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.

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!

Some SEGA stuff

I recently got into my head that a VGA box or similar for the Dreamcast would be nice and quickly leaped to eBay and made a purchase. It arrived yesterday, from England in what..a week or less? That’s certainly impressive.

There’s a noticeable increase in image quality but sadly I also experience some sort of faint vertical lines on all displays I’ve tested this on, save for an old HP CRT. There seems to be quite a number of other people on the internet reporting the same issue, and with different boxes/cords to boot.

Not sure what to do really… I don’t know if a VGA cable of higher quality would solve it. One of the LCDs I tested it with stated that the image was 680×480 60hz but the older CRT said 59hz and that worked fine. Soo…maybe that has anything to with it? I don’t know…we’ll see if a solution pops up…

In related news, I found this while going through some stuff in my room:

I guess it came with my Mega Drive all those years ago…huh.

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