Just a pretty self-explanatory comic today -- I love early Spielberg and I love big jugs.

Anyway, also up today is Karen's Character Page. Sorry it took so long, Kare.

One other thing I want to talk about is the really shitty licensing news that came out of Otakon this past weekend: Pani Poni Dash? School Rumble? Paradise Kiss?... No Haruhi or Shuffle!? It seems to me that somebody dropped the ball here. Were these sure-fire hits too expensive for you big anime companies? And School Rumble? This title is obviously only being brought over in order to cash in on the greatness of the now completed Azumanga Daioh. Too bad SR has none of the charm, none of the great characters, none of the writers, and absolutely none of the funny that Azumanga does. I couldn't get through 6 episodes of SR (and I sat through all of the hyper Excel Saga and the really shitty Melody of Oblivion... I can handle pain). Trust me, if the writers and director can't make their characters anything more than simply "annoying" and "mildly to severely retarded" enough to sit back and enjoy the series without reaching for the remote control or some razor blades then they've failed. And so has this show. In every possible way.

I am very curious as to how anime companies today actually go about picking which shows they want to get for distribution in the States. They've obviously cut back in overall releases in recent years, and in doing so I would have thought that they would have then only tried to get the rights for "good" to "great" series instead of the "bad" to "scary-clown terrible" shows that they seem to be settling on. Solty Rei (announced earlier) and School Rumble are some of the worst cases of shit-to-film I have ever seen in the past 10 years. Oh, I can't WAIT to review Solty in the next few weeks on my other site. I must warn the world.

Honestly, are the seriously good shows (think Monster) just too expensive? But even so, how does blowing your company mullah on shitty series make you able to afford the good stuff? Nobody's going to buy it in this saturated market that the anime companies themselves have created (even despite the cutbacks in releases in the past year, anime still has a full row and a half at my local Best Buy)... Or are fanboys too goddamn stupid to know that they don't have to buy every single release of every single show that was ever crapped out on DVD? I am simply in awe that Shuffle! is unlicensed and yet School Rumble and Robo-fucking-tech: The Shadow Rapers become "must own" releases.

I think fanboys/girls really need to take a step back, download a few fansubs and see what sucks and what rocks ahead of time (and then inform the US anime companies what sucks and what rocks so that they can avoid the suck and stick solely to the rock) so that we can end this shit before it starts. Me, personally, when I see a fansub I like, I most assuredly buy it on DVD when it's released Stateside. Not out of any mislabeled loyalty or anything, I simply like to watch stuff on a big-screen TV, in surround sound, on a big-comfy couch with other people (Karen gets kinda heavy on my lap for hours at a time while we stare at my 21" monitor on an uncomfy office chair... Not that you're heavy, Kare, I just don't have enough of an ass to cushion even my own weight). When I catch a fansub that sucks, I definitely do NOT buy that sucker when it comes out. Common fucking sense -- I don't owe the licensors anything if it sucks. Then I do my best to warn other people against the shitty series so that FURTHER shitty series aren't brought over in the future instead of some good shit... Doesn't seem to be working so far, but I will not give up... At least not until I get completely pissed-off-sick of everything and start the blood-sport cullings leaving only the most non-retarded and deserving behind (it's a short list).

- the Rossman