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Posts Tagged Canada

Free Comic Book Day 2009 Overview

Almost a month after the event, here I come with my earlier-promised recap of Free Comic Book Day at Strange Adventures in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Waited these weeks to get my pictures uploaded onto my computer, and you know what? The majority of them were horrible! Ah well, that’s what I get for not getting to know my camera better before taking ‘er out, right?

This year Calum, manager of Strange Adventures, set out to top his incrediable feat of last year’s FCBD where he gave out over 15,000 free comics to eager readers. Well, success was had and faster than any of us expected.

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Free Comic Book Day 2009!

Free Comic Book Day

Regretful that I’m so last minute reminding folks about the glory that is Free Comic Book Day! On the first Saturday of May, comic book stores around the world offer just what the name would suggest: free comics!

Tomorrow being the 2009 date (May 2nd), definitely make time to check out your local comic book stores and pick up some goodies, meet some people and have fun with the deals, atmosphere and good times that can only be achieved with free swag enjoyed by many!

If comics aren’t your thing, there’s something for manga fans as well (though admittedly not as much as has been made available in the past by publishers). This year Viz will be offering a 32-page Shonen Jump edition that includes a chapter of Stan Lee and Hiroyuki Takei’s collaboration piece: Ultimo. You can see a preview of the free booklet here.

As a volunteer, I’ll be lending a hand to the amazing folks of Halifax’s Strange Adventures in handing out over 20,000 free comics! If you’re in the area, be sure to stop by. Along with free swag there’ll be some surprise appearances, artists on-site to draw some goodies for the young ones (including Faith Erin Hicks, creator of Zombies Calling, and MTCopyright, artist of Whore of Turfan) and a bunch of great in-store deals!

Expect an overview and photos of the day here in Halifax soon after. All the best to everyone out there; enjoy your free comics!


Kuri’s Overview of Animaritime 2009

Animaritime 2009

Animaritime is fan-run anime and gaming convention that has taken place in New Brunswick, Canada for six years. Each year it grows with more events and more attendees and this year was certainly no exception. With over 1000 attendees, Animaritime enjoyed its highest attendance numbers yet and brought with it a whole lot more of the fun, activity and lack of sleep that staff and attendees alike have come to expect. I myself am a three-year attendee and two-year staff member, with no plans on stopping being either anytime soon.

You can check out Animaritime’s forums if you’d like to learn more about the convention, including people’s thoughts, photos and videos of the recent event. For the curious, Animaritime’s official photographer also has lots of photos for online viewing. Under the cut I share some of my own experiences at Animaritime 2009 which happened earlier this month, including a short peek at some new purchases and a mish-mashed overview of my panels.

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New Manga Titles and YouTube Advertising

As I work on a round-up post of Animaritime 2009, I’ve been making the manga blogosphere rounds to see what goodies I missed over the weekend.

On the manga licensing front, there were a few new titles I came home to read about:

Deka KyoushiBrigid has information about five new yaoi titles from NetComics and Ed over at MangaCast posts about new listings in Diamond previews: Peach! by U-Jin, put out Aurora Publishing, and Fujita Maki’s Trill on Eden being put out by GoComi. Trill of Eden is a title first spotted on Amazon in December.

Lys-chan found some new CMX titles on Amazon which she posts about on her LiveJournal: A Tale of an Unknown Country by Natsuna Kawase and Oh! My Brother by Ken Saito. I also came across a listing for Deka Kyoushi by Tamio Baba (pictured at left).

And though I didn’t have time to post about it before heading out for convention-y goodness, Digital Manga has a post about YouTube manga previews they’ve put together as promotion and preview for several of their recent and upcoming boys’ love releases. These titles include the previously released Black Sun and the long-awaited sixth volume of Our Kingdom.

Taking a brief moment to catch up on the anime-world in Canada, those who watched the premiere of Pretty Cure on YTV over the weekend have good things to say about it, including a pleasant dub job and, from what they can tell, no edits or censoring. I can’t wait to catch an episode but the 7:30am and 4:30pm on Fridays showtimes are likely going to make this a difficult thing to manage. Darn you work and school!

On the less positive anime front in Canada,  Bandai Entertainment’s free YouTube streaming of Gundam 00’s first couple of episodes isn’t available in Canada. Phooey. Then again, Code Geass did become available to us eventually…

And to finish this round-up post with something else anime-related (crazy, no?), I have to post a link to ANN’s news that Takako Shimura’s Aoi Hana is getting an anime. I love the manga so I’ll definitely be adding it to my short of list of animes I look forward to previewing when they become available.

Keep your eyes peeled in the near future for a post about this past weekend’s Animaritime including a quick peek at my newly acquired swag, which will be a very good indication of the reviews you can expect to see here at Kuriousity over the next month or so :)


Animaritime 2009 Countdown

Animaritime - Coming Soon to a Moncton Near You!

As a staff member of the very-shortly-upcoming Animaritime, my time has been pretty split this year thus far with final preperations. I hope visitors haven’t minded the older boys’ love reviews I’ve imported over from Manga Jouhou in recent weeks. I always want to provide atleast something new for my loyal readers each day :) For those looking for my thoughts on some more recently released titles, expect those to pick-up again next week.

In the meantime, I can’t wait to see all the new and returning attendees at Animaritime this year. Our pre-registration numbers this year were incrediable as the convention grows more and more each year. As during last year, I’ll be running several panels and I’m also the manager of this year’s Artist Alley. I’ve doubled the size of the Alley this year as well so definitely drop by to see the amazing talent we have in there. It’s going to be tons of fun, I guarantee it!Animaritime Artist Alley 2009

The panels I’ll be running this year are:

Shonen-Ai/Shoujo-Ai (Friday, March 6th, 8pm-9pm)
Yaoi (18+) (Friday, March 6th, 9pm-10pm)
Yuri (18+) (Friday, March 6th, 10pm-10:30pm)
All About the Wii (Saturday, March 7th, 1pm-2pm)
How to Get Manga (Saturday, March 7th, 9am-10am)
Digital Illustration (Aid to MTCopyright: Saturday, March 7th, 11am-12pm)

For more information and scheduling on Animaritime (Moncton, NB), you can pop in on the website and check out the information there and on the forums as well.

Only one day left until I pack the last of my things and head on up, but of course there’s still a million things left to do!


Pretty Cure To Premiere on YTV March 6th

Pretty Cure Comes to Kick Butt on YTV!YTV’s website has updated with a few new shows beginning this Spring and that includes the premiere of the previously announced anime, Pretty Cure. As you may recall, Pretty Cure is coming to Canadian television dubbed due to a deal directly between YTV and Toei Animation, definitely an interesting surprise move by them when we first heard about it in December.

The first episode is due to play at a depressingly obscure time of 8:30am (Atlantic time)  March 6th, but returns with a more favourable rerun at 2pm the following Saturday afternoon. (via Zannen.ca)

YTV’s synopsis of the show (with lead character dub names):

“Natalie and Hannah are suddenly thrown together as the legendary warriors known as “Pretty Cure”. They’re each entrusted with a Card Commune, a device that looks like a cell phone, and by sliding their Pretty Cure Cards through them they are able to transform. As Cure Black and Cure White, they must fight against the evil monsters of the Dark Zone who are after the magical gems called “Prism Stones”. It’s up to these ordinary girls with extraordinary powers to collect all seven Prism Stones and restore the Garden of Light before the darkness devours everything.”

Outfits may be silly in the way only animes can be, but with some pretty slick looking animation and magical girls who literally kick their enemies’ butts, I’ll certainly be catching a rerun of the first episode (would watch the premiere but I’ll be busy that weekend!).


YTV Snags Pretty Cure

In a bit of a surprising move, YTV has made a deal directly with TOEI animation to bring their anime series, Pretty Cure, to Canadian televisions. Some may recall that the American company 4Kids had licensed the series originally but failed to air it. The series will be getting the classic anime-to-TV treatment with some character renaming, an English dub and most likely some cultural-note tweaks and possible censoring (does Pretty Cure need censoring?).

Related: I’ve recently updated the Anime in Canada page. I’ve removed the schedules since I don’t watch anime on television, so keeping up with what played when became near-impossible. The list now shows which Canadian station is playing what and I’ll leave it up to the stations’ websites and local television listings to tell you the rest.


Death Note 2 This Wednesday!

deathnote2_prp02.jpg

A reminder to Canadian folks that the second live-action Death Note movie, Death Note 2: The Last Name, will be playing across the country in select theatres this Wednesday, December 3rd! Tickets are going fast and the first movie was sold out across the nation so if you want to make sure you and your friends get a seat, then I recommend buying your tickets early.

Also, don’t forgot to check out your local anime organizations and theatres for special events and get-togethers surrounding it, such as Halifax’s pre-movie cosplay contest :)

Edit: Another event definately worth attending if you’re in the area, is at Granville 7 theatre in Vancouver, where there’ll be a signing session with the Death Note English voice cast.


Canadian ComicShops Update

I’m not really relevant but I’m still cute!A little semi-hidden section of my website is a listing of places across Canada where people can go and find themselves a fix of their everyday anime and manga. I’ve recently gotten to check out a few more of the places during a recent trip (with fun results in some cases) so I’ve now added my impressions of them. You can check those new ones out for my take on some comic book shops in Moncton, New Brunswick. I’ll be adding my reviews for the shops in my home province of Nova Scotia in the near future. Anyone who’s visited the stores on my provincial lists and would like to contribute their thoughts, or knows of a place I’ve missed, please feel free to send me an e-mail :)


Bleach Movie: In Theatres October 20th!

Bleach: Memories of Nobody

A reminder to Canadian anime fans; the first Bleach movie, Bleach: Memories of Nobody, will be playing in select theatres across the country tomorrow, October 20th. Even if you’ve seen the movie, there’s nothing quite like watching it on the big screen. Remember, the more you go to anime in the theatre, the more you’re supporting it and up the chances of more being played!

While I’m not sure of what kind of special events are happening elsewhere, I know the Bayer’s Lake Empire Theatres in Halifax will be having a special Bleach cosplay contest before the showing so those interested should definately show up a bit early for some fun and prizes :)


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