clover and I like Morita.

- Momoi improvising "Do you remember love" from Macross on keyboard at Anipara. Oh 2003, what a great year for Halko Momoi fans.

- Priz needs to return my emails or I will start to AIM-stalk him so he can finally watch GURAGURA.

- Momoi Akihabalove DVD search not going well at all. I did manage to scrounge up some obscure songs from a CD that she sold at Comiket 67 that Nakid never ever ever promoted. What the hell, Nakid?

- Akibapop has the best intro/outro I have ever heard and I could loop it forever because I love "A. K. I. B. A Akibapop" cheerleader style chanting to fast beats. :heart: Mosaic.wav. I desperately want the full version.

- My investment professor appears to be BS'ing his way through the last two classes. I hope he's only kidding around and will actually start teaching next week! Otherwise...

- Do I like KOTOKO enough to buy this? http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=GNCA-16
I already have this song on Glass no Kaze, so it is a huge waste of money. But..it comes with a DVD...and it's not some random singer, it's fucking KOTOKO!! Help me out.

Posted by Paranda at 10:38 PM | Comments (2)

Interesting Momoi fan art.

Good news, I fixed my computer. Now I can write more about Halko again on my site which nobody reads. Speaking of Halko, I went to the NYU Anime club meeting for the first time today, and out of the 8 or so people I questioned, 7 of them had no clue who she was. After some careful memory prodding, I had one of them recognize her as Maya from Ragnarok Online but other than that..no success(Yes, I attempted to casually slide it into conversation. Even I have enough common not to go up to some random guy and scream "HAY DO YOU KNOW UNDER17, IT ROX!"). Wow... so disillusioning. When is she gonna get famous??

Anyway, to the point of this post: http://nicopyonzoku.hp.infoseek.co.jp/
Momoi Haruko fanart! Well we all know it existed, because fanart exists of every single person or thing on earth..but I am posting especially about this site because the drawings are particularly cute and the art ideas are well executed. The drawings are sloppy, but I enjoy the Tondol Baby evolution depicition. Plus, it appears to be done in oekaki or MS Paint so that is always impressive. Mainly, I chose to write about it because this drawing is hilarious and I am now using it for my AIM buddy icon:

There are a few pics in all. Take care when browsing though, as the site does contain some questionable drawn loli content. I would avoid the gallery links on the bottom row.

Posted by Paranda at 11:21 PM | Comments (0)

NYU 2005 Fall Semester

retsu begin de gozaimasu

Posted by Paranda at 2:07 AM | Comments (0)

Computer destructed.

Friday afternoon, via a horrendous registry accident (LOL PAY ATTENTION IF YOU ARE MANUALLY DELETING VALUES DIRECTLY UNDER THE SOFTWARE TREE, BECAUSE IF YOU MISCLICK, YOU DIE), I completed destroyed my main PC. After a failed restore/merge of my backup software hive, somehow Windows XP died on reboot, and now completely refuses to get past the initial boot screen. To top it all off, it has locked me out of all my own accounts and/or changed the password algorithm, so I can't even access the recovery console to repair my registry. I spent about 6 hours trying to do everything to get around this, up to resetting all admin passwords to blank, yet it refuses to authorize me..so I'm guessing I royally fucked up whatever component checks passwords. My only option is to reinstall Windows XP, but I can't find my disc, so I will have to wait until next week to get ahold of a new one. In the meantime, I will opt to play PS2 a lot instead of try and use my secondary PC which sucks.

Thus, I will not be making any new updates aside from this one for however long it takes me to fix my desktop.

Posted by Paranda at 4:19 AM | Comments (0)