It’s another one of those gachapon jigsaw puzzles.
Another Nadia capsule 208 piece jigsaw puzzle completed
Cool fan art from a doujinshi called Bolt On
In November, I bought an interesting-looking doujinshi called Bolt On by a mangaka named Ocha. While it is an original doujin manga, it also contains some great fan art too.
The Ingram from Patlabor.
Anice Farm from Sonic Soldier Borgman.
Priss from Bubblegum Crisis.
Sylvie from Bubblegum Crisis.
This doujinshi features original manga stories by Ocha and they feature rather nice artwork.
Manga drawing my student Miho gave me!
Tonight I was very moved! It was the last night for the adult English class, at the end of the 15 weeks of lessons we’ve had together. Miho-san is a quiet woman who did not speak English much, but she became very interested in learning about my incredible love story, of how I came to fall in love with my pen pal Mayu and married her. She was very moved with how I was a shy nerd/otaku type who married his Japanese pen pal.
Miho-san said that she’s just been preoccupied with raising her children to adulthood that she never thought much about having a hobby, but she said that I helped inspire her to reach back to her old hobby of drawing anime/manga characters. She’d shown me a beautiful picture of Maetel she’d drawn a long time ago. For me tonight, she gave me a booklet with two sketches of Minmay from Macross and Lum from Urusei Yatsura. I was so happy and almost started to cry! Miho-san is an excellent artist! Thank you, Miho-san. These sketches are my new treasures.
This is a photo I took of a watercolor painting of Maetel that Miho-san showed me. She is rather talented.
Some neat clothing I picked up in January
First up is this black Urusei Yatsura sweatshirt. It features Lum on the back, and on the front breast it just says “Urusei Yatsura.”
I got this kick-ass Buck Rogers T-shirt from Ali Express. It’s neat that this website sells all sorts of unlicensed merchandise.
Nadia capsule 208 piece jigsaw puzzle completed
I scored this on Yahoo Auctions Japan (YAJ).
The “We Love Nadia” 100th Wedding Party doujinshi
I finally bought the collaborative, compilation doujin manga called “We Love Nadia” On Yahoo Auctions Japan. I mentioned about this manga before in another post I made about Jean and Nadia’s wedding. It looks like Sadamoto did the cover art, but inside are illustrations and mini comics of Jean and Nadia, with their life past the events of the TV show. I have said many times that the Nadia movie was a huge disappointment. They separated Jean and Nadia by having Nadia pursue a career in journalism in England and left Jean alone in France, reset Grandis’s character, concocted a dumb plot involving a girl named Fuzzy who needs rescuing, and it was just dumb. The only positive about it was seeing Jean and Nadia a few years older. I was hoping that a followup to the stellar TV show would involve Jean and Nadia either getting married, or post-marriage with children.
Well, this “We Love Nadia” doujinshi does not disappoint! This cute manga is a collection of short stories of Jean and Nadia becoming adults, their wedding, and raising a family. It is a collaborative tribute to Nadia from many various people. Some of the art is crap, some of the stuff is comedic, but most of it is fantastic. A story of their wedding, Nadia thanking her father, Jean and Nadia naming their son (Jean wanted to name him Nemo, but Nadia objected and thus became Junior), Jean and a pregnant Nadia explaining to Junior where babies come from, and Nadia giving birth to their baby daughter Cherry! I want to try to translate this as much as I can because this is very precious. It cost me 5,000 yen, but I think it is worth it! It contains some rather charming stories, and I want to translate some of these to put on my Greg’s Life page like I have with other scanlations I’ve done in the past.
Too many doujinshi based on existing properties are pornographic. When I found this on YAJ, it was described as a doujin about Nadia and Jean’s wedding. Well, is it about their wedding or their wedding night? I asked the seller if it was hentai, and he said no. Even Sadamoto was involved, the seller said. I imagine at least the cover art is by Sadamoto.
This is a thank-you letter to Sadamoto.
“I alone will make Nadia happy,” says Jean.
“I’m so happy.”
I swear, this is what I wanted the movie to entail.
Jean and Nadia’s family, with their son Junior and daughter Cherry. I imagine that must be King’s son next to them? There is a picture of a full-grown King and his own son.
Nadia giving birth to their daughter, Cherry. (Cherie?) This is so cool.
Nadia was such a fantastic anime series, and I think it helped that Miyazaki developed the concept plot for the show. It follows in the same Miyazaki style as Future Boy Conan and Laputa: The Castle in the Sky. Young girl is in trouble and being pursued by those after her, young boy rescues her, they go on an adventure. One might be tempted to think that Nadia is a ripoff especially of Laputa, without knowing that both were developed by the same creator and that Nadia was possibly conceived before Laputa.
But then came Evangelion, which in many ways ruined anime. It introduced the anime trope of a brooding, miserable protagonist full of angst and self-pity, throw in a bunch of characters who hate each other in a lazy attempt to provide tension, and give the plot so many psychotic, gross elements that don’t make sense and fools everyone into thinking that it’s “artistic” or something. Sorry, I would rather see Jean and Nadia kissing on the beach than Shinji jerking off in front of Asuka as she lays unconscious in the hospital. Shinji is a pathetic, miserable turd who never develops as a character. Boys need a protagonist to look up to, not a loathsome weakling who wallows in self-pity to commiserate with.
Dairugger XV, the “Voltron I”
When I was a kid, I learned about Voltron late. I started watching the show during its second season with Voltron I, aka “Vehicle Voltron.” It wasn’t until later that I was interested in Voltron III, aka “Lion Voltron,” known as GoLion in Japan. I like the SF epic space fleet battles of Vehicle Voltron rather than the more fantasy, heavy metal aesthetic of the Lion Voltron. I found some neat “Dairugger Fifteen” stuff on Pinterest.
My backpack is covered in neat-o nerd buttons
I get a lot of comments on the buttons covering my backpack. I appreciate it when somebody has something to say about a button they’ve identified as something they know and like so that I can have a meaningful interaction with somebody, but if they are a boring person and just commenting on the amount of buttons only because they noticed that I have a lot of buttons and that most people don’t have a lot of buttons on their backpacks then they’re just wasting my time as I’m not usually interested in interacting with normies since it depletes my Energon cubes or something.
A very long time ago, my cousin Bethany gave me a button that simply says, “Everything I need to know about life I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.” I think this was back in college. It just slowly increased from there. Many of the buttons I’ve purchased on my own, but several were given to me, particularly by people who were kind enough to just want to add to the collection. Over time, I’ve lost some buttons, unfortunately. I won’t show them all, but here are some I’m particularly fond of.
This is a button for Mugen Senshi Valis by Tokuma Soft for the Nintendo Famicom. While I don’t care for this Famicom port, I do like the PC Engine a lot and the Megadrive version somewhat.
These buttons are for a game called Pac-Man. Perhaps you have heard of it.
Here is Mai and her fabulous tits from King of Fighters 2001.
A few years back, Village Vanguard stores at shopping malls had plenty of Sega Megadrive merchandise. There were these blindboxed enamel pins. Here are Puyo Puyo, Tant-R (a spin-off from Bonanza Bros), Sonic the Hedgehog, and Bare Knuckle II (aka Streets of Rage II for the NA Genesis). I’ve never played Tant-R before, so I sent this pin to my friend Brian. That’s what friends are for: pushing stuff you don’t want onto others.
Here is Reimu from Touhou Project and Lum from Urusei Yatsura. Reimu was given to me by a former coworker named Eddie several years ago. I think the color may have faded a bit? Not sure. If you don’t know who Lum is, I hate you and I’ll never be your best friend.
More King of Fighters: Here are pixelated Athena and King buttons.
My friend Lou gave me these enamel pins: the Vic Viper from Gradius and Oopa Oopa from Fantasy Zone. He found these at specialty pop-up stores in Tokyo, I do believe.
Anyhow, I have many other buttons and pins on here: Uglydolls, Peanuts, Rilakkuma, Blue Impulse, Darius Burst, Star Trek, the Flatwoods Monster, Tamiya, Hasegawa, and other pins. If you don’t know what any of these are and just want to comment that I have lots of buttons because you’re a normie and find it weird that others aren’t normal like you, then don’t talk to me by saying, “Boy, you have a lot of buttons on your backpack, bleh” because that drains my energy. So shut up.
The allure of Nadia’s sexy, white island dress
Many reviews I’ve seen of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water comment on how the middle of the series containing the episodes of the gang stranded on the island is “boring” and “pointless.” Yes, this stretch of episodes is a bit of a lull in terms of action and the main plot, but I disagree. These episodes contain character development, zany action bordering on Looney Tunes, and of course Jean and Nadia kiss for the first time. Perhaps the most memorable from these episodes is the whole “white island dress” motif for Nadia when she made a makeshift one piece dress to be sexy and use her femininity to appeal to Jean after she realizes how much he cares for her. On the island, she really starts to fall in love with Jean and she flirts with him, and makes an effort to attract him with this dress. But the allure of this white dress seems to be lost somehow to English audiences as it doesn’t seem to be commented on much or have such pictures posted on image boards. Actually, doing a Brave image search for “Nadia anime white island dress” shows most of the relevant hits from my Tumblr page. But doing a similar search in Japanese can produce plenty of results, one of which is this one. I found it at this page:
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/4019389
Several garage kits have been devoted to Nadia and her white island dress (I happen to own two resin and one sofubi kits of the subject). So if anyone tells you that the middle of the show when they’re on the island is boring, just remind them of Nadia’s skimpy island dress. This image exemplifies why this island dress is so popular in Japan. Here is a translation of the image above.
TOP: なでぃあ島編のカーテンワンピース：ナディアさんはいろいろとヤバイ!! / Nadia’s island white one-piece dress made from a curtain: Nadia-san is wild in many ways!
LEFT: <「言って！似合うて」”Tell me! Do you think this looks good on me?”> <Her compulsion is cute!> <無防備にもほどがあるとこがとてもGood!! / It’s so good she’s uninhibited!> (This is referring to how she is mostly uncovered while wearing this dress.)
RIGHT TOP PIC: <「おねがーい！なんか妙に甘えてくる!! / “I’m especially pampered!”> (That doesn’t really translate well into English, but it must be my lack of Japanese level.) おっぱいぜんぶ見えちゃうよ!?わざとなの!? というトコもGood! / Her entire breasts can be seen? Is this on purpose!? This point is also good!
RIGHT BOTTOM PIC: <パリーン！/ CRASH!> <-ジャンのメガネがゆれる音 / This is the sound of Jean’s eyeglasses popping out! <いきなりのたくし上げ攻撃！/ Sudden pull-up attack!> <ヤバイ！/ WHOAH!> <ナディアはいったい何を考えて生きているのでしょうか？/ What is Nadia thinking?> If you recall, this is when Nadia hikes her dress up to show Jean the allergic reaction to something on her legs she’s had on the island.
Furthermore, unlike as depicted in this picture, in the show when she is wearing this white dress, she’s actually going commando (called nopan in Japanese slang —“no panties”) as she made this dress to wear while laundering her regular outfit. This nopan status is conveyed in the two resin garage kits of Nadia in her island dress that I own.
Macross Regult heavy missile battlepod plamo by Arii
I started working on this old 1:100 scale Regult Heavy Missle Carrier plamo by Arii yesterday. Hasegawa is releasing 1:72 versions of Regults, with the standard and the light missile variant. I’m sure next year they will make this heavy missile variant too. I’m sure they will have a 1:72 Glaug officer’s pod eventually too. Back in the day, Arii made a 1:72 Glaug while Imai made a 1:100 one. Bandai has repopped the Imai molds, but the larger Arii kit is a thing of the past and must go for a lot of money.