Osamu Tezuka

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Archive for the Misc Category

22 Years of Fun (and Stereotype)

Many thanks to everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday! It’s much appreciated and did turn out to be a pleasantly happy one.

As a random bout of this 22-years-alive appreciation day, I’ve written down some random facts about me that come attached with some commentary! So if you’re a little curious about me, past my thoughts on 179 manga books (hard to believe I’ve written that many since March 2007…), then check it out after the jump! Maybe you’ll discover we have some more stuff in common; the misunderstood, multi-hobby geeks that we are!

Read more…


Birthday Layout, Kuririn Continues to Be Awesome

Don't mess with this. Happy Birthday to me! As a present from me to you (and me), it’s a new site layout. Much prettier, and hopefully the text is easier on people’s eyes now. You may find a few spots are still a bit glitchy, or have some lopsided formatting, but rest assured I’m compulsively going through and fixing the problems as I find them.

I should have a me-oriented editorial of sorts later today but in the meantime, I hope you like the new layout and this bonus post picture of my first birthday present of the year. Full of glorious nostalgia, he looks positively perfect underneath my Bruce Tim Batman, wouldn’t you say?


Rush Seeks New Home

Someone please find us a new home!

Taking this moment to send some pluggage to Tina Anderson’s recent site post, where she states that the Rush team have finally come to the end of their patience with DramaQueen and are now actively seeking a new publisher.

As a quick recap, DramaQueen hasn’t put out any of their scheduled books in over a year nor have they given fans any answers on the future of the books or remaining licenses. This also includes subscriptions for the Rush series, which have now left many people $30 poorer and with no books to show for it (and just as few answers). Essentially it’s a publisher death that many are just waiting to hear the final call for. Sad, but I think it’s fair to say us readers are more than done waiting for DQ as well! Even if we do really want to get a hold of some of their series…

Back to the subject at hand: As someone who awaited the preview issue of Rush eagerly, and enjoyed the pretty artwork and diverse nature of it when it came out, I hope that the artists and writers of Rush are able to find a publisher who will continue on with the anthology. Good luck to you, Rush team! Make sure you tell us fans the moment we can throw pre-orders at you for the next issue.


Attending Canada FanExpo 2008

Coming to a Toronto near you in August

So through a combination of spontaniety, coincidence and luck, I’ll be attending Fan Expo Canada at the end of next month (August 22nd-24th). It’s my first large convention, boosting an average of 40 000 – 45 000 attendees each year.  I’ll be sneaking about here and there but for the most part people will be able to find me nestled away in Artists Alley, selling some of my artwork alongside friends. I plan to have a post about my trip and how the convention went after the fact.

In the meantime, any Kuriousity visitors planning to go this year? Or have attended in recent years? Certainly let me know!


OPlay is a Go at GoComi

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The long-hinted at online game, OPlay, has finally been released today over at the Go!Comi website. Those who sign up (it uses the same log-in as the site’s forum and account system), can play the prolouge chapter for free, with a $7.99 fee for the first episode.

I think it’s a neat concept for sure and it’s fun playing that kind of choose-your-own-adventure-dating-sim-esque game with such beautiful graphics (Hunter and Julie did wonderful work on this) and with the ease of online play (no downloads required). But is it $7.99 an episode good? While I thought the prolouge was neat, the episodes are going to need to be a lot longer than that to come close to being worth the cost. Can this online-play manga be worth nearly the price of a regular manga book? I’m too broke to say for sure right now but if anyone else gives it a shot past the prolouge, I’d love to hear about it!


Inside the Shop: Strange Adventures

Nestled alongside the steep Sackville Street at the base of Halifax’s historic Citadel Hill, is Strange Adventures, one of the Maritime’s most well known comic book shops. It offers something for everyone: wall-to-wall comic books, shelves of manga, numerous cases of gorgeous figurines many of us only dream of owning, and every other inch and corner covered with all the things cool, fun and geeky in all the best ways.

Walking into Strange Adventures for the first time is an interesting experience for sure. Going down a few small stairs, you step into a short and often surprisingly small room that is taken to its limit when it comes to filling up with stuff. While the set up doesn’t allow for the most mobility when there are lots of people, otherwise it’s a dream. Everywhere you turn there’s stuff, stuff and more stuff; the kind of organized clutter that gives you something to stare at, play with and purchase for your own collections at every turn.

Some specifics, personal nostalgia and an interview with the store’s owner after the cut! 

Read more…


Daemonium Style and OPlay Peek

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In celebration of the first volume release of Kosen’s new title, Daemonium, they’ve updated their website with a firey new layout. They’ve also created a mini-site dedicated to the series which can be seen here. There’s some info, artwork, downloads and a link to Tokyopop’s manga viewer with a look at the first chapter.

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And over on DeviantArt the other day, *lone-momo posted some preview images of their work on GoComi’s upcoming online game, OPlay. You can see the pics here, here and here! OPlay, which stands for Online Play, will be a play-for-use game that will work in a similar fashion to dating sims/choose your own adventure sort of deals. The staff of GoComi plan to launch it in the near future and have told people to keep their eyes peeled for the “virgin episode”.


July 20th Random Round-Up

We're actually somewhat relevant to following content!

I’ve been a tad swamped by my to-do list recently so updates have been a little sparce, aside from my reviews, this past week. What does that mean? It means an end of the week random round-up of course! I’ve got a few things I’m putting together for posting so expect some fresh material and, of course, lots more reviews for books both amazing and not-so-much! But for now let’s get to the rounding shall we?

ComiPress has added a new website to their Backstage project, Yaoi Suki! I helped put together some of the information for this addition and really enjoyed going back through the short but sweet times Yaoi Suki had on the web and reexploring all the little crevices of it. Jen also mentioned my humble little site as a good source for boys’ love news! I think I’m still blushing a tad. Definately means I have to keep myself in gear around here doesn’t it? I’ve been gettin’ lazy on you recently! I highly recommend reading through the interview, it’s got a lot of interesting, fun and useful information for Yaoi Suki fans, missers, well-wishers, yaoi fans and website runners in general.

Speaking of boys’ love, I’m sure by now most of you have heard about the Youka Nitta plagirism issue after she was outed for tracing various advertisements and photographs for her art. I’ve been sitting on my thoughts about this for a while so expect a solo post about it in the near future. In the meantime, Gia kept on top of the issue with the general scoopresulting effect and an amusing follow-up from one of the advertising companies whose photos were copied.

Remaining on the yaoi train, Yaoi Press has had a few notable updates in the past week with their convenient Twitter feed on their new blog. They’re still seeking submissions for their upcoming artbook, announced that some of their books have been picked up by Borders, and started up a mailing list newsletter. For Yaoi Press fans I definately recommend signing up for the newsletter as it’s chock full of information for readers, contributer hopefuls and the generally curious.

And finally for the boys-loving-boys of the day: For those who can’t get enough of ’em, Manga Jouhou has some reviews I’ve written for them posted: Invisible Boy (Vol. 02), Red, Love Lesson, Love Circumstances, and one of my absolute favourites in recent reading, A Strange and Mystifying Story (Vol. 01). 

Tokyopop has put up a Beta version of their new site (via MangaBlog). Call me too-picky, but I don’t think it’s taken many steps in the right direction. I like that finding the manga section is tad easier (even if most of the links go to the wrong place right now), but it’s all still completely overshadowed by the slow loading time, cluttered community content and now endless lists of YouTube vids. I hold to my earlier thoughts that TP should seperate the manga information from this community set-up and allow their readers and consumers a simplier and more effecient way to find what they’re looking for. But this is only Beta afterall so who knows, things could still come together a little nicer. Check it out and share your thoughts on it!

And lastly, making this post’s header image relevant, a plug over to the Animaritime 2009 website where pre-registration is now open. If you’re in the east-coast of Canada March of next year then definately come check it out. You know you’d go just to meet me, right? It’s a great, comfortably sized convention that grows more and more every year and I know I for one am already looking forward to another fun year!


Yen Plus First Look

Yen Plus

Tiamat kindly pointed me over to the Yen Press website today where they’ve posted the first cover of their upcoming anthology magazine, Yen Plus. The first issue will be available in stores July 29th with subscriptions starting with issue two. A previous post by Yen staffers explains the subscription costs, which includes $59.95 a year for Canadian subscriptions.

I’m definately looking forward to this first issue so expect some opinion sharage at the end of the month. Here’s hoping there’s nothing but good things to say!


All Your Anime Belong to Funi

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Funimation has done it again! After yesterday picking up a portion of Geneon’s titles, this morning it’s been revealed that they’ve nabbed lots of ADV titles as well. Watch out as Funimation becomes an anime releasing powerhouse, bringing quality and affordable anime to DVD shelves everywhere!  Shocking, right? …Not really, but also not entirely expected (and here people were talking about Funimation having big problems like ADV). Ah well, all looks up so far and much better than licensing limbo!


Take me back to the top!