Category Sternbild Stuff

Jun 13 2012

Derpchan goes to Desucon 2012 – Report!

Cuddly moral support team. Many people asked where I’d gotten these guys from, and the answer is “Japan”.

I’m still recovering from my trip to Desucon 2012 which was held June 8-10 in Lahti, Finland. I don’t think I’d be so tired if I didn’t have to travel there from practically the other end of the country, 12 hours on the train wears me out even if it’s a night train and I can sleep. Anyways, a quick con report before I forget everything.

This was my 3rd time going to Desucon. My loyal side-kick for the weekend was Mineko who also took most of the photos because I had my hands full carrying around my moral support team (Kotetsu & Bunny plush dolls) on Saturday. I cosplayed on Friday and Sunday, Mineko spent the entire weekend getting into trouble as Scarf-tan.

To everyone who wondered where the plushie heroes were from: I ordered them from Japan, you couldn’t find these guys at the dealers’ room although there was some Tiger & Bunny stuff this time. Continue reading →

May 9 2012

For Fun: Pre-order Bingo

Today’s pre-order war over G.E.M. Kotetsu inspired me to make this bingo chart. (I doubt anyone has time to play bingo while smashing F5, tho.) This is a v2 of the bingo chart because I realized I’d left out a rather important one.

Well, you know the drill. Re-arrange to your liking or add some objectives of your own for future wars!

May 4 2012

A little update, if you will…

Hi, it’s derpchan, the member of This is Sternbild who has a little shopping obsession. I mentioned in my review of the Limited Version of Katsura’s artbook that getting S.H.Figuarts Wild Tiger with it made me want more – specifically Barnaby.

Thanks to the frequent reprints, I finally managed to grab him and today he arrived.

“So, how about that fried rice, Bunny?”

And a few more pictures in the Facebook album.

Seems that the S.H.Figuarts of Wild Tiger and Barnaby have finally reached a point where they aren’t constantly SOLD OUT. Barnaby was in stock at Big in Japan and Wild Tiger at Hobby Search.

Now I’ll stick to my guns and wait for Fire Emblem – I’ve been wanting him ever since I saw his Figuarts but Bandai saved the girls for last because even Lunatic is coming out before them. (Hopefully they’ll release Crapsuit someday, too.)

Apr 26 2012

Spring Season Anime Round-Up

We’re a couple of weeks into Spring season, so it’s time for some impressions again. Aki and I are still shedding tears into our Pepsi about there not being more Tiger & Bunny, but this season is actually turning out to be better than expected. Since we talked about ZETMAN before so I guess that’s a good one to start with…

We Are Disappoint

The worst fears I had about ZETMAN are turning out to be true. 13 episodes is too little, the pace is far too fast, and they’re changing things too much. I fully expected them to change something – that’s always the case with adaptations – but they’re making the story less dark. I won’t say more about the changes since Aki’s avoiding being spoiled about the manga story. There’s no time to build any characterization at the pace they’re going, and Aki is just confused and doesn’t really give a damn about any of the characters. Or the plot. If they’re even managing to build any plot, so far they’re going for the cool factor and nothing really clicks together. I’m mostly just feeling sad about what they’re doing to ZETMAN. The more I watch it the more I feel like I can’t really recommend it to anyone, and it’s a shame because it does look good and the action sequences are well composed. The opening song is very catchy too. I might end up watching this alone if Aki decides to drop it and read the manga instead.

And The Rest

The previous season, most of the stuff we dropped was because it just turned out boring or plain bad. This season seemed like the season of the ragequit because we actually started with a few of those! After the ill first impressions we found a title that is really worth checking for Taibani fans.

Space Brothers (Uchuu Kyoudai) – Hirata Hiroaki plays the main character: a thirty-something guy who gets fired in the first episode from his job designing (red) sports cars, wears too short pants that show his ankles, squashes his burgers and fails a lot. Sound familiar? Well, it’s not Kotetsu but the parallels are really amusing. We got no idea if Hirata got a bit of typecast here after his success with Kotetsu because he’s using a very Kotetsu-like voice for the role. The series is entertaining with a good pacing, even though the setting itself feels quite generic – the main character has to overcome a lot of obstacles to reach his dreams. I feel like I’ve seen a story like this many, many times before but it doesn’t really bother me. The other things outweigh it. Oh, and Crunchyroll is streaming it so you can watch it there.

We’re also happy that Noitamina is good again after a few seasons of stumbling. We were a bit iffy about Sakamichi no Apollon at first because the series compositor Kakihara Yuuko did an epic failure with Persona 4 the Animation, but so far it’s been really pleasant to watch. Tsuritama was automatically on our watch list because we’ve both got the hots for Nakamura Kenji‘s series – Mononoke is one of our all-time favourites.

The rest of our watch list for this season looks like this: Arashi no yoru ni, Folktales from Japan, Hyouka (this just started so we’re still undecided if we’ll stick with it), Jormungand, Lupin III: Mine Fujiko to iu onna, Eureka Seven AO, and Shirokuma Cafe.

It’s Not Anime But I Like It

Actually, there’s something we want to recommend this season: Unofficial Sentai Akibaranger – a parody on super sentai shows. Now, what makes this interesting for us is that Satou Keiichi did the character design for the show. Maybe we’ll get to see some dangerous underpants (with a surprise bulge) in it. Plus it’s really really funny, even for people who don’t normally watch tokusatsu shows. Give it a try!