Aozora Shoujotai: An otaku room study

While curiously absent from the cover illustrations, Isurugi Takuya, the male lead from from 青空少女隊 (Aozora Shōjotai), also knowns as 801 T.T.S. Airbats, is a gigantic nerd (in a good way). He doesn’t go around spouting anime references like other people sharing his passion would do if this was any other series, instead the shelves in his room is filled to the brim with figures and toys.

The original manga ran from July 1991 – October 1992 in Shounen Monthly Captain and for the reader with a keen eye, provides an interesting glimpse into what shows were popular back then. Or at least what the author, Toshimitsu Shimizu, preferred.

Lovers of Bubblegum Crisis will have a riot as hardsuit-clad Priss is featured in almost every photo. Speaking of which, I also suspect Toshimitsu may be a fan of BGC episode 8, since Vision’s spider-like tank makes two appearances. A man after my own heart, this guy

A robot from Armored Trooper Votoms also appears twice, as does King, the lion cub from Nadia: Secret of Blue Water though not Nadia herself, strangely enough.
Other interesting appearances are Rabby and Patty from Gallforce: First Story and Magical Taruruuto-kun, from the series with the same name.
For the lover of older anime there’s Maetel from Galaxy Express 999 and Tetsujin 28.
There’s silhouettes resembling Onyomiko (Kaku Rei) from Genji Tsuushin Agedama and Tekkaman Blade. Something that looks like a Sailor Moon figure is also in there as well as the Thunderbird 2. Even Totoro and the Moomins show up once.

In 1994 the series got an anime adaption and the reference hijinks continues, this time in color!

Hooo boy, there’s a lot in there. Obvious ones that I can tell right away is the Millennium Falcon, Ultraman, Sailor Jupiter, B-ko from Project A-ko, donning her battle suit, Gunbuster, Kinu Himuro from Ghost Sweeper Mikami, Nuku Nuku from All Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku (say that one fast three times) and even a not yet painted figure of Kagurazaka Yuna from Galaxy Fraulein Yuna. Evangelion also makes an appearance in the shape of a poster and somewhat more obscure is a figure of Cyomi from the (in)famous Viper-games by Sogna.

There’s even a lovingly reproduced brief homage to Namco’s Air Combat, the predecessor to the excellent Ace Combat game series.

Phew!
I think that was all I could catch, but there’s probably more in there. I love it when manga authors and anime studios show their love for other works in this way. It’s like a pop-quiz extravaganza for the viewer “in the know”, so to speak.

In other news, I’m still waiting to stuff to arrive. Bleh.

Recent Pickups 10/5 2012

So, I was thinking to myself, “Man, it’s already May now, you should start saving for the convention you will attend in June”. YEAH, THAT ALWAYS WORK DOESN’T IT?!
So, I stumbled over some stuff I had to get because I either wanted them badly and they were elusive or just a good deal.

First up, there’s this Mitsubishi VHS deck I picked up very locally for a very low cost, along with a whole box of tapes. Which included Disney’s Peter Pan, which I’ve always wanted to watch in full since I had to go home that one time when I watched it at a friends party as a kid, so that’s something I guess.
No, the real reason I wanted this is because it can play NTSC tapes. Something I have no immediate need for but might have in the future. Just felt it would be really nice to have, considering the interests I have. For this player, which outputs in very nice quality I might add, I paid 250 SEK. Or about 36 dollars, if you want. That’s a steal, even if it isn’t a Super VHS.

Next up is some LaserDiscs. More Bubblegum Crisis, to be more precise. Gee, you would think I have this show completed soon. And you’d be almost right.
I found episode 2 & 3 on eBay for what I thought was good deal. They were auctions, but nobody had bid on them so I got lucky I guess

Speaking of lucky, I’ve secured two, to me, elusive LaserDiscs I’ve wanted since I got my player in August last year. Bubblegum Crisis episode 7 (probably my favorite) and Metal Skin Panic MADOX-01 showed up on Rakuten. Naturally I had to buy them, but in hindsight I should’ve picked out some more stuff while I had my wallet open. The price to get these two through EMS was hardly ideal. I think, just for LDs alone, 5 or 6 seems to hit a sweet spot when balancing items costs versus shipping costs. Oh well, happy to finally own both of these~!

Especially BGC 7, I have been looking for quite some while. Now I’m just missing ep. 4 & 6, which I think shouldn’t be so hard to track down.

Hopefully.

Loot 2012-04-10

It’s been what feels like just a little while and we’re already having another LD-licious loot-post? Well, to be fair, last time I had some LD-lootage was back in February so cut me some slack :p Since it’s only LDs and there isn’t a need to really get down & dirty on the details, this will be a brief post.
With this haul, the Birdy the Mighty OVA-series is complete. It was quite a while since I saw the last two episodes, so I can’t comment on those but overall this is a series I very much enjoy.
Not only is it well animated, I like the style and “feel” of it. Also, it has a quality soundtrack, so it’s an thoroughly enjoyable experience which I really prefer over the franchise reboot which is Birdy DECODE. Happy to own it!

Other than that, we have the first episodes of the ToHeart TV-series & Battle Athletes OVA. Also, with these two episodes halfway to completion, 卒業 Graduation is based upon a series of games with the same name which for some reason mostly was released on the more niche gaming systems. That is to say, PC Engine, PC-FX & Saturn.
I’m not sure about this but I think it’s fairly unfamiliar to most people, especially since it never gained the kind of fan-following that ToHeart & Tokimeki Memorial did.

Last, but certainly not least, we have the premium item of today; the You’re Under Arrest the Movie TUNE UP BOX.
Actually, it seems special and all that, but I don’t know if I have seen any other LD-release of it so maybe the TUNE UP BOX is just a regular box :p
Inside there’s two discs & a booklet with some illustrations, commentary and such. Always nice to have.

And there we have it.

Book lootage 2012-03-25

Went a little shopping around on eBay for once – didn’t know you could find cool books like these on there for prices that doesn’t cost X amount of limbs or your eternal soul. Or both. Generally, I only buy electronics & the occasional game from eBay, and I know what things can cost there sometimes – the word “eBay gauging” wasn’t coined for nothing.

Man, taking photos of artbooks like these is a pain, some even needed a little bit of photoshopping afterwards to make them readable.

For the keen-eyed reader, there’s two MM-games in there as well: Rockman EXE 2 (Mega Man Battle Network 2) and Rockman DASH 2 (Mega Man Legends 2). I’ve played both of these before and the reason for getting them is a bit…weak, perhaps but why not. I’ve played through MMBN 2 a few times before using the excellent VisualBoyAdvance emulator, but I’ve felt a craving for the early MMBN-games again recently. So, I thought that I could try to play them “for real” this time, on real hardware & no save-states, and then in Japanese for kicks just to see how far I will get.
As for Rockman DASH 2…well, I already have it for PC and I’ve actually reached what I believe to be the final boss BUT, I’m sort of stuck. The controls are a bit wonky, the added mouse-support really can become problematic sometimes. Soo, maybe it will go better with the PS1-controller…not sure, but I’m happy to have it anyway.

Now for the good stuff~! They say a picture can convey a thousand words, and I can’t be arsed to write that many words. Picture spam imminent!

GALL FORCE MOOK*

The fighting gallant girls

GHOST IN THE SHELL OFFICIAL ART BOOK

3D action-shooting game for PlayStation

PATLABOR – Pulsation

Dragon Magazine Special**

Maybe, just maybe, this amount of photos is a bit overdoing it : |

* “Mook”, in this context, refers to a book styled and laid out similar to that of a magazine.
** While Wikipedia says that Dragon Magazine is a publication mainly for light-novels, they have released a number of artbooks as well. I have another one, featuring art from Michitaka Kikuchi (Silent Möbius, Borgman) and I’ve seen some for Slayers as well. The ones I have are very good, so keep a look out!

Loot 2012-02-21

Alright, first loot post in 2012!
There’s games, books, music and anime both in LD & Blu-ray. Yup, think we have all bases covered this time…
The How to draw Manga-books came from the same Amazon purchase as the collectors edition of REDLINE, since I wanted to reach the amount needed for free shipping. As far as how-to-books goes, they’re neither bad nor great. They feature some interesting inteviews but they don’t teach you any techniques besides “draw more” :p
And as for REDLINE, haven’t watched it yet. I’m thinking of watching it the first time with some friends for maximum effect.

Moving on then, to music! Let’s just get those Sailor Moon CDs out of the way first. One turned out to be some sort of drama cd, but giving it a quick listen, Usagi’s voice is all I can hear. Upon closer inspection there are songs in there, they just start after 1 or 2 minutes of the characters talking. Weird that they didn’t separate the tracks. The full OP & ED is included though so it’s not that bad I suppose. As for the other one, it refuses to play. I’ve tried that disc in, basically, everything that I own that can play a CD and it just doesn’t work. Weirdest thing is, the CD looks pretty good too. No big fingerprints, hardly any scratches…but there seem to be some kind of…something just around the inner area. Maybe that’s it. I’ll need to see if I can clean it somehow.

Aside from Sailor Moon, there’s also two albums from Mariko Nagai, who I discovered late last year through youtube and the anime Yawara!. There’s mostly good early 90′s j-pop in there and some slower songs as well. Good stuff!
Lastly, there’s an album by the group Pink Sapphire. A “tv-sized” version of their song “P.S. I Love You” is played in the main menu of the first Galaxy Fraulein Yuna game, so that’s where I heard it. Sadly, it also has some kind of playback problem during the first track. Wonder what I can do about that…

1st OP for Yawara! The song is “Miracle Girl” by Mariko Nagai

“P.S. I Love You” by Pink Sapphire

On to the games, then. There’s Bomberman ’94 for the PCE (HuCards are totally rad), which needs no introduction since it’s well…Bomberman. Same goes for Daytona USA. Then there’s JetMoto, which I have fond memories of playing the PC-version I borrowed from a friend when I was younger. And finally there’s Racing Lagoon, which is this rather interesting tuning-racer mixed with a healthy dose of RPG-elements (complete with an over world mode and “enemies” that forces you into a quick battle should they hit you with their car), from Squaresoft, of all companies. Now, the character CG models haven’t aged well at all, the driving feels floaty and slightly off but the music is, for the most part so far, bloody fantastic. Oh, and then there’s Noël – Not Digital, because I could. I’m not very good at these kind of games (Noël 3 on the Saturn gave me a bad end, oops!) but I’m strangely attracted to them.

And with that we move on to the last group, the LaserDiscs. Last time there were 5 of them, this time it’s only 4 but all very good. With this I can add Idol Defense Force Hummingbird to the list of completed series, and Bubblegum Crisis, Birdy the Mighty & All Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku gets another one each.

Hummingbird is probably the only anime in my LD collection so far, with the possible exception of the Dirty Pair TV-series, that I haven’t watched in any shape, way or form before actually getting it. As a whole, it’s a pretty nice series, but the later two episodes, while trying to build up tension and be all serious-like (well, not really) wasn’t as enjoyable to me as the first two. Specifically, episode two is my favorite by a clear margin. It’s the most consistently animated, having lots of good key frames, introduces two new likeable characters and out of all four LDs is the only CAV one. Which is weird since both episode three & four clocks in about 30 minutes as well. Also, 3 & 4 has a different art direction where the girls doesn’t have the same colorful hair and the drawing style is slightly changed as well. Still, quite enjoyable for what’s it worth. : )

Also, yes, my bedsheets have an elephant-theme going on. You are now jealous.

Until next time.

Game comparison: Yuna VS Yuna Remix

I was thinking of writing a few lines about the new anime season but I’m waiting for episode 2 of the shows I’m following, so that’ll have to wait. Instead, I’m going to do a little shoot-out here with two versions of the same game; 銀河お嬢様伝説ユナ (Ginga Ojou-sama Densetsu Yuna) or Galaxy Fraulein Yuna. I’m going to issue a 56k warning here

I don’t have any proof, but quite I’m confident that a great many gamers and anime-fans haven’t heard of this particular title before. And I don’t blame them. With the third and last game released for the PS1 in 1998 and a series of OVAs released around the same time, Kagurazaka Yuna is indeed an icon of times past. There is a compilation of the first two games + sought after spin-off Ginga Fukei Densetsu Sapphire released for the PSP in Japan, 2008, but I’m not really counting that.

With artist Akitaka Mika at the helm, Galaxy Fraulein Yuna is a classic multimedia franchise, including everything you would expect; games, anime, CDs…the lot.
The plot revolves around the cute but somewhat ditzy 16-year old Kagurazaka Yuna, who just happened to win an intergalactic beauty contest (the Ginga Ojou-sama contest – hence the name) and with that suddenly became an idol, with all that entails. However, not only does she receive fame, but also the title of “Saviour of Light” and must do battle with evil forces – in this case, her rivals from said competition, who have had their hearts “stolen by darkness”.
And that’s the gist of it. Sounds corny to you? It is. But I think the game’s straightforwardness works in it’s favour.

The series started out on the PC Engine, with the first game released in 1992. It saw a re-relase (the one I have) with some additional content in 1995 and also a sequel. In 1996 the first game got a re-make on Saturn titled “Remix”. So, you’d imagine that the Saturn version is quite the upgrade from the, by then, 4 year old original version. After all, the Saturn is known as a 2D powerhouse and the large number of high quality adventure, visual novels & digital comics in it’s library certainly speaks in it’s favour.
But you’d be wrong. And in this comparison we will see why. Before we get to the screencaps, let’s compare the opening:

Now, I used Magic Engine (PCE) and SFF (Saturn) respectively in order to grab some screencaps, from the beginning to the first battle with jealous rival Kaede. I used emulation because I’ve got both systems hooked up to a CRT-screen at the moment and we all know how well that goes with photography. Right.

PC Engine-version (1992 – quite small so enlarge them in your browser or something)

Saturn-version (1996)

While the Saturn version features anime-cutscenes in the more modern style the series adapted as it series went on, everything is a mess. Let’s be honest here, the Saturn never had any luck with FMVs (I blame bad codecs) and when they replaced the pixel art cutscenes with the handrawn ones, we’re well on our way to artefact central. Speaking of artefacts, around all character portraits, there’s this almost halo-like pixelation, or what looks like the result of a poor job with the magic wand tool in Photoshop. Not to mention that many character portraits are re-used from the PCE-version, and thus doesn’t match with the newer character design. Other casualties includes the backgrounds, which now looks like they were made in MS Paint – and I’m not joking. The map-screen, which is displayed when you change location in the PCE-version, is absent and so is almost the whole GUI. We’re left with a very bare bones interface with only a semi-transparent blue bar for text and character portraits.

While I appreciate that the game now runs in full screen, it all looks so amateurish. The battle system also gets an “upgrade”. What used to be merely a rock-paper-scissors kind of thing now also has 3 quickly changing stats (attack, shield & evade) which needs to be timed correctly for maximum effect. The idea itself is good but the result is lacklustre. It makes my eyes spin. Also, the grainy FMVs make their comeback during the battle.
In fact, the only thing that can actually be seen as an improvement in the Remix-version is bigger character illustrations and the sound, and even then it’s not a very big difference. Voices sound maybe a little less compressed and the music is no longer chip-generated, but whether that’s a good or bad thing is debatable. This time, it’s a bad thing because no one seemed to care enough about the music to really make it any better. The PCE version actually sounds a bit more distinctive.

If you think I’m hard on Galaxy Fraulein Yuna Remix, it’s because an improved version of a game released on 32-bit system, should not be inferior in almost every single way to the original version, released 4 years prior on what essentially is an 8-bit system. If they just had actually sat down and harnessed the power of the Saturn, it could’ve turned out a great remake.

Now, I do enjoy this particular franchise, and some day I should really pick up the third game for the PS1 or Saturn…and maybe the PC-FX version, should I manage to get my hands on one of those.

Omake content! (Season backdrops from the Saturn version’s calendar mode.)

And that’s that. See you next post!

More loot 2011-12-28

Edit: Corrected the part about the Dirty Pair LDs.

Earlier today I picked up a package that was in transit during Christmas. You probably know what to expect by now…

No games this time but an Arcade Card DUO for my…well, DUO. Others in the same group is a bgm collection sort of from the All Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku OVAs, as well the soundtrack for Bubblegum Crisis episode 4 & 7 (I think I should collect all these, I have them as mp3s but they’re good) and finally yet another installment in the Namco Game Sound Express-series. I wonder if I haven’t gotten all the GALAXIAN 3-related ones now – Namco makes (and made) some good music, after all.

And then some more LaserDiscs. First off, the final two episodes from Aozora Shoujotai (801 T.T.S. Airbats). This marks the second OVA series that I’ve completed, the first one being YUA with only 4 episodes. And that’s one of the nice things with OVAs – they’re pretty “easy” to collect thanks to the small number of episodes.

I threw in episode 8 of BGC in there as well. I’d like to complete that series too but thanks to their age (and/or popularity, perhaps?) they can be a bit tricky to track down. Rakuten had a few more but at the moment I thought I’d just concentrate on my favorite episodes. Couldn’t get my hands on ep. 7, sadly.

Lastly, I picked up two LDs from the old Dirty Pair. I’ve seen a bit of before (mostly the OVAs) but not everything. Wasn’t sure exactly what these LDs would contain – it was hard to dig for info. Now with them in my hands, I can see that both of these (Dirty Pair Masterpiece Compilation +1 & Dirty Pair Complete +1) contains episodes from the 80s TV-series. However, the episodes they contain seem to be a bit random and doesn’t correspond to the order in which they aired. According to wikipedia anyway.

I wonder what the +1 stands for though…hmm.

More oldschool loot

This is my latest haul. The artbooks are by Makino Ryuuichi and Kikuchi Michitaka (also known as Asamiya Kia) respectively. They’re both very nice, though Ryuuichi’s got plenty of saucy content I wasn’t aware of. I don’t really mind though :p
The LD for Gundam 8th MS Team (contains the first two episodes) came with a nice folder/booklet & fold out poster to go with it, which can be studied below.
Other than that, there’s two more soundtracks from Namco Game Sound Express-series as well as some games for PC Engine & one PS1 game : ) That ought to keep me busy….I hope?

I wanted to take some pictures from the books as well but they didn’t come out all that well…so, that’s all you get :>

…56k warning?

Oldschool l00t of excellence

(Warning: thumbs are a bit screwy thanks to me not resisting captions)
During the time when my old blog was getting ignored by me, I did get a way of income and that has naturally resulted in some loot. First up was something of an impulse buy where heart went before all reason:

キタ━━━(゜∀゜)━━━!!!!!

And as a result of that, this:

Yes, I’ve started to collect Laserdiscs. I realize DVD might be better in many ways such cheaper per episode and generally less cumbersome but LOOK AT IT. IT’S SO AWESOME. I mean, it’s certainly not very economic to buy each episode loose as often seems to be the case with anime LDs but it really feels like you’re getting something for your money spent. High quality artwork on the front (and often back) of the big sleeve and then a gigantic disc that weighs quite more than you’d initially believe. And in all of LDs I have collected so far (not a very big collection but slightly bigger than pictured) there’s usually an insert of some kind, sometimes a folder, with interviews, comments and character/vehicle design/sketches.
Really cool stuff.

Some stuff that I bought together with the LDs also deserves special mention. Like, for starters, this B-Club Special Bubblegum Crisis artbook. I wasn’t expecting that to float around the interwebs for an affordable price, really happy to pick that up. My camera does suck though, apologies for that.

Fuck. Yes.

I also picked up the first artbook for another guilty pleasure of mine: Agent AIKa. Sadly, I didn’t take any special pictures of aside from the one above.
In the same batch, there were also two volumes of Namco Game Sound Express.

The 80s says "hi!"

And last but not least additions to my game collection:

I also got Rockman Dash (Mega Man Legends) and Tokimeki Memorial 2, pictured in the loot above.
Phew! I believe that’s most of it. I don’t have any more pictures, anyway :p