Random Non Conventional Cosplay

Keroro Gunso (Sgt. Frog) Cosplay

Sen to Chihiro (Spirited Away) Cosplay

Unintentional Dragon Ball Z Cosplay

Cute One Piece Cosplay

Rimu

I found these on my hard drive. I'm not entirely sure what they are, the files were like 10 years old. I had a translation file and these scanlated pages... I think I made them for practice when I was thinking of getting into doing scanlations. If the folder name is to be trusted, it was from a comic called "Rimu." It looks pretty funny, I wish I could figure out what it is and where I got it. Heh heh. There are 8 scanlated comics here total, you have to follow the break. Read the comics right to left.

Ico Comics

Found these on my hard drive, thought they were hilarious so I decided to share, along with completely unnecessary translations. These are comics related to the game ICO.

Text

Girl: There's lots of room...

Text

Child 1: *kid noises, sorry, I'm not sure*
Child 2: *kid noises, sorry, I'm not sure*

Text

Girl: Let go~~
Police Officer: Stop!

There's also the awesome "Training Day" comic.

And of course, the classic Penny Arcade Ico Comic.

Caramelldansen Taunts - A Brawl Hack

I told you yesterday that I was saving the coolest Caramelldansen for last... and here it is.




It's almost every Super Smash Brothers Brawl character doing the Caramelldansen dance as their taunt! Sure beats the animated versions (here and here.) And the best part? As long as you have an SD card, you can easily mod the taunts into the game for your own use.

Brawl modding is pretty easy and the results can be pretty cool. (hmm... i maybe should have chosen another example.) Just follow this guide and, if you can read directions, you'll be set up in half an hour. Once you're set up though... If you just want the Carmelldansen taunts, that'll just be copying one directory to your flash card and you're done. But see if you can stop at just that one mod... you can easily spend days sorting through assets and configuring your Brawl hacks.

Top Ten Caramelldansen

It's Caramelldansen Time!

Caramelldansen is a meme combining a Swedish song of the same name with a very simple dance. The dance originated in Japan, where it's also called ウマウマダンス (uma uma dance) / ウッーウッーウマウマ (ua- ua- uma uma) due to confusion about the lyrics. I like the Chinese names for it. In addition to 焦糖舞 (caramel dance), they call it 兔耳舞, which means Rabbit Ear Dance. That's a pretty good description of the dance. People will release videos of their favorite anime characters doing the Caramelldansen dance.

Anyway, there are literally thousands of variations you can find on Youtube or Nico Nico Douga. I'm going to list my top ten favorites. (top 10s are good, right?) My favorites are mostly videos that are either themed or have large amounts of characters. As far as I care, this list is the best of the best. Well, except for the one I think is the absolute coolest, which I'll save for tomorrow's post.

3D-CG Vocaloid Nendroids




One Piece (cast up to 2010)




Full Metal Alchemist




Rurouni Kenshin




Lupin




Evangelion (there's also a second part if you click this link)




Haruhi




Gundam 00




Yu Yu Hakusho




Lotsa Random Characters

Harry Potter Schools

I think it's pretty amazing how you can take a photo of Emma Watson as Hermoine, change the color schemes, and make it look like she belongs in a completely different Hogwarts house.

To Gryffindor go the bold and brave,

while Ravenclaw keeps the genius.

Slytherin claims the most ambitious,

and to the rest go Hufflepuff.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2 comes out July 15th... it's so strange that the movie series is going to end.

Flame of Recca Review

This manga takes place in the modern day.  16-year old self-proclaimed ninja Recca, a girl he chose as his master, and a group of friends who become increasingly close fight against an incredibly evil business man trying to find a certain magical artifacts, which are called madougouin this series.  This manga focuses on fights, character back stories, and small bits of comedy.  Each character has their own madougou which they must cleverly use to fight against their opponent.  The characters strength comes from learning new abilities from their madougou and due to their determination to protect each other.  It has a very good, diverse cast of characters who get good development throughout the series and are given good backstories.  This manga does include a lengthy tournament.

I was introduced to this series through fansubs several years ago.  I felt that the series started off very strong, then got linearly less interesting, but then ended strong.  Years later, I found that the anime series (which was 42 episodes) was based off of a manga series (episode 42 was roughly equivalent to volume 16 out of 36.)  I found scanlations for the manga and finished the series.  Later I read the first 16 volumes as well, after the series was released by Viz.

This is a highly recommended series as long as you're not tired of shonen cliches.  In my opinion, it is one of the top shonen fighting manga because of the great detail in defining the character's motivations and the pure awesomeness of the main character's power.

There are three points which I count as weaknesses.  The first is the art quality.  The first 16 volumes are not very fun to look at, in my opinion.  However, if you view this series as I did with the anime transitioning into the manga, this point is negligible.  The second is the fights themselves.  Many of the fights really aren't that interesting, specifically the ones where the victor is determined by "Oh, I suddenly found a new ability of my madougou that I didn't know about before."  This is not so bad though because there are a fair number of fights that are determind by the fighter cleverly using their known abilities.  The final weakness is the tournament in the middle.  While I understand why the author did it, it lasted too long and pales in comparison to the less cliche feeling and more revelation filled story arcs of the beginning and the end.

In any case, this series is in my top ten manga list.  Seeing these characters struggle and achieve their goals have motivated me, somehow.  "I must Protect my Princess" is a great life mantra, in my opinion.  Plus, thinking about summoning flame has done wonders for my imagination.  Definitely take a look at this one.

[warning! ending spoilers follow]







In addition to the three points of weakness I gave before, there is one more.  The ending.  This is probably just my preference, but... when you think about it, the whole series took place in less than a year.  I would have really liked a look into the future to see how the characters turned out in the long run.  Yes, I realized that the story was over and the whole thing isn't real anyway, but I would have enjoyed it more if the author showed the lives of the characters a bit after things got calm.  It's easy to grow, develop, bond, and such during a large crisis... but what happens once life is no longer crazy?  True, I'm asking for to much, probably, and it's probably just because I get too interested and involved with the characters in the story.

As a counterpoint, the ending does completely "end the story" without any lingering mysteries or any chances for continuation.