Nopy's Blog

I don’t blog about this often, but I am a collector of Sailor Moon trading cards and have been collecting them for 15 years. I won’t bore you with the details of my collecting adventures, but in all of those years I have obtained a few thousand cards (mostly Japanese) and spent a few thousand dollars. The good thing about these cards is that they are now worth far more than I spent on them.

As with every collecting hobby, there is always that one item that every collector wishes he had. In the world of Sailor Moon cards, that one item is Amada’s 5th Anniversary Memorial 22K Gold Card. For those not familiar with gold, 22 carats means something contains 91.6% gold. In order to get one of these cards, you had to have a winning insert card, of which 1995 were printed. You could then mail that card to Amada to redeem your 22K Gold Card. Each card was printed with a unique serial number on the back indicating which card it was on the production line. While there were potentially 1995 of these cards made, I doubt that every winning insert card was redeemed. Even if 1995 were produced, the 22K Gold Card is still by far the rarest, most valuable, and arguably the most beautiful Sailor Moon card in existence.

As you can probably guess from the picture above, I now own one.

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With summer coming to a close, blogging projects and carnivals seem to be in full swing. Today I’ll be contributing to a blog carnival that Foxy Lady started called Reflections on Animanga Blogs. Participants write a post answering some questions asking for their opinions on anime and manga blogs. At the end of the carnival, all of the posts will be summed up by Foxy Lady. If you would like to join in or learn more about it, please see her post.

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Almost every year around this time I make a post covering Animethon, an anime convention that takes place in Edmonton, Canada. It is the oldest anime convention in the country as well as one of the largest. As such, expectations for the event are high and there is always lots to see and do. I’ve been going to Animethon as an attendee since my days in high school, starting with Animethon 11. I’ve enjoyed it every year, which is why I keep going back. The difference this year is that I have returned as a staff member rather than an attendee. After 8 years of attending, I was the only one of my friends who had never volunteered for the event and the only one that still goes every year so I figured it was about time to give something back.

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(Warning: Huge image dump below.)

In case you’ve been wondering where I’ve disappeared to this past week, I caught a cold and was buried with work immediately after I got back from Anime Expo 2012. Now that things have settled down, it’s time for a little show and tell :)

To make things easy, I’ve divided the post into several sections:

The Event

Performances

Exhibit Hall

Autographs

The Last Day and Regrets

Loot

Cosplay

The Event

Anime Expo 2012 (or Anime Expo 21) was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center again this year from June 29 to July 2.

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I don’t usually read visual novels (the only one I’ve finished before this was Planetarian), but with so-called “horror” anime *cough* Another *cough* turning out to be more mystery than horror, I wanted something that could invoke at least some sense of fear. That’s when I heard about Saya no Uta (Song of Saya).

Written by Gen Urobuchi (Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Fate/Zero), Saya no Uta is an eroge visual novel published by Nitro+ in 2003 and is well-known for its horrific storyline and scenes so grotesque and brutal that they make your stomach churn. Being an eroge, it does have some XXX scenes, but they’re not essential to the story and if you don’t want to see them, you can read the censored story on Youtube.

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A Taste of Animethon (ATOA) took place this here in Edmonton this weekend and I took this opportunity to try out some event photography. From the last Animethon, I learned that I needed a good flash and a wide-angle lens to better deal with the conditions at Grant MacEwan (the place where Animethon and ATOA is held). I have neither and I didn’t want to spend $500 on them so I borrowed some equipment instead. I used a Canon T2i with a 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM lens and 430EX flash. It was my first time using this set-up so it took a while to get used to and some pictures didn’t turn out as well as I wanted, but some of them still worked out. Anyone who is here just for cosplay pictures can scroll to the bottom.

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Inspired by Justin and Kuuki’s blog posts, I have decided to participate in the Japan Blog Matsuri. If you are unfamiliar with the event, it’s similar to the My History with Anime project, but every once in a while it gets a new topic. The topic this time is “Reasons to Visit Japan” and is being hosted by A Modern Girl.

If you’ll recall, I’ve already visited Japan in 2010 and stayed there for a month. Being in Japan for that long turns the idea of sightseeing and sushi-eating into a chore so I won’t bore you with things like “oh, you should see X temple and Y tower”. Instead, I’ll tell you the REAL reasons why you should visit Japan (ie: experiences you won’t get anywhere else):

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One of the great things about spring cleaning is that you always find things that you’ve completely forgotten about, like this, a box of Maid Cookies.

Some of you newer readers may not know this, but I travelled to Japan for a month last year and brought back a bunch of goodies, this was one of them. I found this unique product in a store in Akihabara, in fact, almost all of the large anime stores were selling it. Prices ranged from 600-800 yen, but I can’t remember what I paid for it.

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In response to Yi’s fun project idea, I’ve gone back through all of my old anime posts and put together a collection of the times when I’ve overthought something and was wrong. Since I’m on the topic of overthinking, I’ve also included some posts where I’ve just completely taken things out of context. These posts go back to when I first started blogging in 2008, so most of the series I cover are complete. If you haven’t seen them and plan on watching them later, be warned that there are spoilers below.

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When you visit any online anime community, you will see a lot of Japanese terms being thrown around such as moe, ecchi, shounen, shoujo, yuri, and yaoi. Sometimes terms are used incorrectly or their meaning has been twisted but those have become the norm for English-speakers, some examples include hentai and otaku. All of these terms have been around for a long time, but when I look at them, I notice that something which was found in almost every anime discussion has practically died. What I am referring to is the term “kawaii”.

OK, maybe it isn’t actually dead, but it certainly isn’t anywhere near as popular as it used to be, at least from my experience.

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