Blog Profile / HappySoda
| URL : | http://www.happysoda.com/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Animation / Anime & Manga | |
| Posts on Regator: | 179 | |
| Posts / Week: | 0.7 | |
| Archived Since: | March 5, 2008 | |
Blog Post Archive
Another Ending
Finally got around to finishing Another. Typical of the “sinister mysterious thing in this town” genre, the ride to the end, the accumulation of idle thoughts speculating on the details, while waiting on traffic lights to change during my daily commute, wound up far more interesting than the final destination. Having expected as much, a [...]
Redline Flatlines, but Still Beats
Redline opens, race in progress and my mouth stretches wide with a wicked grin, eager to sing its praise over the rooftops of the world. My buds need to see this. There hasn’t been something this balls dipped in awesome in years. At last, I have something new I can lend to Mr. Likes anime, [...]
Spice and Wolf, Season 1
Spice and Wolf is a curious show. At a quick glance through some of the art, it seemed designed for the viewer to fawn over a wolf-girl who doesn’t mind being naked. Anime character designs are usually a decent barometer of what a show aims to do. However, Spice and Wolf proves the rule that [...]
The Good, The Bad, The Ugly of 2011
Like most years, 2011 was a mixed bag, especially as far as watching anime and blogging goes. Spent much more time this year fiddling with tabletop RPG stuff. I still love anime and figures, which is why I can’t quite kill this blog, no matter how sad it gets. The Good On a personal front, [...]
Going Native Again: Trunk Girl and Shoujo-S (NSFW)
I love Native. They extend the collection experience beyond most companies. Native doesn’t stop at the figure, at least with the three in my collection (Kotone, Shoujo-S, and Trunk Girl). Each of the figures came with an almost designer-like box. I didn’t take photos of the boxes, a) because it’s a pain and b) it [...]
Usagi Drop, A Fantasy
Daikichi is a single, never married, thirty-something male who takes the responsibility of raising Rin, a five year old girl who was in the care of his grandfather who passed away. Nobody in the family wanted her, so Daikichi took responsibility. The setup of Usagi Drop sounds close to a Hallmark Hall of Fame type [...]
Mikoto and Kuroko as Maids
The official character illustrations for Mikoto and Kuroko appeal to me due to a distinct art style, a little sharper, a little less soft, a bit more linear than cute girls get drawn. So yeah, I like the characters via the designs and the expressive images I’ve seen floating around. In much of the official [...]
Rideback
Worlds change in an instant, mused Rin Ogata as she danced on stage. She was a rising star in the ballet world, but when her ankle gives way it changes what she had thought would be the rest of her life, following her mother’s path of the prima ballerina. Now that the dream had slipped [...]
Summertime Rin and Saber
I’m a little surprised that there haven’t been more Rin figures made over the last few of years. I can see why Saber figures outnumber Rin. Armor. Big sword. A wider variety of costumes and outfits. Plus if you go with the extremes of Rei and Asuka spectrum of anime girls, Saber is closer to [...]
Otakon 2011
Every year since about 2007, I’ve been saying to myself on the drive home from Otakon that I’m getting too old for this shit and this is my last anime convention. Pretty much everyone else I know considers themselves too old for it, or you know, they’re just not into it enough to want to [...]
Misconceptions of a Dwarf
Walking up to a house cat, pointing at it and calling it an aardvark makes about as much sense as pointing to sauerkraut and calling it honey. On some level names are just arbitrary sounds attached to an object, a label and we all know labels stink. Limiting. Confining. Why get bent out of shape [...]
Hold That Taiga
A 1/8 scale PVC Taiga has spent the past couple of months on my desk and I didn’t mind it at all. The highlights of the figure are a seated pose, the chair, and the sort of a china dress. In the real world, the china dress never looks as good as it does on [...]
Twelve Days of Anime, Post 8: Here’s Johnny
Finally got to crack open my Eden of the East BluRays and marathon them. Totally was not expecting something as whimsical as a magic penis being the solution to a problem from a Kenji Kamiyama work. I expected something more subdued and restrained as a lot of this director’s previous works have been. It was [...]
Twelve Days of Anime, Post 7: Girls + Guns + Canaan
Jackie Brown was a so-so Tarantino. Okay, maybe it’s actually a decent movie, but after Pulp Fiction…it was a let-down. The main thing I remember about it was one of the character’s obsession with bikini girls shooting machine guns and kind of laughing at the guy for watching such cheesy shit. Being a too-smart for [...]
Twelve Days of Anime, Post 6: Eight Was Great
Maybe Endless Eight section of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Season 2 works better as a condensed viewing experience, eight episodes in two sittings, as opposed to waiting two months, one episode a week, because I thought it was an interesting watch, which is far from the reaction that the people who were watching it [...]
Twelve Days of Anime, Post 5: Section23 Dubs Anime
Five years ago, anime releases in North America without an English dub were anomalies reserved for a Satoshi Kon film or two. Until this year, it was starting to appear that the anomaly would become the matter of course for anime released in North America. Fewer people buy anime these days and selling a number [...]
Twelve Days of Anime, Post 4: To The Poles
This chic has lots of sex and she’s the initiator of the deeds. In the context of anime and their squeaky clean perfect virgin main characters, this angel blew me away. Not to get carried away, since Panty is more a characature than a character, and in an odd way feels more fleshed out than [...]
Twelve Days of Anime, Post 3: Watched Clannad
Watching Clannad makes me wish I wasn’t such an ass in high school. For me, that’s where the fantasy in Clannad lies, not the cute girls. I really don’t have this urge to protect or rape the girls of Clannad as the prevailing Pavlovian “tastes great!” vs. “less filling!” response mechanism regarding moe goes on [...]
Twelve Days of Anime, Post 2: Holiday for a Witch
I’m not much of a classic Hollywood fan, but I am one of the many who has a spot for Audrey Hepburn. So in “My Romagna,” episode 5 of Strike Witches season two…as soon as Lucchini lands her kick and grabs the hand of the girl she “rescues” a grin spread across my face, because [...]
Twelve Days of Anime, Post 1: Streaming Anime
For over a decade, I’d always thought it would be nice to be able to watch anime as it was being released like “normal” TV. I don’t do fansubs, so when streaming gained mass and momentum, I no longer had to wait 2-years to watch the anime I’d hear people talking about. I was looking [...]