Random crap.
I found a sexy Nadia fanart picture to use for my wallpaper that reminds me of warmer weather. Neat. Mayu and I are nearly finished re-watching the series on the bluray I bought with gift card money I received for Christmas. Pretty soon I’ll see the Nautilus rescue the Eiffel Tower from collapsing onto Paris at the end.
It’s another one of those gachapon jigsaw puzzles.
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.
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.
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.
I scored this on Yahoo Auctions Japan (YAJ).
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.
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.
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.
