So I woke up at 6am this morning (or rather, yesterday morning, since it’s already passed midnight) because I was supposed to go to MMU Melaka for the Games Anime Comic Circle, the same one Kurogane had been covering for both days of the event. The original plan was to start heading towards our destination by 7am and reach there by 10.

But, I ended up waiting until 9am before my ride arrived. If we had left when we had originally planned to, we might have realized that earlier that we needed to get a number in order to get an autograph from Masakazu Morita, which was only limited to 100 people.

It’s actually my first time attending an event such as this, so the experience is really very new to me. And even though I was looking forward to it, I didn’t know I would have that much fun running around, checking out the booths and cosplays. There’s also something else I’ve learned, cosplays looks so much better when you’re there to see it in person rather than just looking at pics. Some might look good in person but doesn’t even look half as good when captured on camera. Now I’ll probably think twice before judging pictures taken of cosplays which looks lame.

And, I really need to invest in a newer, better digital camera with a larger memory stick the next time I attend such an event…

The whole album has been uploaded in full size to my flickr’s GACC2008 album. Here are some of my favourite shots of the day:

Hitsugay taichou has really funky hair

The Espada cosplays are pretty good, I think the entire Espadas were there…

How can I resist cosplays of my favourite series? And I really love this pose!

“Domo! Haado Gay des! FOO!!!”

Bleach cosplays were all over the place thanks to Morita-san being the special guest?

Masakazu Morita greeting his fans (read: everyone in the room)

As I was just telling Dyna recently while discussing about a post idea he had, Japanese seiyuu’s are worshipped pretty much wherever they go as long as there are anime fans around. And that’s pretty much everywhere.

Kon is one of the best cosplay around

I managed to take a few short videos of when Morita was on stage (and screaming “Bankai!” multiple times) and spent almost all the money I’ve brought with me which I’ll be putting up in the next post or two. Fortunately, I didn’t have that much with me, so I didn’t spend that much. Unfortunately, that also meant that I couldn’t buy many stuff which I wanted to. Like the Haruhi figurines. Damn, those are expensive!

GACC 2008 Coverage:

• GACC 2008 – Part I (Cosplay)
• GACC 2008 – Part II (Loots)
• GACC 2008 – Part III (Videos!)

Another quick note that I’m having my final paper tomorrow, after which I’ll be pretty free. There are quite a few posts and reviews which I haven’t been able to write them yet, so I’ll probably set aside either Wednesday or Thursday to at least finish up the episodes reviews that hasn’t been posted yet.

Fun at the beach!

I was so unprepared and disorganized that I couldn’t find the time to post that I would be away for a couple of days. Some of my old friends managed to gather and we headed off the to beach for some fun in the sand (and to test out my new telescope, which unfortunately weren’t much use because we still couldn’t really figure out how to use it).

The beach was rather quiet since we went during the weekdays and its the monsoon season, meaning the waves would be rather rough. It was a pity, though. We had really wanted to go kayaking but the resort wouldn’t allow us to take the kayak out.

Instead, we ended up fooling around the beach, play some cards outdoors and relax by the sound of the waves under the starry night.

We took some really great photos as well. Here’s one of my favourite:

Try guessing where I am in this photo

I’ve uploaded all the pictures we took onto flickr (even the bad ones) so if you’re interested, head on to my Sematan Beach Trip 2007 album.

You can find the previous post for this here:

• My Chronicle: Journey Through Anime I
• My Chronicle: Journey Through Anime II
• My Chronicle: Journey Through Anime III

It’s time to end this, at least for now. This is the final part of My Chronicle: Journey Through Anime series. The 3 series I mentioned in the previous part had turned me into an anime fan, but there were a couple more anime which were, and still are, important to me that significantly influenced my perspective on anime.

Rurouni Kenshin

Also known as Samurai X, I remembered this as my first “serious” anime. As with most of the other anime I’ve caught on TV, I skipped quite a few episodes here and there, especially at the beginning. It wasn’t until Shishio’s arc that got me hooked.

Probably due to the influence of Ninja Senshi Tobikage (in part 2), I’ve always viewed ninjas as being way superior to any boring old samurai. But Kenshin changed all that, and even flipped it around. Samurai were starting to make ninjas look weak.

Who knew that sword fights could be so dynamic with so many different moves, and unlike most others, the moves were adaptable and you almost never see the exact same battle twice. Doryuusen and Ryuutsuisen might have been commonly used, but you’ll never catch any recycled cells (which was a normal thing to do then) and there’s always something different about the execution of the techniques.

The battles were smooth and well choreographed, even by today’s standard. Surely a sign that it was extremely well done when it debuted in 1996. I only wished the anime stayed truer to the manga as it got a little boring from Amakusa’s arc onwards.

The main cast of Rurouni Kenshin

Ranma ½

Besides Cardcaptor Sakura, this is my other top favourite anime of all times. The anime lasted 3 years, from 1989 to 1992, with 161 episodes in total. This is excluding the 12 episode OAV, 2 movies and a whole collection of other CD and DVDs.

Of all my anime collection, I easily spent the most on Ranma (at least more than a thousand) for the DVDs, manga, CDs, and a whole bunch of merchandise.

With the craziest bunch of characters you’ve ever seen and the whackiest of plots and twists (as well as plotholes) it’s pretty hard not to like it once you’ve started watching it.

It is also because of Ranma ½ that I started to like Rumiko Takahashi’s other works, especially Inuyasha.

I was so deep into Ranma that thinking back, it almost became an unhealthy obsession. Each episode was repeated 3 times a day, and I never missed a single one. I even skipped classes (and I actually failed a couple of subjects) and shut myself up in the room just so I could watch it in peace. Thankfully, I didn’t hit a point of no return and made sure that I was never anywhere near that kind of obsession again. Sure, I still get my crazy moments, but it doesn’t happen that frequently and I always make sure that I’m fully aware of any consequences.

But Ranma ½ is still one of my favourite anime and whenever I’m bored without any new anime to watch, its one of those “oldies” that I would pull off my shelf and start an anime marathon to entertain myself.

Like Rurouni Kenshin, it’s kinda amazing when you realize that Ranma’s anime first appeared in 1989. The OAV aside (since it’s newer), the animation for Ranma ½ can really be considered top notched as I find it even superior to some anime from the late 90s and early 2000s.

“Huh? What’s this? It says…”

That’s it for now!

After my obsession with Ranma a few years ago is when I started searching for new anime more actively rather than just depending on satelite TV networks and CDs/DVDs that could only be found locally. In fact, my first anime site (which is long gone) was a Ranma ½ fansite that gained quite a bit of popularity but could not be maintained due to heavy bandwidth usage *ahem*.

It was known as “SatAM Anime”, so if you’ve been there before do let me know (out of curiosity)

My Chronicle: Journey Through Anime ends here, at least for now. If I feel there’s something new that should be included in here, it would probably be done on a later date.

I’ve actually spent a lot of my time the last 2 weeks playing a new game on my Nintendo DS. It’s called Luminous Arc, and was just recently released in US version.

When I first saw it while going game hunting with Dyna and Carbunkid about a month ago. Kid picked up the game from the shelf and shoved it to me. The first thing that immediately caught my attention was the artwork. It’s simply gorgeous. My first thought was, “I need to get this game…”

Luminous Arc is a Strategy RPG that uses a battlefield grid for battles. If you’ve played this kind of games before, you’d know how addictive it can be. There are also replay values as well, especially if you didn’t max out all your other character’s “hearts” (which is quite difficult unless you battle a lot, and I mean a lot) and the side quests if you missed them in your first playthrough.

The English voice cast is great and very fitting with all the characters. You will seldom find me praising the English dubbed cast of any Japan-made games and especially anime, so it’s saying quite a lot.

What does this have to do with anime?

Since this is supposed to be an anime blog after all, I’ll try to justify why I’m posting about Luminous Arc.

I’m currently on my third playthrough of the game (with all my over-leveled characters) and I’m actually thinking of getting the Japanese version of the game. If the English voice casting is already so impressive, I was wondering about the Japanese voice cast.

And according to Wikipedia’s entry on Luminous Arc:

With some of my favourite Seiyuus like Aya and Akira as well as Keiji, Yuuko and Fumiko who had impressed me with their anime roles before, it’s really hard to resist the temptation to grab the Japanese version and enjoy their voice acting talents.

Ahh… So many things to buy, so little money…

Click here to get your own copy of Luminous Arc.