Well she made new friends given that Kimouchi is far away and Yuki is in a coma. Eri does talk to Yuki I just don’t say it and as for Yuki well she is worried but knows she can’t do anything. Yes I know I didn’t say it just assume the times I don’t use her she is living so to speak.
I swipe plenty of things from different places and put my spin on it, I think.
Well, I almost didn’t make my post this month. I’ve been pretty much goofing off: reading Dracula, playing Bible Black, and watching Black Butler. All to put me in the Halloween mood. I even ate a five pound bag of Reece’s Pieces all by myself.
I was at Wizard World in Columbus a couple of weeks ago helping a friend hawk his wares, where we were approached by a woman who asked us if we had any Black Butler items. We didn’t , but it was amusing, because, of course, I have been watching the show, which made me an instant Comic-Con expert on Black Butler. The lady in question wasn’t an anime fan per se; she’d just been sent there by her 14-yr old niece with a shopping list. I wonder if her niece bothered to tell Auntie that the story was a combination of dumb jokes, ludicrous slap-stick, extreme violence, grisly murders, and fancy pastry, all served up by one hell of a butler. And if you ask me, there’s more than a little yaoi content present in the show. It’s just the sort of thing to appeal to 14-yr old girls these days, but, of course, I didn’t mention any of this to the aunt.
Wow! Over ten thousand views now; I’m happy.
I hope this means that people like what I’m writing. Personally, I like it myself, and would write it even if no one were reading it; because I love the characters. I’m sincerely interested in their trials and travails–and I enjoy being the cause of them. I suppose if any of them could step past the fourth wall and get at me, I’d be in deep trouble. Good thing that can’t happen.
You know, I often wonder how good a job I’m doing in capturing their voices. Some are easier tham other. Rex and Taro are a bit hard, because they’re so serious and straitlaced, and I don’t know how well I’m doing with the female characters, like Kokoro and Sugimoto. Kuchisake seems easy, because all she has to do is act menacing and superior and mock everyone else. Chinpo is the easiest, because he speaks with my true voice. We’re both pretty feckless and bewildered about what’s going on around us most of the time. Kitsune is a reflection women I’ve known over the years; except for Zorro. I’ve never had a girl spring me out of jail.
Well, it’s almost Xmas as I write this, and I’m reminded of a cartoon I once saw: it depicted a bunch of people gathered together in a typical suburban living room, decorated in tinsel and holly. They are all naked and wearing animals heads and one of them is saying: “Isn’t it great to celebrate an old-fashioned Christmas for a change?”
I hope yours will be, too.
I like what you write.
I may try and hammer one out by new years.
I really don’t know how poor Chinpo’s going to get out of this one.
I like to acknowledge my crimes, so I freely admit stealing the character Leona Ozaki from Masamune Shirow’s Dominion Tank Police (I’m a little pissed because you can’t get this show from Netflicks) along with references to Ani Puma and Umi Puma. You may have noticed that she referrs to her tank as “Nappy” in my story, rather than “Bonaparte.” That’s because originally I had the idea of changing her name around too, in order to prevent it from becoming too obvious a rip-off. But sometimes you just have to go with the obvious. I couldn’t think of another name that worked as well. Anyone who knows anything about the Puma sisters is probably scoffing at the idea that they would quietly submit to incarceration. But whether they did or whether they didn’t is beyond the scope of this story. I don’t expect to have anything more to say about them. Also, what about Yuki’s friend, Eri? How is this turn of events going to affect her ? Don’t know.
Tengu. Tengu are really pretty interesting as Japanese folk monsters ( yokai) go. I was only able to lightly touch on all the Tengu lore ther is out there in my treatment. My biggest problem was dealing with those other Tengu-the ones with the long noses. As you can see, I just referred to them in a hyphenated note and forgot all about them. But, if you’re interested, here’s the deal, if a priest or person of some stature turns into a Tengu (due to overweening pride or some similar sin), he become a Daitengu and retains his human form, except for the dildo schnozz), whereas us ordinary jerks turn into crowlike Kotengu. Now, since Jaku is a Kotengu, it may mean that he was not as famous in life as he claims. Just a thought. On top of that, not all Tengu are transformed humans. Like I said, Tengu lore is vast.
Chinpo may have made a mistake in throwing away those tickets. Appearently he doesn’t know everything about how fairytales work, because sometimes the most worthless-looking things can be of great power. But I wouldn’t have expected Jaku to tell him that and spoil the fun.
Anybody seen Rin, Daughter of Mnemosyne? Really great, but garanteed to induce mental illness in anyone who watches it. Well, I had a good old time with it and it’s a little too late for me to be worrying about the state of my mind, anyway. The ending was a little weak though. But has anyone ever seen an anime series with an ending that doesn’t suck? How’d you like Panty and Stocking?
Eri perhaps will go into hiding or something?
I don’t even know if my stories happen in the past or future as for now I’ll need to think.
As to that, I have always considered that your stories are taking place a little bit ahead of mine in time. Of course, I’ve been flitting around between the different characters and writing so many flashbacks that I’m beginning to get a little confused myself. I’ve found it safest to think of my stories as taking place in the NOW, whenever NOW happens to be.
We shouldn’t assume that just because my continuity and yours are seperated in time, recents events are not having an effect on Eri. After all, even if this Meow Meow thing blows over, it doesn’t mean that the cat people were ever re-integrated back into Moriyoh society. They may still be behind bars for all we know. So Eri (who is the Beast’s grand daughter, you know) should watch her back.
Yeah or it could be that a few are still held but not all or not. Then I’ll go with mine being weeks or less ahead in time.
For those who may be interested the tongue twisters that Yoshimi vainly hoped to hear echoed in her dream are as follows: Niwa no niwa ni wa, niwa no niwatori wa niwaka ni wani no tabeta [In Mr. Niwa’s garden, two chickens suddenly ate a crocodile]; Tokyo tokkyo kyoka-kyoku kyou kyuukyo kyoka kyakka [The Tokyo patent office hurriedly rejected the permission today]; Aka pajama, ki pajama, cha pajama [Red pajamas, green pajamas, brown pajamas](my favorite); and Nomu nara noru na, noru nara nomu na [If you drink, don’t drive. If you drive don’t drink]. That last one was the slogan of a Japanese police don’t drink and drive campaign and as such one I figured Yoshimi would be most familiar with.
Since these stories we’ve been writing are primarily fantasy, we have to make allowances for Yoshimi’s vast powers of recuperation. I broke an ankle once myself, and I can assure you that a real person wouldn’t be able to do all the stunts Yoshimi pulls off after just three days in bed. In my case, it was a month before I could get around even with a cane and many more months after that before I was completely healed. But Yoshimi’s an action girl with an unusually high threshold of pain-and she’s gonna need it.
By the by, when the Wife finished editing this last story, she stated that it’s turning into a horror story and indicated her distress at the fact. Shes not keen on scary stories, but this is sort of a horror story so things could get a little tricky from here on in. As it was, after she’d finished her editing, I went back in and added the blood to Maria’s predicament, since I wasn’t convinced that merely seeing her friend stripped and tied up would be enough to make Yoshimi want to scream, but now I feel more comfortable with it.
Went out to see John Carter a couple of weeks ago. It wasn’t great, but I enjoyed it and I don’t think it deserved to be pissed on the way it was by the critics and fanboys alike. True, the movie John Carter was too emo to be the real JC (who was, in truth, an egotistical dork) and I don’t remember any Burroughs’ heroine with cajones as big as this movie’s Deja Thoris, but that’s just the times we live in, styles change. Film critics! Honestly, why do these guys even bother going to the movies? They’d be happier someplace else.
First off, I’d like to thank the girls from Bible Black for stepping in the play the Acolytes. Type-casting, to be sure. Don’t worry about poor Imari, being set on fire’s not the worst that’s ever happened to her.
I’ve been all caught up in the Queen’s Blade anime lately. For those of you who may not be familiar with it, it’s about a group of well-endowed women warriors who must journey across a savage land, leaving a trail of fan service in their wakes. Apparently it’s based on a series of game books published by Hobby Japan (I must get some) which, in turn are based on the old Flying Buffalo Lost Worlds game books. I vaguely remember them from long ago when I worked in a hobby shop, but not much about the game. However, FB pioneered the pick-a-path concept, which is essentially what eroge is all about it. I do seem to remember that you had to have a gross of six-siders to play FB games, instead of the regular Platonic solids used by other games, which I always found a bit awkward.
I have two favorite characters: Cattlya, the wastefully over-endowed blacksmith. So earnestly maternal, but that poor son of hers, always getting smacked in the face by his mother’s winnebagoes, and those of all the other female characters, he’s either going to end up with a trauma or a happy childhood-I can’r decide which. And Setra, the talking scepter owned by shimapan princess, Menace. Voiced in the English version by someone who’s trying to channel Paul Lynde, he seems to be the only male character in the story who realizes he’s surrounded by a bunch of nearly naked chicks. He’s sort of the resident baggy pants comedian at the Queen’s Blade Burly Que Theater.
I hope I’ll get to see Queen’s Blade Rebellion someday.
Did you know the most popular pizza toping in Japan is corn? (Creamed or pop, I wonder.) With mayonnaise? I think I’ll pass, but here’s an amusing site that describes many of the scarier toppings the Japanese like to put on their pizzas. It is well-known, of course, that pizza was invented in the U.S., and not particularly Italian. I was stationed in Italy back in the Sixties, and the closest approximation you could get to pizza there was a round bread crust covered in tomato sauce and not much else. It was strictly for tourists, tho. There were so many better things to eat in Italy that pizza was just a waste of time. A bunch of us used to go out on the weekends and eat our way through the town of Vincenza. First we’d stop off at this one place that specialized in ravioli and eat mountains of it. But that was just an appetizer, because then we’d decamp to this other place, where we’d start off with minestrone and wine, then move on the steaks the size of Sicily with all the trimmings and this wonderful kind of corn bread (I never found out what they called it.) and wine, then a big, gooey dessert and wine. Then end the evening up with a little Cognac and cheese (or maybe we’d go to a bar). Sometimes we went to Venice, where we consumed tons of seafood and wine at a little out-of the-way place called “Mama’s.” Supposedly, we were the only ones who knew about it, but it seemed to me that every tourist in the world showed up there sooner or later. There was this one dish, mussels with spaghetti, which at first repulsed me, but I eventually got hooked on it and still make it for myself at home. But, of course, canned mussels are not as good as those scooped up from the sewers of Venice.
You may remember that Sugimoto sarcastically referred to Yoshimi as Sukeban Deka. Who here remembers Sukeban Deka (the original School Girl Detectives)? Back in the Eighties I used to work at a hobby store that stocked Bandai magazine. It was all in Japanese, and so completely mystifying, even to the guys who used to buy if for the pictures of giant robot models and anime characters. Bandai was promoting Sukeban Deka heavily in the pages of their magazine at the time, with lots of pictures and interviews of the Sukeban girls inside. I didn’t know what it was all about, but I liked the sailor suits. Years later I managed to get the movies on tape and watched them to death. (Actually, I still have them, but their getting pretty old, and I haven’t yet bothered to go around looking for them on DVD.) My favorite Sukeban moment is when Yui, confronted by a bunch of brainwashed thugs from the Hell Castle reform school, is backed up against a wall as they come at her bristling with knives and sad intent. She says: “Please! I don’t want to hurt you!”
You repeated the same thing three times in that post.
As for why I’ve not post I hit a wall but I think I got an idea forming I’ll work on it.
so I did, so I did. There, that takes care of it. Fell free to jump in any time, This witing scam is a lot of fun, you know.
Aye, and I’m finally working on my next post.
Considering that this BBS is consecrated to eroge, I deem it appropriate to work into Project Sakura, from time to time, some reference to an h-game that I’ve played, and one of my favorite places in the eroge-verse just happens to be the Bazooka Caf√©. That should be obvious by now. It’s not my favorite game by any means, and the whole bosom mania thing is kinda feh to me, but that aside, it’s a lot of fun and I always enjoy my little visits with Hideyuki and the girls. Also, I’ve learned how to make tea that’s exactly right.
I’ve also been playing a lot of Bible Black and Demonbane lately, both games that involve ancient magic books called grimoires. Well, I was walking through the library here where I work and, as luck would have it, I came across this: Grimoires : a history of magic books by Owen Davies; published by Oxford University Press. Fascinating book, I recommend it. Through it I learned that one of the spells that plays a prominent part in BB making a woman dance naked is a real spell and not made up for the game
Happy Hollandaise, mina,
I hope everyone out there got what they wanted for Xmas (world peace and love and good will to all men, right?). I got Panty and Stocking, the complete series, and I’m having a lot of fun with it. However, when I showed it to a friend of mine, all the profanity and toilet jokes gave him a headache. So I guess it’s not for everyone. I’ve been hoping for a long time now that there was ever going to be a sequel, but I’ve pretty much given up hope. I also got a set of two Sukeban Deka movies, another favorite of mine. This set claims to be the complete series, but that’s not true. There was a third movie The Deadly Trap of the Seven Lost Souls (or something like that); it was confusing to follow and not as good as the first two, so it’s probably just as well,
Some of you may have noticed that my description of the village of Sadd and it’s problems differs a bit from Raidy–no tower for one and no monsters aside from the cats and dear Miss Kuchi. That’s because I was reading a story in a collection of Japanese folktales about an (unnamed) village that was plagued by demon cats who lived in a nearby forest and liked to dine on young girls, so I and decided to adapt it to my story. That village was saved by a hero (not Raidy or Momotaro) whose name I don’t remember (Altho maybe it was Raiko). Narumi, as we’ve seen gets a little hot under the collar when dealing with Taro, but, still, he’s got her to come along with an adventure she doesn’t wholeheartedly believe in. She’s either gullible or falling for him, but don’t ask me. I’m only the writer. Ilet the characters sort that stuff out for themselves.
As I think I’ve mentioned before, The Wife edits all my stories, and in the course of the process this time, she asked me who Miss Betsunade was. Seems she forgot that that was the name that Kuchisake used at JAST as the school nurse. I explained to her that it was simply a Japanese word that means ¬ëalias’ as Sugimoto pointed out in Sleeping Beauty. Personally, I never liked the name. I always thought it was kind of clunky. So now, with the need for aliases all gone, I’m glad not to have to use it any more. But it struck me as I was explaining it to her, that I should have just used Miss Alias as her pseudonym. I would have sounded better in addition to having the virtue of fewer letters.
I understand that Rebuild of Eva 3: You Can [Not] Redo (I don’t get the brackets) came out in November. I suppose it’ll be awhile before I get around to getting a copy of it for my own. I like to think that as an Eva geek I stand second to none, but I’m not all that keen on the Rebuild series. I’m happy that they exist, because means more Eva to satisfy my Jones, but as stories they are not that interesting. Not really an improvement on the original series in my humble opinion. The animation is pretty impressive tho, and a joy to watch; especially the newer iterations of the Angels. But other than that¬Öfeh.
I don’t know much about the new movie, and I avoid going to the sites that are talking about it. I’ll form my own opinion when I see it thank you. But I did hear that this current story takes place 14 years in the future. Eh? What for? Does this mean that the Childrenz are now in their twenties and able to have sex legally in the United States. And what about Misato? She’s always been my favorite character, and I my guess was that she was in her late twenties or early thirties, which if you add 14 years means that she’s now in her forties, or nearly so. Not that that’s a bad thing, because at my age, forty year old women are practically Lolitas. But what an extra 14 years of hard drinking must have done to her doesn’t bear thinking about.
I think I got something kicking around inside me. I hope cause I’ve been tapped out of ideas for awhile now.
Well, we’re all looking forward to that. I was thinking of borrowing a couple of your characters for a little scene, but since I was thinking of putting them in a situation you might not approve of, I guess I’ll hold off.
You know, I’ve been studying Japanese for a while now, but without making much progress, but I still keep trying. My great ambition is to someday be able to translate some of the many untranslated manga in my collection. Black Jack, for example, or Cutey Honey. Obviously, it’s more than just finding the right words in a dictionary, and online translators are no good. Azumanga Daioh gave me a lot of problems until I found a completely translated collection of the strips that I could use as a Rosetta Stone (but of course, by then there was no need to translate them myself). Another one that’s tough is Nichijou. I know something funny’s going on, but it’s so full of in-jokes and cultural references that’s it’s nearly impossible to make sense of. An example of this is “selamatpagi,” a word that kept cropping up in one of the stories and seemed to be a generator of much hilarity, but which I couldn’t find in any Japanese dictionary (even the Green Goddess) and, of course, totally stumped Google Translate. However, thanks to a bit of serendipity, I later learned that selamatpagi is a greeting in the Indonesian language. Your guess is as good as mine as to what the Nichijou girls were doing using it.
I’ve heard that translation is often a matter of interpretation, and I suppose that’s so, but I sometimes wonder what the translator is thinking and how they go about translating a text-especially when I’m playing eroge. Oftimes, even with my limited grasp of Japanese, I can tell that what the character on the screen is saying is not very much the same as what I’m reading in the caption box. For example, I was recently playing X-Change 2, and in the scene where Takuya is trapped in Chisato’s machine which is running out of control and about to blow up, he asks her why on earth she built a self-destruct mechanism into her machine, she says: “Watashi no shuumi desu” (It’s my hobby). But the English text comes out as: “Because I like them.” Why? “It’s my hobby” is a simple translation and it’s a funnier line and more Chisato-like than “because I like them,” which is pretty lame.
Currently, I’m working on a manga called Otome no Teikoku. It’s by Kishi Torajiro, who gave us Maka Maka, the lesbian-themed manga that appeared in the Japanese Penthouse a while back and shared a similar theme: young girls who have feelings for each other. So far Otome seems simpler to work with than Azumanga or Nichijou. There’s not that much dialogue to translate and, anyway, you can pretty much tell what’s going on from the pictures. However, the title, Otome no Teikoku, does offer an interesting problem in interpretation. “Teikoku” means either “a large country” or a “Great (important) country.” “Otome” means “maiden” or “young girl.” So I guess Otome no Teikoku could be interpreted as “the great country of the girls” or “the land of the maidens” or something like that. Google Translate says: “Virgin Empire,” and it’s probable that this time the robot may have guessed right. But personally, I like “Virgin Territory” for the title, because I think it expresses the idea of these girls exploring the unknown and exciting landscape of their budding sexuality. However, in this case I may be guilty of the same kind of thing I was complaining about in the paragraph above.
Punt me the idea and besides I borrow or hijack your Eri character, you could take her back. Anyway punt me the idea and perhaps that trigger ideas of my own.