The Otakuologist

Dude, Where’s My Head?

The Otakuologist — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 09:05:42 +0000

Imagine that you’re a female Dullahan, a headless Irish Faerie who carries her head under her arm while riding a headless horse on your way to act as portend to a humans death. Now imagine that you have… well… misplaced your head. Maybe you dropped it, maybe somebody took it but either way… it’s gone.

You’d be pretty pissed off, right?

Now suppose that in your search to find said head, you wind up in Tokyo. Suppose also that since your traditional Irish garb of a black funeral dress and your traditional Irish mode of transportation (the headless horse) seems a little out of place in modern day Tokyo.

What do you do?

A – Change your horse into a flat-black painted, unlicensed motorcycle
B – Change into sexy (if slightly androgynous) riding leathers
C – Move in with an underground doctor with a crush on you
D – Get a job as a “transporter”
E – All of the above.

The answer, of course is ‘E’ and that means that you are one of the many intriguing characters of the anime “Durarara.” I just started watching this show and it’s one of my favorites.

The characters are engaging, the story is constantly shifting gears and the artwork has a kind of rough quality that I’ve always been a fan of.

The anime is based on a series of light novels written by Ryohgo Narita, of “Baccano” fame. It’s also been made into a manga.

The best thing about this anime is that it’s relatively new. And even though it airs in Japan, I don’t have to wait sometimes weeks for someone to upload it onto one of those unreliable anime fan sites. Usually I only have to wait an hour after it airs in Japan.

I encourage you all to check this show out on Crunchyroll. Do you want to watch it as soon as it comes out like I do? Then you should Get a Crunchyroll Premium Membership!

This post contains Affiliate Links. For more information read my Disclosure Policy

Boxee Gets Loads of Anime with Crunchyroll [Streaming Video] (lifehacker.com)
ISG: Crunchyroll Releasing Naruto, Other Facebook Games to Promote Anime Brands (insidefacebook.com)
Boxee and Crunchyroll Bring Anime to Your TV or PC (mashable.com)
All-Con to Host U.S. Debut of Japan’s 24-Hour Endurance 1,000 Anime Song Medley (prweb.com)
Gogo Is A Good Gundam Singer [Gundam] (kotaku.com)

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Yeah, Like I Know About World of Warcraft

The Otakuologist — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:10:39 +0000

Image by swanky via Flickr

I’d like to apologize for the past few World of Warcraft posts made on this blog. All of them in fact. As I explained in a previous post, I had signed up for a service that would help me get more backlinks here to the blog and therefore more traffic.

To recap: I write posts that get posted on other peoples blogs and in return I get blog posts written for this blog. That way we all get backlinks and more traffic

Unfortunately, even though it’s a really great idea, it’s not feasible for this blog because there were almost no anime, manga or otherwise otaku culture related blogs I could trade blog posts with. Just the guy with the WoW posts. And after doing some research, his information was wildly inaccurate.

So I’ve dropped the service until there are more relevant blogs on that site. Too bad because I really enjoyed writing the posts for somebody else. But from now on my focus is on this blog. I’ll get my traffic organically thank you.

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Ready For An MMORPG Download That Won’t Break The Bank?

The Otakuologist — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:38:33 +0000

A few years ago I came across new type of game they called an MMORPG. A little research on the net told me that MMORPG stood for “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game” and it was a little different than the so called ‘normal’ Role Playing Games I had played in the past, i.e. Ultima, Oregon Trail and the like. The difference was that I could play it online with other people.

In my mind this was totally new! A game I could play with others without actually seeing their real selves? And I could hide behind a totally new persona? This was an awesome idea! I began the MMORPG download immediately.

The game was Second Life and I got hooked right off the get go. This is not to say that being “in game” was always a bowl of cherries. Due to the massive amount of memory it took to run the game it often froze up my computer and there was always some jerk looking to “grief” you, which meant that some a-hole would shoot at you, or push you or just be a general nuisance. The graphics also often took too long to load.

But it was my first example of being social without being social; that is, I could be anybody I wanted to be. If I decided to be male or female, black or white, it was my choice.

I don’t play in the Second Life universe anymore but I still play MMORPG’s now and then. These days I help save the land of Isya from destruction by playing Fiesta by Outspark Gaming. Fiesta is a nice online RPG that:

Has a huge game world,
Massive battles, and best of all…
Free play… which is what a poor otaku like me is always looking for.

Once again, like all applications of the computer game sort, there are some things that kind of bug me. For instance I play on a laptop and without a mouse the controls are a little hard to get used to. Also, like all MMORPG downloads, you gotta kill the weaker monsters before you can get to the cooler, bigger monsters. I’m not saying that it isn’t fair… I’m just saying I don’t like it.

But the graphics load quite nicely, with an anime look and feel that I love. Plus, if you’re the social type like me, you can join a party and go after those big bad boss monsters and kick a little demon tail.

I invite you to at least download it to your own computer. It doesn’t cost you a penny to play although they do offer some premium items. But from what I’ve seen so far, the premiums aren’t necessary to have a good time in the Fiesta universe.

If you do check out the game I’d love to know what you think of it in the comments section. And as always your comments and questions about anything are always appreciated.

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Its Not Just About WoW

The Otakuologist — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:32:13 +0000

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

You may have noticed a lot of posts about the World of Warcraft lately. I mean a lot. I promise you that this site is not turning into a giant squeeze page for WoW. There is a reason for all these WoW posts however, even though it may not be a good one.

In order to get some more web traffic to this site I signed up for a service called Free Traffic System. The premise is a good and valid one. I write articles and they get posted to other blogs, and in return other bloggers write articles and they get posted to other blogs. Mine included of course.

The one big problem is that there aren’t enough blogs about otaku culture in the Free Traffic System database. Hell, there aren’t even any simple anime blogs in it. Correction: there is one now: mine.

There are other problems as well… most of the blogs on their database are simply article dumps. Blogs that are specifically created to dump articles of any topic in there. They have their place but I want more otaku sites to post to.

So I now ask for the help of any blog dedicated to otaku culture including the following:

Anime
Manga
Japanese Pop Culture
Cosplay
Figure collecting
Cool Japan
Akihabara
etc…

As you can see, the possibilities are endless. It’s not just about World of Warcraft or Anime or Manga. I need traffic and guest posters. If you have your own blog and your own hosting please, please, please contact me or simply go to this website and find out more yourself.

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Introducing The Otakuologist’s Toolbar!

The Otakuologist — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:58:00 +0000

You may be wondering what is next for The Otakuologist… look below:

What you see above this paragraph is a partial screen capture of the brand spankin’ new toolbar. That’s right, I have decided to make my own toolbar so you can have more stuff to do on this site.

With the new toolbar you can do the following stuff…

Search powered by Google
Watch free anime.
Keep up with new posts with the RSS feed button
Play text based games
New features added regularly.

In the future expect videocasts and podcasts and more.

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My Favorite Anime Titles

The Otakuologist — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:11:46 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

I was just sitting here thinking of my choice to live as an anime fan and recalling what my favorite titles were. Some of them, like Speed Racer and Astro Boy I remember from my youth. Others I’ve just gotten to know. Some are films, some are series, all have a place in my library of cool anime.

If you have any that you think should be added to the list, feel free to leave it in the comments section.

Speed Racer
Toradora
Bakemonogatri
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Kimba the White Lion
Astro Boy
Marine Boy
Space Battleship Yamato
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Durarara!
Charger Girl Juden Chan
Akira
Ponyo
Spirited Away
Millenium Actress
Perfect Blue

That’s all I have for now. I’d like to see your choices, there’s never too much anime.

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Lolicons Beware!

The Otakuologist — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 04:21:45 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

With the sentencing of 40 year old manga otaku Christopher Handley to six months in jail for possession of 7 books depicting acts of child pornography and bestiality last week, it felt like a good time to discuss why it’s dangerous for lolicons in the US.

Let it be said that I’m not for or against the lolicon subset of the otaku culture. Nor am I saying that I believe that the government is wrong or right in this issue. I simply don’t know. I am not lolicon but I have no opinion on anybodies activities other than my own.

I’m just offering a friendly warning to people who collect loli manga in the States: You should probably stop.

Japan has a different culture than ours. They are strictly against child pornography but their laws only prohibit photographic and live action footage of children. Therefore lolicon manga sidesteps the law in Japan.

But this isn’t Japan. It’s the United States and as the leader (so they say) of the Western world, different moral sensibilities are displayed. Therefore, if you go looking on Amazon Japan for loli materials or a similar site and think that it’s legal to buy them remember poor old Christopher Handley.

Not that the characters in the manga have to be lolis, though. Otaku Review brought up a really good point. First of all the author writes that it’s not a free speech issue, it’s an obscenity thing which overrules free speech (which I’m not sure I agree with). Secondly, he brings up a very good point about other forms of what might be considered underage pornography:

Do you get it? If you have a manga of “I Love Sister,” or the “School Days” game or video or any manga or anime where an underage girl (or boy) has a panty shot you can go to jail for 20 years. Christopher got lucky with his six months.

Honestly I don’t know if it’s a free speech issue. But until they say it’s legal, be careful.

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What’s next? Pooping?

The Otakuologist — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:50:29 +0000

Remember the Training with Hinako post I posted? Well the 16 year old fanservice queen is at it again with “Sleeping with Hinako.” What that means for lonely otaku is that they can now fall asleep with the girl they just worked out with.

There is a problem though. It’s too sexy, apparently.

Read about it at Sankaku Complex.

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How Fanservice Helped Me Slim Down

The Otakuologist — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:01:36 +0000

I’ve got something to admit. It’s a little embarrassing but it needs to be said… I… am a fatass. There. I said it. I’m not proud of it but admittance of a problem is the first step to it’s solution.

Fortunately I’ve found a video that actually came out in April of last year I believe so I’m a little late reporting this. However the premise of the video is simple. It aims to help otaku get fit… and it gives a great incentive.

Fanservice.

Yup, the video, “Training With Hinako” stars a very moe girl who somehow became an anime character who has been warned that she must lose weight to continue to be an anime character of her show. Strange plot, yes, but honestly the plot isn’t the selling point here.

The selliing point are all the fanservice shots available if you just workout with her. I’m actually surprised how well this works for me. I’m also surprised at how easy it is to lose weight by simply looking down an anime girls shirt. Well, that and eating less I suppose.

It’s already helped. I’ve gone from 294lbs to 289lbs.

You can get a copy of the DVD here. It should be noted that it’s “Region 2″ meaning that if you live in the US you can probably only watch it on your PC’s DVD drive. Or use a special region free DVD player. Either way, you’ll love it.

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Learn To Speak Japanese Like Naruto

The Otakuologist — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 01:11:59 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

Anyone who loves anime as much as most of us otaku do know that the best way to enjoy it is to listen to it in the original Japanese. However, subtitles can be distracting from the art and storyline so the best thing to do is to learn to speak Japanese.

But who has the money for lessons or costly software? Not to worry. The Japanese Anime and Manga site has come to our aid. Not only can you learn Japanese for free but they teach you how Japanese is spoken by certain types of characters.

Ever wonder why certain characters like young girls say things a little differently than the samurai character? It has to do with politeness levels and a host of other things I have no business trying to explain to you. But the Japanese Anime and Manga site will explain how certain characters say certain things.

Check it out by clicking on the link here.

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The Otakuologist

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