News, reviews and features with a focus on manga, self-published works and a Canadian perspective. Enjoy fulfilling your Kuriousity!
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Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Canadians out there! May your long weekends be full of family, friends, fun and turkey :)
From me to all my site visitors, thank you! The feedback, thank-yous, kind words and new friends have made running this blog a blast over the last year. The fun I have posting and sharing with all of you is one of the many things I’m thankful for. Well wishes to all this crisp, Autumn weekend!
A little late for my initial post, but I finally got my photos from Fan Expo 2008 all uploaded. So if you’re interested in larger versions of the pictures I included in my short write-up, along with a bunch of others, I’ve got thumbnails to them all posted under the cut. Be warned, fairly image heavy page!
As I said, here’s a little write-up of some observations and comments from my recent trip to Fan Expo 2008. So if you’re interested in a manga/anime focused peek, then… enjoy?
It figures that an announcement like this would be made just as I was getting on the plane! Anyhoo, Viz Pictures announced this past Friday that the first live-action Death Note movie will be playing in select theatres across Canada on September 15. The movie already played in movie theatres down in the States a little while back. The movie is due out on DVD in North America on August 29th and tickets to showings will be bundled in with the film going for $29.99. The Empire Theatres website has a list of the theatres that’ll be playing this first installment.
Also, in partnership with Viz Media, the east-coast convention Animaritime is hosting a contest for tickets! So if you’re in the Moncton, New Brunswick area ,and would like to win a two-person pass, than head on over there and take a stab at the trivia contest! The convention has also begun accepting applications for new staff members and volunteers so definately fill out a form and send it in if you’re interested in joining our team!
After a couple day absence at Fan Expo, I’m back at home, many manga-richer and good an’ tired. I’ve got tons of e-mails and comments to catch up on but I’m plowing through them. I’ll be caught up soon enough! Expect some round-ups of my trip in the near future including an overview of the convention from my perspective and some interesting, and random, observations I made along the way.
And continued thanks for your interest and support in my site everyone! It’s a wonderful feeling coming back home to so many thoughtful comments and e-mails that don’t try to sell me cheap watches and male-enhancements.
Edit: Also, from the comments on my post Thumbs Up? Thumbs Down?, I’ve decided to leave my reviews as is for now. Maybe in the future I’ll apply some sort of easy one-look method to determine my opinion of the book overall, but for now I’m happy that people don’t seem to have a problem with my lack of them. Comments were greatly appreciated!
YTV‘s fall line-up has finally been announced. Not too much notable, but it’s confirmed that YTV’s Bionix line-up is being moved to Saturday nights instead of Fridays. The anime, Blue Dragon, will also begin airing during the Bionix block in the Fall, the only anime appearing on the short premiere list. I am looking forward to the new X-men animated series however (Wolvervine and the X-Men), especially since I didn’t think it’d be hitting TV until 2009! (via Zannen.ca)
Seems unfortunate, but it looks like we’ll never again see a solid anime-based lineup as we’ve enjoyed in past years thanks to Bionix. Where once we enjoyed series like Witch Hunter Robin, Full Metal Alchemist, Eureka Seven, and lots more, we’re now seeing less and less animation in general and more pre-teen aimed live action television series. You make me sad YTV!
I put a little picture up there in my header image the other day (a note for those curious on RSS feeds where it doesn’t show). Another fun, simple piece of artwork to continue the thought that I’m a big-eyed, cute midget with a habit of being either dazed or clumsy. Well, it’s not all inaccurate I suppose. Hopefully it helps to round out and balance the new layout okay!
Gia‘s down at Otakon and is bringing fans the news and happenings with her live-blogging over the weekend. Pop over there and check it out, including posts from panels with Funimation (finally, some news on Ghost Hunt!), Yaoi Press and Bandai.
Rivkah (artist of Steady Beat), has recently posted on her LiveJournal account with some really neat content for fans. She goes over some of her technical process for creating her comic pages, inparticular two different methods for inking. There’s some gorgeous art to look at it and she asks her fans if they can see a difference in the two methods she describes. Makes me look forward to Steady Beat volume three all the more (by whatever means neccesary I suppose). Still a shame it landed on the Tokyopop’s chopping block.
Fan Expo has updated its website with event scheduling and convention centre layout for the upcoming Expo at the end of the month in Toronto. I’ll be nestled down in spot A130 with some friends selling artwork (find the Space or WB booths and you’ve found yourself somewhat in the vicinity of my table), so if you’re interested in saying some in-person hellos or helping a starving college student out by purchasing some prints, then definately stop by!
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!
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!
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 scoop, resulting 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!
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