Wolf Hurricane

Writer’s block has struck, so I’ll write a short article about the popular Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series. Created and almost entirely voiced by Little Kuriboh, this spoof is a sharp and clever jab at both its premise and 4Kids’ horrendous butchering of the show, but everything else in popular culture is fair game too. As the title says, each episode is abridged from the original 24 minutes to anywhere from 5 to 9 minutes in comical fashion.

YGO: TAS is probably best appreciated by those familiar with the 4Kids dub, but I think everyone should be able to enjoy it. There have been several copycat knock-offs (Naruto: TAS, Berserk: TAS) but accept no substitutes, because this is still the best. Go check it out for the lulz. A real post will be up soon.

PS: I happen to think Yu-Gi-Oh is a badass show. Here’s one reason why.

PPS: Yeah, I know I appeased the female readers for once with this picture. Madness!

Congratulations to Shinnew for being able to name an astounding 26 traps out of 40. The competition wasn’t even close. You make me proud and sadden me at the same time with your extensive trap knowledge.

Go forth and display this half-assed magnificent award with pride. I’ll actually get some real prizes for the next contest; Stuff that otaku need like figures, pencil boards, and lots of soap.

Happy Father’s Day to all you out there. No updates today except for a final reminder that the trap contest deadline is at midnight (US Eastern). Get your last minute entries in, or else I will withhold my moe pictures from now on and make Sanae cry. You don’t want that to happen, right?

Night Wizard flew under a lot of radars during its Fall 2007 run. Sure it started off as a run-of-the-mill game adaptation, with neither the story nor the concept being particularly original, but Night Wizard was still a solid show. It’s a shame that more people didn’t watch this show, because I think it had a lot going for it.

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July is steadily approaching, and if you haven’t seen it already, I’ll steer you over to Moetron’s Summer 2008 Guide. This looks to be a pretty good season for a summer lineup, even if there are a whopping nine sequels… And a show based on a pachinko game, which consequently enough looks like a joke.

My watchlist: Natsu no Sora, Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu, Seikirei

The contenders: Birdy the Mighty Decode, Chocolate Underground, Natsume Yuujin-Chou, World Destruction, Strike Witches, Koihime Musou

Picture excerpt is from Oh great’s currently running manga, Air Gear. Political agendas in anime and manga? Gasp! They could have been a bit more subtle about it. This November, run to the polls and vote Omaha.

Edit: Added a translated page

As someone who hasn’t been too impressed with the selection of anime in the past few years I’ve found myself frequently going to more “exotic” avenues to fill my need for DVD hoarding. Even so far as to go into the terrible world of non-animated purchases. The horror. However my current attitude makes me more willing to try out various random things as my budget isn’t already slotted for 20+ anime DVD purchases for the next two months. That’s what eventually brought me to Oban Star-Racers, an interesting fusion in every sense of the word. The show itself is a 2D/3D experiment of sorts and the show was created by a collaboration of French and Japanese creators with the French actually leading the project.

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I activate my trap card. It lets me discard three cards from my hand to stage a totally fake real contest on the blog. Identify the traps in the picture to win fabulous prizes like nice boats, giant death rays, and stock in Shinra Electric Power Company*. Huzzah**!

*All contestants must be Rickroll’d and subsequently hacked to death by Rena Ryugu or Kotonoha Katsura to be eligible. Stock in Shinra has no cash value and cannot be traded for other prizes. This contest will leave you in despair.

**There are no winners. We’re all losers when it comes to traps.

All joking aside, if you seriously want to participate, I’ll make this a “Name the characters” type of contest.

Show off your mad Photoshop skillz entry
1a. Save the full-size picture to your HD.
2a. Open it up in Paint, Photoshop, etc.
3a. Match names to the boxes you recognize.
4a. E-mail the picture to me - yamcha(at)gmail.com

Or text only entry
1b. Download the numbered version.
2b. Match names to the numbers.
3b. E-mail your text answers.
4b. Do a barrel roll for taking the easier route.

5. Go about life as I judge the results; Whoever names the most characters wins.
6. The winner and runner-up will get nifty awards or something.
7. Deadline will be June 15th at midnight (US east coast time).

PS. Don’t feel daunted because there are fourty characters; I could only name twelve of them without any help. Just enter for fun to test your trap knowledge.

When I heard that BONES had actually done a movie, I was like, how on earth did I miss this? And after watching it, I must say, did I miss the hype for this movie or something? Because I hardly heard anything about it, but as a wise man would put it: Sword of the Stranger is nothing short of a masterpiece.

So here’s a quick review.

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I saw a commercial for this on TV and just had to report this abysmal news to the otakusphere. Set to air on June 24th as part of ABC’s summer schedule is the new reality/game show entitled I Survived a Japanese Game Show. More info after the jump.

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