While we are heading to the halfway point of this year, it’s time to share some interesting things from the last month.
Table of Contents
- Kadokawa Wants to Make 40 Animation Titles a Year, but Is It Unsustainable?
- My Growing Interest in Seiyuu Live Performances
- Madoka Magica Gets a Fourth Movie
- Let’s Face It, WordPress Likes are NEVER Coming Back for Another Reason, Like Spammers.
- What I Have Been Up To
- Notable Blog Posts
Note: Audio version of this post is now available here.
Kadokawa Wants to Make 40 Animation Titles a Year, but Is It Unsustainable?
It’s obvious that Kadokawa have ambitious goals of creating 40 titles by 2023 from its usual 33 titles. To achieve this, they are betting on 3DCG, which will only spell trouble. For the most part, full 3DCG titles has been either a mixed bag or a complete disaster. Just look no further than the disaster known as EX-ARM.
However, there are negative implications from Kadokawa’s plan. Besides the poor working conditions and pay of animators, which we covered previously, this will only make the situation worse. In addition to relying more on foreign freelance and inexperienced animators, we will only see the quality of productions go down.
If we haven’t seen enough animation quality disasters, we are in for more in the future. To me, I would rather see production companies maintain or reduce slightly the number of titles per year to reduce the burden. Not only that, the industry really needs to improve the working conditions and pay first before deciding to increase the number of titles within a reasonable amount.
From this, I can only see more animation quality decreases, production delays, and disasters like EX-ARM in the future. To me, I don’t see this being sustainable in the long term and something must give.
There is a good Twitter thread on this on why this is a terrible idea and why one shouldn’t take an animator’s job without experience.
DO NOT take anime work if you don't know anything about japanese notations, and if your draftsmanship is still very unstable or lack proper foundation. You will put even more burden on already tight schedules- 4/?
— 朱浩然 (MekaAoratos) (@AoratosMeka) May 3, 2021
My Growing Interest in Seiyuu Live Performances
There is no surprise that I listen to a lot of music from seiyuu, especially since they usually sing anime music. Of course, I follow a handful of female seiyuus and units as they do more than just voice act. Yes, they also have singing careers and there are a good number that put out some good sounding songs.
Given what happened with the pandemic, it’s not possible to attend live performances due to travel restrictions, conventions getting cancelled, and more. Even during normal times, attending one is expensive. Besides the lottery to even buy a ticket, you need to also obtain plane tickets, pay for accommodations, etc. It can become expensive quick. Thankfully, there are recordings of most live performances that one can buy on Blu-Ray.
Sure, I have some fascination with watching them since I have nothing to do being stuck at home. While I still have ways to go until I improve my listening comprehension (I can read Japanese while having to look up words), it’s nice to at least experience the event. Sure, it’s not the same as being there, but at least you can watch them perform live. At least it’s not as expensive since most ranges around $70-100.
Aside from that, I decided to buy Minase Inori’s Starry Wishes, which is her 5th anniversary live. While this was live streamed as there is no audience, I did like the songs she sang, the costumes, and how they used the whole arena. After all, they recorded the live during the second winter wave.
While it felt somewhat awkward as Inori tries to interact with the audience who are viewing the stream, at least she makes the best of the situation. Overall, it’s still an enjoyable live to watch.
Lastly, there is Kitou Akari’s first live tour, Colorful Closet. Believe it or not, she grew in popularity because she voices Nezuko from Demon Slayer. Still, I watched a good number of shows she voices characters for. I must admit that I started following her music with her first single, “Swinging Heart,” which sounded pretty good. Still, I think “Kimi no Tonari de,” which is the ending theme for Adachi to Shimamura.
As expected, I’m curious about Akari’s first live performance. Believe it or not, her first live is impressive. Believe it or not, besides having an all-girls band and even two dancers, her live singing voice is impressive. Overall, I think her first live performance is great given that she just started her solo singing career in 2019. Hopefully, she will continue to release some great songs for years to come.
Madoka Magica Gets a Fourth Movie
Believe it or not, the Madoka Magica franchise turned 10 years old recently. With that came the news of a new anime project. No, it doesn’t involve Magia Record, which already have a 2nd season announced already. It’s a sequel to the Rebellion arc.
While we don’t know when it will release, but at least it’s good that there is finally a continuation. Of course, Urobuchi is working on the story, so I can only expect a bittersweet ending with more suffering and despair. I guess we already know that already. Still, it took 8 years to get to this point. I guess this is a sign that 2021 is a better year than 2020.
Let’s Face It, WordPress Likes are NEVER Coming Back for Another Reason, Like Spammers.
While some people are disappointed that I won’t enable likes on WordPress again, I just find them useless and toxic. It discourages readers from leaving comments. My goal is to of course grow my audience through social media and have readers interacting with my content. Therefore, likes on WordPress are useless as it provides no value. It doesn’t promote my content and it discourages people from commenting.
There is another reason I won’t enable them ever again. Yes, there are like spammers who run non-anime related blogs trying to advertise their blog on mine. They leave likes with completely different interests, but they do not follow this blog. This of course illegitimates the like system as they are only doing it to promote their content, not because they actually “like” my content.
Of course, WordPress.com has done nothing to resolve this issue or added the ability to remove likes from Like spammers manually. I do not want to give these spammers any traffic, so I advise people disabling this feature until they do something about this.
Either way, there are other ways to like my content. You can leave a comment on my posts or retweet/like the tweets to my posts on Twitter. Be sure to follow me on Twitter for the latest blog posts and anime related tweets.
What I Have Been Up To
For the past two months, I have worked on two projects involving retro computers. Yes, a Power Mac G4, which I use to edit podcasts and some retro gaming. I also have a Pentium III Reverse Sleeper retro build, which I use for games from the late 90s and early 2000s. I continued to hunt for a more powerful video card, but not with much success.
Recently, I installed a Quadro FX 3000, which is the workstation version of the powerful GeForce FX 5900 Ultra. While this video card is overkill since the Pentium III is holding it back. Still, most games are playable on this machine.
Also, I plan to have a post about it on my side blog soon. I also have the Yuru Camp VR games I plan to review in the near future as well. Too bad I couldn’t get the limited edition of the Yuru Camp games coming out on the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 in September. I guess fans of the anime really want the model of Rin’s scooter. Regardless, I have the Switch version preordered, so I will get to that, eventually.
At last, I’m finally fully vaccinated. While it took a while to get an appointment since they were hard to come by in Montgomery County, I got my first shot in early April and recently received my last. I haven’t experienced any severe symptoms besides a slight pain in the injection spot. It shows that the vaccines are safe, and you should take it if available to save lives and return to normal. As expected, ignore those anti-vaxxers. Regardless, I do not plan to attend any public events, gatherings or vacation this year due to possibility of variants.
Aside from that, I am still playing a good amount of Uma Musume. I am still disappointed that I couldn’t pull Curren Chan since she looks adorable. Instead, the game spooked me and gave me Taiki Shuttle. At least the same training strategy of spamming speed training like with Sakura Bakushin O works since Taiki is only good with short distance and mile races. At least I managed to get Taiki and Bakushin to B+ ranking, but still not A yet. I will eventually get there.
Moreover, it seems that Ijiranaide, Nagatoro-san has created some controversy over the translations and the use of the word, “sus.” Aside from that, while the first episode was pretty mean spirited as Nagatoro made Senpai really cry, Yes, he is very introverted and looks like a stereotypical nerd. I have to admit the scene where they play video games is pretty enjoyable.
Aside from that, the other episodes are a bit better, some teasing backfiring on Nagatoro. Case in point, trying to have Senpai guess which one is the premium bun by putting both buns in her bra. Yep, one of them fell out and Senpai touches one of her breasts instead of the bun and she didn’t realize until it’s too late. Either way, I won’t be covering it until it ends as I only review schoolgirl, shows with a female cast, and yuri genre anime.
Lastly, I started playing New Pokémon Snap. It’s a fun game and the graphics look pretty. Too bad you don’t have Professor Oak being savage and saying “You were close” on shots he doesn’t like.
Notable Blog Posts
Let’s Talk About Gacha Games & Their Yuri Potential – Yuri Reviews – I guess this is not too surprising since the Gacha games have more yuri than the original source material. In Magia Record, besides the other pairings, Iroha and Yachiyo pairing is purer than Madoka and Homura. Besides that, I guess there are the pairings in Uma Musumebesides the existing ones (Happy Meek and her trainer, Kiyuin Aoi maybe). Can’t also forget about the franchises Bushiroad made, which are chuck full of yuri pairings.
Recover From A WordPress Hack – Crow’s World of Anime – Crow shares some advice on how to recover from a hack. I hope Anime Bloggers keep their installations and plugins up to date while keeping backups. Still, his guide will be helpful if one finds themselves in this situation.
With that, feel free to share your thoughts on the topics I shared this month in the comments (please, don’t use the like button on WordPress Reader). As always, we have done these posts since June 2020. These posts come out towards the end of each month or beginning of the next. Feel free to check them out.
- June 2020 (Initial Start)
- July 2020
- August 2020
- September 2020
- October 2020
- November 2020
- December 2020
- January/February 2021
- March 2021
- April 2021
Thanks for the mention!
And an old G4 and Pentium III? I have fond memories of the latter. Computers back then were still new and fascinating, and each chip upgrade brought exciting levels of new performance.
My first Mac was a G3 iMac (Teal), but I bought it used. The first Mac I bought was a G3-based iBook. 999Mhz, if I remember right. I still have it. It never died, but MacOS outgrew it.
I hate to say it, but I kind of miss the days when computing for the sake of computing was fun.
While I was really young, I have nostalgia from using the computers although I couldn’t obtain them since computers back then were expensive. My first Macintosh during my childhood was a Performa 630CD and I eventually got a Performa 6200. But afterwards, I switched to PC until 2006, although I kind of wanted to switch back. But yes, these computers are mostly used to run old games. I also received a PowerMac G3 Blue and White in 2007 from a family member and I still have it. Besides the PowerMac G4, I also have a Powerbook G4 and G3 Pismo and a iBook.
It’s too bad that computing is not as exciting these days since everything is about smartphone and mobile these days. However, I think Apple Silicon brought some of the excitement back as it brings the promise of faster performance than Intel like back in the day. I bought a M1 Mac mini back in November when it came out and it’s a joy to use and haven’t had as many issues compared to my 2018 MacBook Pro.