dormcat's cubicle, Blogger division

Went to Good Smile Café (GSC) featuring Puella Magi Madoka Magica last Thursday. The picture above was taken at a specific angle to have Taipei Train Station in the picture so non-Taipei residents can identify the location of GSC. Take the elevator to 5th floor and enter the left aisle you'll see a wall of figures, mostly GSC's Nendoroid line. Signboard at the entrance. Merchandise at the right of the entrance. Event-specific dishes and drinks in Madoka theme. Non-event-specific menu has GSC's mascot on it. Browsing Madoka 's screenplay on display. The QB curry looked good and tasted good, but I got two complaints: first, the water "glass" was not glass but plastic; only the "Soul Gem" drinks were served in glass. Second, the table was collapsible, making it easy to move around, but with legs extending beyond the border of the tabletop, customers could be tipped by the legs easily. Character and item designs. Main characters illustrated b...

Dang, I just realized that I haven't 1) posted links to photos of PF12 day two 2) updated my blog for almost two months! For the past month, poor weather and busy day job kept me away from taking outdoor photographs. Anyway, digital photos of PF12 day two are here and film photos are here , respectively.

Photographs of PF12 day 1 have been organized. At first I was about to sort them out on the same day, but there was a memorable moment on Saturday, a friends' meeting on Sunday, and a wedding feast on Monday night, delaying the process till now. So what exactly was that "memorable moment?" It is now well circulated on the web; for the lesser informed, the picture above has the hint: Aya-chan (cosplaying Tianzi-sama from Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 at right) accepted the wedding proposal from her boyfriend right at PF12; to be specific, not in the costume above, but as Haruko Akagi from Slam Dumk , while his boyfriend cosplayed Hanamichi Sakuragi. The secrecy was kept tightly and she had no idea at all; when she realized what was going on she broke into tears in joy. It was a pity that I wasn't there witnessing the moment of truth. Other pictures are available at her web diary . Aside from the Slam Dunk group, I thought this Athena Glory from Aria pict...

Established in 2005, Atheist Agenda is an atheist group organized by students and teachers of the University of Texas at San Antonio. It has been reported by the mass media several times because of its (in)famous "Smut for Smut" campaign i.e. trade in your religious books for pornography. Trade in your Bible for porn, atheists urge college students Texas College Campus Divided Over Bible for Porn Campaign What does it have anything to do with anime or manga then? Watch the following news footage: From KABB Fox San Antonio Look at the female student fujōshi who was saying "Homosexual porn!" while taking the book she got from the brown envelop: it was Ijiwaru na Kuchibiru (意地悪な唇) by Ryou Sakurai ( 桜井りょう ) As far as I know, none of the manga by Ryou Sakurai has not been licensed in North America yet, thus the news footage has become an unexpected advertisement. Thanks to ANN user The Xenos providing the news and screencaps.

Click here for the photo album. The weather of the second day was much better; not only the temperature rise up, it even became sunny (despite only occasionally), and I brought my Konica Auto S1.6 film camera with me. Unfortunately the film would not be developed until this Thursday (sigh). When taking the picture above, I only knew this pretty girl was cosplaying a character from Touhou Project but didn't know exactly who she was. Instead, I was attracted by the camera she held: a Fujifilm FinePix S3 Pro. As a supporter of Fujifilm, I seldom see female using this camera, let alone using it for cosplaying (too bad it was not her camera either; she borrowed it just for posing). After looking up Wikipedia, I am now certain that she was cosplaying Aya Syameimaru (射命丸 文), first appeared in Touhou Kaeidzuka ~ Phantasmagoria of Flower View. Being a paparazzi reporter, S3 Pro fits her character perfectly, but I'd say Tamron 18-270mm F/3.5-6.3 would be much more useful than Nikko...

Click here for the photo album. The weather of FF15 / CWT24 this year was the coldest one I had ever encountered; a strong cold front brought the temperature below 10 degree Celsius. I had to wear my thickest feather jacket when I return to Taipei on Friday. While Saturday morning was not as cold as Thursday and Friday, cosplayers were fewer than previous events; lighting was far from satisfactory either. Tiger × Dragon groups were the most prominent among grouped cosplayers (four or more groups), probably because of the Year of Tiger; SOS-dan, which had been dominating cosplaying for the past few years, were significantly reduced. By the way, it would be fun if the three cosplayers in the picture above showed up at Rie Kugimiya's autograph session at Taipei International Book Exhibition. While it's cold outside (literally and figuratively), it was a complete chaos within the stadium: due to the events were held after the Chinese New Year, many young people have extra cas...

Three weeks have passed since the end of Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE) 2010. Due to some personal factors I haven't had my album organized and uploaded, and I feel terribly sorry to cosplayers and friends whom I promised to give photos to. This time I tried to use the built-in Flash direct linkage to my album at Yam, but it was buggy and could only display resized pictures using Internet Explorer, not with Firefox, forcing me to re-upload the title picture to Photobucket. For larger pictures (960 x 720 pixels) please click here . A cosplayer stole our attention: " yakiisis " (Naruto Uzumaki in the picture above) from the invited cosplay circle " 304 " which came all the way from Hangzhou. Her "Nobody Dance" (for the uninitiated: it came from Wonder Girls ) was not only well-memorized, but each beat was full of strength and speed, yet her body figure remained soft and flexible. Since she has "dancing" as a skill in her personal p...

The honored guest of the first day of Taipei International Book Exhibition was Kazuo Umezz (official transliteration; most sources spell his family name as "Umezu"). Unlike most shy mangaka, 73-years-old Umezz-sensei is well known for his love of stage performance and attention. In addition to have danced at the opening ceremony , Umezz-sensei added two additional dances before his autograph session started! The first dance had strong Middle Eastern feel, and Umezz-sensei had long white robes to fit in the theme. At the moment I felt deja vu of his outfit but couldn't name it, only to have realized the likeliness of this colonel . Finishing the first song was far from the end. Umezz-sensei took off the long white robes, revealing his trademark red and white striped shirt. Umezz-sensei said hello to his fans with yet another trademark of his, the gwashi gesture. Umezz-sensei dancing with the music of "Gwashi!! Makoto-chan," related to the 1980 animate...

More than three weeks have passed since the first wave of publicized guests of honor of Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE), and we've got some new updates: Kazuo Umezu, master of horror manga, will visit TIBE 2010 and hold an autograph session. d/books taipei has posted "Range Murata 2010 Combo Pack," thus confirming their role in inviting Murata. Coincidentally, Mardock Scramble , a novel by Tow Ubukata and was planned to be animated with Murata's character designs four years ago and meant to be the 15th anniversary of GONZO , later canceled abruptly in December 2006, was miraculously resurrected as a theatrical movie . I wonder if Murata still taking parts in the new movie edition. Update: Line art of a "China-dress girl" illustrated by Murata exclusively for TIBE 2010. Mighty Media has licensed Pandora Heart and CANAAN but didn't bother to announce at their own official website. Rather, their related merchandises are on sale now. ...

Click here for the album (digital). The anniversary gathering of Bahamut (www.gamer.com.tw) is a real challenge for photographers: heavy overcast and drizzle outdoor; the gaming area is completely packed; the anime/manga area, while backgrounds and lightings were provided for photographers, the arrangement of those equipments were hastily prepared and I'd rather it had none. The most valuable experience I learned from this event was comparing digital and film photographs under the same composition and sensitivity (ISO). Surprisingly, the combination of Konica Auto S1.6 and Fujifilm Superia X-TRA 400 produced very high saturation and contrast (see below): Pictures taken by S100FS had to be increased 15% contrast and 30% saturation, respectively, in order to produce similar results.

Album of day 1 Album of day 2 The two days of CWT23 had fine weathers in Taipei's winter. In addition to standard equipment of S100FS + PE-36S, I also brought out my Konica Auto S1.6, which had only been tested once at 44 South Village after being repaired, coupled with Fujifilm Superia Reala, their finest consumer color negative film, and the results were quite pleasing. Furthermore, K-ON! @ Tien Education Center has been uploaded as well.

GNN , Central Daily , and Mighty Media's own official website have all announced the first round of guests of honors of Comic and Animation Hall, Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE) 2010 yesterday afternoon. Four names have been announced: Range Murata (conceptual character designer of Last Exile ), Miho Obana (mangaka of Kodocha ), Rie Kugimiya (Shana of Shakugan no Shana ), and Junko Takeuchi (Naruto Uzumaki of Naruto ). Details of autograph eligibility can be read by clicking respective links. Mighty always play big at TIBE (as opposed to Comic Exhibitions in summers); they indeed invest a lot on three guests of honor, all are key figures of their most popular titles, notably merchandise of Shakugan no Shana (life-size pillows in particular). Patients of Kugimiya syndrome are already "burning" right now. On the other hand, Range Murata, who had visited Taiwan three years ago, have little connection with Mighty this year, unless Mighty is looking forward a...

Recent busy works kept be away from organizing my photographs or updating my blogs. Nine new albums have been added to my yam blog , including some that I had shown but not written for. 2009-04-19 Cats along Shen-Ou line ; had written a special blog entry for them. 2009-05-13 A friend's kittens 2009-06-28 New Pingsi Coal Mine ; had written a Part 1 for my visit. 2009-07-12 Locating Hasshaku-mon (八尺門) tunnel 2009-10-17 Matsu 2009-10-25 PF11 day 2 2009-10-25 PF11 day 2 Rin Kagamine 2009-11-08 Tiansongpi Station of Lotong Forestry Line 2009-11-08 Cats in Houtong Photos taken at a K-ON! -only event are the last ones to be organized.

Cosplayer photographs of the first day of Petit Fancy 11 have been uploaded . This is the third raining Fancy Frontier / Petit Fancy I've been through. Not only lighting was terrible, protecting my camera from raindrops was really tedious. Fortunately, while I hadn't met any acquainted cosplayer on the first day, this group of Oh! Mikey (also known as The Fuccons ) did it surprisingly well. Barbara Fuccon's mouth must have been exhausted.

Due to various reasons, I didn't have enough time to sort out cosplayer pictures taken during Comic Exhibition Taipei 2009 until yesterday. Now they can be found at this album (including two members of Taipei City Council).

Toshiyuki Morikawa, who played Tyki Mikk in D.Gray-man , Ryuichiro Isaka in Junjō Romantica , among many other roles, arrived at Comic Exhibition Taipei 2009 on August 15. In addition to numerous anime and radio/CD drama characters, Mr. Morikawa also dubs Japanese voices for many Hollywood stars, including Keanu Reeves in The Matrix trilogy, Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible trilogy, and Ewan Mcgregor in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. For the complete interview in English, please visit Anime News Network .

Riichirō Inagaki (center) and Yūsuke Murata (2nd from right), creators of Eyeshield 21 , were invited to attend the 10th Comic Exhibition at Taipei on August 15 and give an autograph session. Like all other guests of the Exhibition, the two donated an autographed signboard to the charity auction, which raised money for the relief effort aimed at the victims of Taiwan's worst flood in 50 years. For the complete interview in English, please visit Anime News Network .

The two-day weekend is when highest number of con-goers attend Comic Exhibition Taipei. Most popular events are often scheduled on the weekend as well. Not surprisingly, I stayed at the convention hall for two full days in order to cover those events. The first one on Saturday morning was a combined autograph session of three Katekyo Hitman Reborn! seiyū: Hidekazu Ichinose (as Hayato Gokudera), Suguru Inoue (as Takeshi Yamamoto), and Takashi Kondo (as Kyouya Hibari). While the original manga of Reborn! is serialized in Tong Li's Formosa Youth (licensed version of Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump ), the majority of its fans are young girls, way more celebrity-worshiping than boys at the same age. The fence surrounding the stage area had been crushed five times due to overcrowding. Soon after the main gate had opened, all major routes to Stage A was completely blocked by the crowd. Quite a few cosplayers are among the crowd. The spectators have filled every square inches in fron...