Nopy's Blog

Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai (a.k.a. ‘Haganai’ or ‘I Don’t Have Many Friends’) is a short 12-episode school harem comedy anime series produced by AIC Build and that aired in the fall of 2011. A lot of people seem to brush off school harem anime as rubbish, and considering the premise of some of them, I’m not surprised. The description of the series on MAL makes it sound more interesting than your average school harem comedy:

Hasegawa Kodaka has transferred schools, and he’s having a hard time making friends. It doesn’t help that his blond hair tends to make people think he’s a delinquent. One day, he runs into his bad-tempered solitary classmate Yozora while she’s talking animatedly to her imaginary friend Tomo. Realizing that neither of them have any actual friends, they decide that the best way to alter this situation is to form a club and start recruiting.
That is how “Rinjinbu”, The Neighbours’ Club, was formed, a club specifically designed for people who don’t have very many friends. As other lonely classmates slowly join their little club, they’ll try to learn how to build friendships through cooking together, playing games, and other group activities. But will this group of relationship-challenged misfits really be able to get along?

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Now that I have your attention, I have a question for you: what do you think is the best anime of all time?

While I could look at the numbers at any anime list site, I want to hear directly from you. Back in the late 90′s practically everyone would tell me “Evangelion”, but times have changed and people change. Please leave a comment with your answer and reason, or if you’d like, write a blog post explaining your answer and link to it in the comments. Ask your friends what they think too.

For the record, here’s my answer.

As part of Kai’s call for anibloggers to share how they manage their time, I will be outlining how I schedule my life.

Everyone has to spend time on the necessary aspects of their lives – for me, that happens to be: sleeping, eating, and working. I don’t know anyone who can live without the first two, and I need to third in order to make money. Assuming I spend 7 hours per day sleeping, 2 hours eating, and 8 hours working, that leaves me with 7 hours for other things each day. That actually sounds like a lot of time, but a large chunk of it is taken by things like hygiene (brushing teeth, showering, etc.), travel, exercise, chatting with friends, and unforeseen events.

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A little over a week ago, Exilehero posted an article questioning what reasons bloggers have for blogging. I don’t think I’ve covered this topic before so here’s a summary of my reasons for blogging.

I started Nopy’s Blog back in August of 2008 with a simple post titled “Hello world!” Little did I know that this blog I started would still be around 3.5 years later. So what made me decide to start a blog in the first place? To understand that, lets take a journey into my past, to 2005, the year I graduated from high school.

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Volume 141 (February 2012) of Megami Magazine once again features Nanoha and Fate from Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha. The cast of Nanoha has been absent from the last few volumes, but with the second movie coming out this summer, we’ll probably be seeing a lot more of them soon. This volume contains a few goodies, but first lets take a look at the pin-up posters. Ones with more racy images are hidden in the links, so click at your own discretion.

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Now that all of the new series this season have aired, it’s time to go over my thoughts on each one and decide what to watch. I have seen at least one episode of every series listed below, but most of them have gotten 2 or 3 episode views before I came to my decision. I have excluded sequels of series that I have not seen since I would not be able to follow what is going on.

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Whenever you talk about anime, and in particular, the anime fandom, the term “otaku” almost always comes up. Those new to the anime scene have probably been bewildered by the conflicting uses of the term, so I will try to clear up some of the confusion here.

The reason why it is difficult to grasp the meaning of “otaku” is because there seems to be two main definitions that contradict each other. In Japanese, the word evolved into slang to describe people obsessed with a certain hobby, not necessarily related to anime (ie: military, idols, games). Calling someone an otaku in Japan was similar to calling someone a geek in the 80′s, before it became cool for everyone to call themselves a geek as they do now. It’s mainly used as an insult and conjures up images of smelly, fat, pedophilic men that may or may not be child killers (a famous string of crimes from 1989 is to blame for that).

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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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It’s hard to deny that anime has good music compared to other animation. For example, I don’t think a song from Spongbob Squarepants or Ben 10 would ever make it onto the Billboard Charts, but you often hear of anime music reaching the top 10 on Japan’s equivalent Oricon Charts. With music oriented anime like K-ON! achieving huge success, that got me thinking: does music affect the popularity and success of an anime, or conversely, does an anime affect the popularity and success of a song?

In a recent post, I listed 10 anime series with good music that made it onto the Oricon Charts. Most of these series were very popular when they aired, but it’s hard to determine if that was soley because of the music or if the anime was already good. Ideally, to figure this out, we would need to put a crappy anime on the market with good music and a good anime with bad music, then watch the Oricon charts. Unfortunately, I don’t know any pop stars or anime studios that would help me, so I’m settling for the next best thing: watching Senki Zesshou Symphogear.

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Some of you may remember a post I made last year on whether to purchase one or both versions of a particular figure. The figure in question was of Ruri Hoshino, my all-time favourite anime character and unofficial mascot of Nopy’s Blog. Originating from the 1996 anime Martian Successor Nadesico, figures of her are extremely hard to find, which was why I was elated to hear that a company called Kurushima would be releasing two versions of Ruri, titled “Way Back From Bakery” and sculpted by Keiko. As you can see above, I bought two of these figures, one is the polka-dot dress version and the other is the pink-dress Miyazawa limited version. They come in exactly the same box with only a couple of stickers identifying which version is inside. Each figure retails for 14200 JPY, making them the most expensive in my collection.

Unlike most figures, which are made out of PVC, this line of Ruri figures is made out of cold cast resin. While PVC figures are generally soft and pliable, cold cast figures are hard and brittle, making them extremely fragile. Enough description though, below you can see my review of the actual figures.

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