Anime in Focus: Rozen Maiden Episode 2

Because the talking doll was DEFINITELY referring to physics

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I dare say, my updates have become sporadic. I did, however notice that this copy of Rozen Maiden has been sitting on the desk in that pile of things I plan to watch. I WAS planning on watching Lord of The Rings to catch up with normal society a bit, but then I realized I already read the books...

Having already seen this episode at an anime convention, I sort of already knew what happened, vaguely. It starts by demonstrating a bit of Shinku's powers, by showing her repairing the damage caused in the previous episode. The real plot gets going when one of Jun's classmates shows up and attempts to drop off his homework. Unfortunately for Jun's master plan of avoiding contact with people entirely, they run into each other, demonstrating to her that Jun has been doing nothing but sitting in his room and ordering things online, if his sweatpants and posture are any indication. (hey, if he was older, he'd have stubble too. We can only assume he's reached the level cap in WoW by now) Shinku walks in on this, and notices this girl is wearing a ring.... signifying her as being a servant.

We get to see the relationship between this girl and her doll Hina, who seems rather possessive. So possessive, in fact that Hina winds up sucking the girl into a pocket dimension where doll-person relations get entirely reversed. Such a drastic action winds up drawing Shinku's attention, leading to Shinku hunting her down to investigate, leading to... PLOT REVALATIONS

In the confrontation between Hina and Shinku, we learn that the dolls compete in these things called “Alice Games” where they battle to the death in order to eat each other's souls, or something. This leads to a battle in what looks like a demonic toy box, making this show feel like a bizarre Highlander/Toy Story cross over.

Anyway, after a delightfully bizarre fight involving exploding piggy banks, we get to the conclusion, where rather than Shinku eating Hina's soul, she demands her servitude. While some questions are answered, even more are created. The important thing is that this show show promise, and I hope to see more innocent looking toys used as weapons of mass murder. They can't POSSIBLY screw that concept up.

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Coming when I feel like it:

Next Episode!

Anime Conji 2011

Last weekend I wound up volunteering at Anime Conji 2011, a rather small convention in San Diego, the most exiting city on earth.

Anime Conji was definitely the smallest convention I've attended, with a whopping 1700 attendees, less than one tenth of Anime Expo. The convention's location was spread out of a smaller venue than Anime Los Angeles, (Which took up most of the LAX Marriot) a small part of the Town and Country Resort, sharing a hotel with some respiratory research convention.

See, they have THIS in San Diego

On the entertainment side, I wound up getting to see Steam Powered Girraffe, a band of robotic singers from the 1900's. This was exiting, since I had taken my girlfriend to see this band about a month and a half beforehand. They seemed more exiting at this convention than a month ago, since they were the main event, rather than an opening act to Abney Park (Steampunk band from Seattle, totally awesome) Other than that, the only events I attended were the rave and the mochi maid cafe. The Maid cafe was being held by a bunch of girls in maid outfits, where we recieved free food. In retrospect, I feel that I ordered the wrong item, seeing that I ordered the soup, and it was lukewarm by the time it got to me. The waiters were nice though, and we got to see the maids doing the Hare Hare Yukai.

This convention's rave managed to be.... okay. It was a bit better than the rave at Anime Expo 2011 (way too big, not interesting enough) but not as good as Anime Los Angeles' rave (plenty of room, decent music) Here I learned that my girlfriend cannot dance, and that not everything needs a techno remix. On Saturday, one of the DJ's decided to do a techno remix of the “Over 9000” video that everybody has seen over 9000 times. Unfortunately, this is a bit of an old meme, and the quiality of the remix was not good enough to warrant being played at a rave. The rave on Friday was a bit to big for the room that it was held in (capacity 80) making it difficult to get to. The rave on Saturday had enough room, but also contained the annoying over 9000 remix. Best convention rave still belongs to Anime Expo 2010, until further notice. I'm thinking of checking out the gas lamp district in San Diego after Comic con, assuming that my girlfriend decides to learn how to dance.

There were a large percentage of cosplayers at this convention, about the same percentile as Anime Los Angeles. Gatherings were a massive load of fail (Okay, I couldn't make the blasted Scott Pilgrim party, so I don't know how that went) as the Persona gathering and the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya gathering were made at the convention, and both held less than 10 people. I suppose the gathering organization was comparable to the entire convention's organization.

Organization was a mess at this convention, but this will be detailed in the upcoming volunteer report, however, I will note that I had trouble finding the location based on the description on the website. Apparantly it was a lot better than last year (this was only the convention's second year) so hopefully things are more in shape next year

Overall, my attendance at Anime Conji next year depends entirely on my econimic situation, and whether or not I can secure a staff position. I may take a shot at hosting my own panel if I can manage the logistics. The convention makes a nice bridge between Anime Los Angeles and Anime Expo. It should be considered that the convention tickets were about 35 dollars (student, but there were a LOT of available discounts) and that it takes place in San Diego, a city filled with awesome, cheap restaurants, and wonderful theater districts.

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Related Posts:

Anime Los Angeles 2011

Anime Expo 2010
Getting the most out of an Anime Convention

Persona 4 anime announced

While I've been in a bit of a writer's slump, I recently found the news story that I must share with EVERYBODY

Article with info here

Anyway, holy crap, this has the potential to bring in a a whole new wave of Persona fans, which will help me in my unending war with the Final Fantasy fans...

From what I noticed in the trailer, they appear to have made some new music for this. On the plus side, it appears that the person who made the music from the original game will be working on the soundtrack. Personally, I hope “I'll Face Myself” makes an appearance in the anime.

Hopefully, they manage to capture the majority of what made the video game awesome, and allow a wider audience to understand my deep love for Chie. Sadly, the only thing from the trailer we could see was actually less informative than the opening sequence to the video game.

 (starts at 1:48)

More importantly, this will probably force me to bring out my old Seta Souji cosplay. I thought that cosplay was going to be retired, but I guess it gets to come out of the closet again.

Updates will be posted here as I get them, and I would appreciate anybody sending them to Darthsomebody@yahoo.com

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Persona 4 Review
Persona 3 Review
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne Review