Because it's not Scottish

Not sure if you're going to attend the New York Anime Festival? Then sister (or brother), let us tempt you with their dazzling guest list to date, including "prominent online artists" such as:

Juno Blair B, writer and illustrator of Star Cross'd Destiny! Star Cross'd Destiny is a webcomic--sorry, serialized graphic novel--about a teenager called, um, Juno. A "sad, traumatic" teenager, mind you. With powers over "weather and metaphysical darkness." (Can't you do something about your own emo then, lass?) And an '87 Shelby Daytona Pacifica which, I'm guessing, is not at all reminiscent of the author's own '89 Shelby Dodge Daytona.

Actually, there are a lot of teenagers in this; there's an embargo on main characters above the age of 20. Yes, the author is that type of borderline anime Sue. Logan's Run is all you can look forward to if anime fans rule the earth, I tell you. Still, keeping everyone in the same age bracket is a handy excuse to draw everyone the same; props to you if you can distinguish any of them from the thumbnails.

Supposedly this won an award. Supposedly.

Lindsey Henninger, "the most popular artist on anime art portal theOtaku.com". And you can clearly see why! Breast cancer: what anime girls have in common. Actually, they don't, because the teen demographic is not big on mastectomy storylines in their sexy robot catperson boylove power fantasies, but whatever. You get the idea. I mean, she meant well. The point is, she has what it takes to be a prominent online artist at a Reed Exhibitions event. Reed Exhibitions: "generating billions of dollars in business" in 34 countries worldwide, to bring you this. So please, take in what NYAF calls "her unique art and coloring style". Take it in and suck on it. Mmm, delicious.

Chris Hazelton, and I didn't get much farther than the front page for his webcomic Building 12 before I realized life was too short for such pain. My life, anyway, but not yours. As a fun aside, there are probably more aliens (2) than people of apparent African descent in it (0), because that's just the way shit goes down in this fandom. Be sure to check out his mad lettering skillz and a page from his apparently published work, A Steel Wing Shattered. The work is rated 16+ but it already evinces all the comic design sensibility of someone who's 11. Okay, maybe 12.

And that's rated 16+ as according to Chris's "publisher", Demented "We Can't Distinguish Between 'Its' and 'It's'" Dragon. Pay for a fucking editor, people. Just goddamn do it already. Also, it took me all of two seconds to pull this map up on Google--you see how there's that bit to the west that isn't New York City, much less a poorly filtered image of downtown (southern) Manhattan labeled "Western New York"? Ah, but my ire at self-styled publishers who have no interest in learning or applying the basics of editing and presentation--comics don't need asterisks to denote sound effects, by the way--it runs away with me. ("Rift the heaviest graveyard stone" indeed, what did Lafcadio Hearn ever do to deserve this?) I digress. (I bet I could put manga-style pictures to Atlanta Nights and they'd still publish it... yeses.) My favorite line from their website: "Originality in both story and art are always a plus!" And they have neither, so there you go. Dare you not to check out Yoko Molotov's Stray Crayons, which is "based in Yoko Molotov's hometown of Louisville KY, a beautiful, haunting city." Louisville: the Paris of the South. Or, knowing Demented Dragon, West.

Now, not to begrudge people the creative urge, and no doubt these artists will improve over time somehow, but the anime convention circuit sure does love to celebrate itself some low-level-mediocrity-verging-on-outright-crap. Certainly there are times when it's hard to get a person of the caliber you want, or even one who could pass as a journeyman professional. But is that really a reason to give feature status to any warm body with a Wacom tablet who presents at the door? Does that do the artist, the fan community, or the industry--or even an event's reputation--any favors?

I ain't sayin', I'm just sayin'.

When content writes itself

The 1st Annual Naruto Star Trek Convention. There, my job is done.

But your job has just begun! The Convention is looking for panelists to come up with 2 panel topics that, God is my witness, combine both Naruto and Star Trek for discussion. So come to the convention and, as the organizers say, "[f]ind out why Naruto and Star Trek are more alike than you think." Because they're not going to tell you on their website. And frankly, they probably won't even tell you when you attend the convention.

A hint or two would be much appreciated because all I can picture is Picard squealing "I'm gonna be Admiral! Make it so!" while Beverly Crusher cries a lot because she's a sissy-pants medical officer and no use to anyone on the Away Team and then I want to cry too, quietly and alone in a corner.

Everything's wetter under the sea

Time for more mascot escapades, this time featuring the latest incarnations of Anime Boston mascots A-chan and B-kun. Anime Boston seems to have an aquatic theme for 2008, which is no doubt why their webpage features A-chan trying to check out B-kun's tacklebox. And taking notes on what she sees.



Whee! It's like someone spotted hidden treasure down there.

Vox Populi

Dear Illuminati:

I used Action Replay on my video game and now it doesn't work properly. I contacted the original video game manufacturer and asked for assistance but nobody replied. Why? And what can I do now?

Signed,
Anonymous


Dear Anonymous,



Your question is so clueless, just reading it has driven Blackbolt OOC. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Shooting you into space with our minds,
The Illuminati

Eat Drink Mad Villain

Good news, everybody! It's the upcoming series Three Delivery!

Three Delivery is set in a magical Chinatown and follows the adventures of a group of orphaned teenage delivery kids who are also Kung Fu-fighting superheroes. Together, they must prevent the evil Kong Li from collecting powerful, ancient food recipes that have the power to unleash dark forces upon the world.

Finally, someone acknowledges those underrepresented themes of Chinese kung-fu and evil Chinese men! But tell us more, creator Larry Schwarz:

“The show is a fantasy, but the characters are written as real kids who viewers will want to emulate. We also incorporated tween trends, including extreme bike riding, punk and EMO."

Really? Emulate real orphaned delivery kids? Wow, I can taste the awesome already, and it tastes like EMO! I'll let the press release explain further:

When orphans Sue, Sid, and Toby are recruited by Nana to make deliveries for Wu's Garden Chinese restaurant, they see it as a chance to move out of the orphanage and ride cool bikes.

Two things:
A) Nana got to stop with that child labor shit.
B) Seriously, those kids have got to be dumb. As. Fuck.

Anyway, Three Delivery. Coming this fall!

The Order #1

So here's the deal: California's LA-based Initiative team is composed of regular humans juiced up into superheroes with really boring names and powers. And a Greek pantheon-based sorting system that doesn't work at all, just like Ares once his royalty checks start rolling in. There's no genuine reason why arbitrarily designating team roles as Hera, Apollo, or Athena works any better than Strategist, Tank, or dozens of other words that are completely free to use (until Stark applies for trademark registration), but you'll have to sit through the official explanation whether you like it or not.

Anyway, this issue won't set the stars ablaze but there's enough here to show promise, especially if you're not wedded to the idea of four-color superheroes. (Speaking of color, the cast includes not one, but two physically handicapped minorities--c'mon, would it be so hard to let at least one of 'em keep a pair of functioning legs?) Our characters are adults who recognize, to varying degrees, that it's all basically a set-up. So do you join up to save the world? Or so you can use your new powers to skip traffic on the freeway? Sure, it's a little cynical, but hel-lo, LA.

Barry Kitson's art is solid, which also helps. Incidentally, I suppose it's too much to ask that action star/charity diva Magdalena turns out to have an international passel of adopted orphans or a Kabbalah bracelet, is it? No? Oh well.

The deal-clincher, though, is that everyone gets fired in the first issue. Okay, not everyone. But a bunch of people are unceremoniously handed the pink slip, and it is awesome. This is something the Marvel Universe could frankly use a lot more of, as its employment standards are pretty laughable:

X-MEN: So, A-List Villain, you've been killing people off and on--mostly on--for the past ten years or so without remorse or regret?
VILLAIN: Yup.
X-MEN: Even tried to kill us a number of times, I see.
VILLAIN: Uh-huh. In fact, I'm thinking about poking your eyes out right now.
X-MEN: Welcome to the team!

Also, there's a bear with a jetpack. I'm not one for bears with jetpacks, as a rule, but if you have to have bears with jetpacks, LA is as appropriate a place as any to send 'em. So--go bears!

Where is the good stuff?

Aoi House: because creativity would take effort. Published by Seven Seas and appearing in Newtype USA, this OEL manga "harem comedy that's truly like none other" features the truly, truly unique elements of:

* A harem, duh.
*A panty-stealing character hamster!
* Everyday protagonists who end up living in a cra-a-azy dorm full of people... of the opposite sex!
* A shy, dark-haired girl with glasses! A sassy, trouble-making redhead! Rich blonde girl! Plus, other characters you've seen a dozen times before!
* A theme song featuring 101-level Japanese lyrics!

My God! Can you stand the sheer novelty of it all? Sure, it's a collection of overused stock elements that justifies OEL manga's occasional bad rap as nothing more than cheap imitation. It even reads right-to-left. But on the other hand--well, there is no other hand. Still, the artwork by Shiei is competent, if very generic. Who knows, maybe even Aoi House was supposed to be unoriginal. You know. A very post-modern artistic statement. Or something. Besides, it's not the creators' fault they got published or that people are willing to buy this stuff.

And yeah, it's a manga set in America where all 7 main characters are pleasingly pale to the eye. If Wikipedia is to believed (as I haven't read the hard copy of the books), one character was supposed to be African-American, but there were toner problems. Never heard that one before, but OK. Sorry, African-Americans! It's not that they didn't want put a token representative in this manga. It's just that they couldn't, 'cause of the technical issues involved with your darkness and all. And there just wasn't time to hire a replacement here. Maybe you can appear in an upcoming volume once they can do that toner stuff. Or maybe not.

But hey, at least the gay character isn't a comedy prop portrayed as an effeminate freak unable to resist straight men due to his uncontrollable queer man-lust, right?

Right. Does he turn kindergarteners and Cub Scouts gay in his spare time, too?

In any case, lest you think author Adam Arnold was completely asleep at the right-side wheel, his notes make it clear that lots of effort did go into developing a quality product:

We've even taken steps to ensure that all the girls' bust sizes are as varied as possible. Nina's are the smallest, but she's quite macho. I'll let you try and figure out which girl has the largest.

Thanks, guy! But I'm afraid I'll pass. On all counts.

Anime: a beacon of nuanced multi-ethnic representation since, well, never

Hey fan-kids! Want to blog against racism? I know you do, because it's easier than trying to make a difference in the "real" world! And now pretense to action is cooler than ever with these handy dandy anime icons! Nothing creates concrete change like a "ninja against racism" icon, because you know how Naruto is about the fight against--against, well, ninja, mainly. Um. Maybe they're ninja who stand for racism (except for the good guy ninja, who stand only for being ninja) and also ninja.

Here at Power Level One Million, we're ready to join International Blog Against Racism Week and speak out against racism. For a week. On a blog. Which only a few of our friends read. Because that's how we'll turn back centuries of institutionalized inequality. See, there's even an icon.



Because like so many bloggers out there, we too can commit... to looking committed. As long as it can be accomplished entirely from the comfort of our computer wheely chair, anyway.

Hello Kitty: Mark of the Beast, Mark of Shame

Because tardiness and littering are adorable! But did Sanrio okay this?

It's also made for a man but strong enough for a woman

Just as video games increasingly attempt to emulate film, there must be an equal and opposite reaction. And here it is: a film that emulates a video game cutscene, but alas, not on purpose. Action sequences: good, of course. Everything else: well, just tune in at 4:25 into the trailer and thrill! To! Acting! If that doesn't make you feel like you are right there in the recording booth, nothing else will.

CATBLUE Dynamite! Making its stateside premiere at the New York Anime Festival this winter. Good luck.