Dude, your mom is hot… Mothers in Anime

Stacy’s mom has got it goin’ on
She’s all I want and I’ve waited for so long
Stacy, can’t you see you’re just not the girl for me
I know it might be wrong but I’m in love with Stacy’s mom

So I’ve kinda disappeared from blogging for a while as bro and sis have taken over a bit (with the exception of my kyonko-love post). The reasons are many (work, mom acquiring a new car and a recent Atlantic City trip) and I kinda don’t feel like going into all of that. I’m back (along with $90 of AC winnings) and ready blurt out my random thoughts once again.

Last week, I’ve stumbled upon CCY’s interesting post on the convenient disappearance of parents in anime over at Mega Megane Moe. That is certainly a solid read worth at least a look (as I am willing once again to prop my fellow anime blogger’s article and thus saving myself from rewriting stuff already said). My thought on it is that anime centered on teenagers and young adults is kinda a given with anime’s target audience often pointed at that direction. It is also makes things alot easier for storytelling since teenagers unsure of themselves often makes a good starting palette for character development. However, anime with the child-parent dynamic is usually a really intriguing element and I kinda wish anime explores it more often. As long as it doesn’t get too angsty (another good article in the anime blogger community).

Also last week, I just had the opportunity to watch True Tears episode 9 (again, I’m behind on my anime as well). And in the various scenes we see her character in this episode, one of the things that I randomly come to my mind: Shin’s mom is quite hot. After reading the non-existence of anime parents post, this has me asking: Where are all the hot anime moms? This is the question I’ll explore somewhat this week.

Winter 2008 Mid-Season Recap – March Madness Edition

Kyou’s stroking it like it’s hot… err… I mean stroking three pointers and not that kind of stroking… you sick freaks…

With March already here, sports fans in the United States are preparing for one of the special multi-week events in sports: The 2008 NCAA Division I Mens Basketball Tournament. 65 college mens basketball teams will face each other in one of the largest single-elimination tournaments in all of sports for the NCAA Division I College Mens Basketball Title. The large event structure draws millions of viewers and office bets each year.

There are two ways a team makes it into the tournament field of 65 teams. The first is the automatic bid where each conference selects one team usually determined by winner of the conference tournament (the Ivy League has no conference tournament so the automatic bid goes to the winner of the regular season). The second method into the tourney is through an at-large bid. The NCAA Selection Committee looks at the remaining spots and selects teams from the remaining field by looking at a team’s key selection items such as record, strength of schedule, quality wins, bad losses and the slightly controversial figure of the RPI. Once the field is filled, the committee seeds them and selects the first round match ups in each region on the Sunday of the end of the conference tournaments (Selection Sunday). The first round games of the tourney usually begin on the Thursday after.

Up until Selection Sunday, a number of sports analysts make projections as to which teams would make the tournament. Since about more than half the field is filled by at-large teams selected by the NCAA Selection Committee, pre-Selection Sunday analysis often becomes an interesting topic on ESPN or for water cooler talk. There are a number of sports analysts who write and discuss solely on the pre-Selection Sunday analysis such as Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology which attempts to predict the entire tournament field, seeds and match ups. Most analysts compile a team’s key tournament selection information into what is usually called a tournament resume and they predict the possible seeding or non-entry for that team.

Below are both mine and bro’s attempts at taking the pre-Selection Sunday analysis idea and combining it with this season’s shows. Now after rethinking a few things (the comments after bro’s Clannad X’s and O’s post, the international nature of anime blogging and the [lack of] athletic ability among anime blog readership), I tried to lay out as much information on this topic as I possibly can. To be honest, analysis about this tournament can be a bit tough for the casual onlooker. Below are some definitions for the terms we plan to use and how we intend to relate them to anime. For more information check out the wikipedia articles on the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship and the NCAA basketball tournament selection process.

Lovable Imoutos; a Yukari Tamura complex? – Memorable voices defining seiyuu careers

Coming late to the party… I had this in the works about two days after the 15th episode of CLANNAD. But other blog stuff + work had put this down on my priorities list. Now that Stripey and Koji Oe put up their imouto-related posts, it’s time to revisit this post.

Ni-Pah!

In another wild episode of CLANNAD, episode 15 introduced a new character, Mei Sunohara, who is voiced by Yukari Tamura. Mei is just simply awesome (as proven by the amount of imouto love in the anime blogosphere after episode 16), but her screentime was short lived. Yet, the first thing that goes through my mind when she introduces herself at the end of the episode is that she should’ve followed up by saying “And this here is my friend, Yuuno-kun.” The somewhat unfortunate thing is that Yukari Tamura will always be remembered for voicing Nanoha Takamachi from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha no matter what she does with the remainder of her career. She has attempted to vary it up with other notable character roles such as Sakura Yoshino from Da Capo, Mai Kawasumi from Kanon and Rika Furude from Higurashi. However, one can still hear her signature Nanoha voice in almost all her character roles which is probably a very good thing to stake your seiyuu career on.

Fall 2007 Wrapup and Winter 2008 Look Ahead

Just a quick post on the ending of the fall 2007 season and the startup of the winter 2008 season as it applies to this blog…

Fall 2007

With the fall 2007 season ending, some one season series ended and some multiple season series still continue. For me, I was following four fall 2007 series that ended:

• ef – a tale of memories
• Genshiken 2
• Minami-ke
• Myself; Yourself

As one of my favorites from the previous fall season, ef surprised alot of people with its execution. Even though I can see this kinda hard for some anime fans to truly appreciate, it is at least a watch for most.

2007 Year in Review – Top 5 Anime News Stories

This is the first post in (hopefully) a set of posts about this past year in the world of anime. I plan to do at least another post on my personal favorite anime from 2007. So for now enjoy this first post on the major news stories of 2007.

So thinking back at the 2007 anime news stories, I wanted to pick out news stories from both Japan and North America that had an affect on anime in the States. I tried to list these more as major news themes than individual stories. So here are the top five anime stories of 2007 that I came up with:

5. Government Involvement in Anime

Both the Japanese and American governments have done things that may affect anime in the future. The American government has increasingly focused their attention to the regulation of child pornography which may lead to possible increased censorship of anime. On the Japanese side, the Japanese government has been particularly active with anime this year. The government is open to actively promoting anime as a cultural export which has also seen some criticism in a major American publication. Yet promotion also comes with some policy as the government looks to possible censorship because of poll and asks the American government to stop the distribution of illegal animation online. Along with this, the Japanese government also is looking into realizing “Gundam”.

Seriously Japan. You know that if you don’t get there first, the North American Colonial Army of Britannia (*cough*United States*cough*) will flatten Tokyo with their Knightmare (*cough*George Bush Class*cough*) frames.