New York Anime Festiv- ...Comic Con 2013;FIRST DAY IMPRESSIONS!!! (Well, it was Friday so, technically, SECOND day.)

If living outside a rock hasn't taught you this yet, listen carefully:

waiting until the last minute doesn't help.


Thus, long story short, I was not able to procure a pass this year before the scalpers got to them.
(Ironically, you'd think having a job would make it easier, except having excess cash makes you buy expensive things.)

Luckily, a friend, or should I say, a complete stranger was able to help me out on this part.
.......I will not be providing the details.
Also, friends suck.

Because of this very generous procurement, I was able to secure access to the con for most of the afternoon, barring a few hours where I had to move and babysit my car on account it being a stupid weekday.

If you've been there, I don't need to tell you access is pretty damn extreme year.  E.G., I sort of had an incredible need to use the men's room before I got my pass, but from scoping things out in the morning, pretty much the ENTIRE Javits center is behind checkpoints, save for a small portion of the front lobby.

DA-ME, otaku suckaaa!

Having attending this con for the last SIX YEARS, this was highly unexpected, as all the checkpoints, without exception, used to be further in.  I mean, if you desired so, you could just pretty much chill in the lobby and people watch allllllll day.
Like SRSLY.

(In regards to the bathroom thing, thank God for that McDonald's, for once in my life.)

Anywayyy, on my first day this year, a few major points stood out:
1. RFID chipping the badges prevents counterfeiting; it doesn't do a daaammn against scalping.
2. GoodSmile is back again! Awesome!  And they're still Bastards.
3. It's a damn waste of money if you're planning to go to mostly panels, 'cos you'll wait for at least an hour and still won't get in.  And it ain't even Saturday yet!

I'll be back (eventually) on my thoughts on my second, more epic attendance.  I skipped Saturday (I HATE Saturdays), so you'll hear about the third day of the con...which would be (for press) actually the fourt- goddamn Sunday, October 12th, 2013.

(BTW if Peter Tatara is reading this, thanks for getting back to me, slthough you couldn't help me get past security at all, really).

!!UPDATE!! (I'm not dead!!!.............just barely alive.)+PLUS-Miku corolla addition!!!!!!!!!! = SUCCESS! ....ish.

More than half a year since my last post...orZ
...YET, at least it didn't become an annual tradition!  \(^e^)/

So, let's get to the beef. (Not Waigyu beef...too damn expensive.)

I don't really remember how I came to this revelation...it's just been so long since I made the actual discovery and didn't tell anybody abo.....What I mean is, I've discovered how to get an AR Hatsune Miku to dance! Pretty AWESOME! (for about five... up to ten minutes).

What I lacked before, what was actually a necessity to download ANOTHER separate app, called JUNAIO (the name's actually lowercase; apparently the dev likes !style!  ...I  bolded and capped for EMPHASIS).

Well, a thousand of my superfluous words aren't able to show you this in properly glorious justice, thus pictures will be appropriate:






YET, instead, HERE I'VE GOT VIDEO! (which is worth a thousand pictures, right? ...I presume? uhhh...Whatever.)

A second attempt with better results on a large Android phone with a WAAY too shiny screen-



In addition, I've got figures coming soon!  Cool ones, I promise......I just can't guarantee the ETA.


In the meantime, check out my FIRST EVAR post on figure.fm, which has a short sample of my current figures, and possibly cool photographic techniques!  Plus I'm not spending the effort to repost it here!


Come back and see my new material soon*! 

(*soon timeframe is in relative terms. you may or may not agree on its validity.)

TYPHOON SANDY HAS DESTROYED EVERYTHING!!!!

Well, not really.

Typhoon, or the term preferred in the Western Hemisphere, Hurricane Sandy has truly simply destroyed my electric and telecommunication utilities, which makes up the majority of everything, for me anyway.

Even if you're not remotely American, as you may have overheard, if in any case you've been watching TV, using the internet, or had even physically conversed with another person, a large, no-longer-a-very-unusual storm has hit the NYC area, causing mass havoc unlike since what has last been seen in dues of the Northeast Blackout in 2003.

This means I'm sitting at my local public library, unable to update my feed, posts reviews of figures I've obtained, or work on other projects that I may have planned but have been too lazy to write about. 

I have a portable generator, but its priority has been to provide hot water and preserve frozen provisions that the biological beings in my residence require to continue life functions. 

On the relatively positive, at least all my motor vehicles have at least half a tank of petrol, and I have enough gasoline-electric power for a few more days, very likely enough to outlast those situated in the position of a poor sap waiting in a 2-hour, 100 vehicle long line to purchase up to 5 gallons of fossil fuel at illegally scalping prices.
Also, I know how to siphon. 

So the new revelations regarding AR Miku or my sweet, sweet, creepy-inner-thought-creating Majest...Angelic Island Kikuchi Makoto figure will have to wait a bit, for the two people I've promoted this blog to.

Check back soon, but you'll need to look at the older posts for updates. 'Cos that's the way I do it.

Miku Corolla Revisited

Hey, it's just over a week since NY Anime Fest 2012! (I AM NOT calling it Comic Con!)  Thus, I won't be covering the events of the con, because:
One-I'm not the journalist type;
Two-I did not have a press badge;
Three-I hardly attended many major events;
Four-I'm not a damn journalist!
Parenthetically (aka BTY) Peter Tatara won't return my emails, and I will consider that Five.





So, dispirited from the results of my previous post, I did a little google ditty, and through info gleamed from pages not updated in the last year, it seems that I have to download an app, mundanely enough called the "Toyota Shopping Tool".  At the least, that's what should've happened for me when I sent the text.

I swear, officer, those apps aren't mine...

Since no one under their 50's isn't interested in purchasing a Toyota (well, other than a Prius, really) the only interesting thing this app features is this Toyo Tag feature.

Stupid Japan its addiction to invent unnecessary proprietary format.

Touch that, and a reticule emerges:

Fox Two armed ready!    Locking on target....   orZ

...which allows you scan Toyota related stuff.....like scan the information post aside a displayed Toyota vehicle to get information.
There were other features, but I didn't give a damn, as I'd rather be strapped to a chair, eyelids tied back, and forced to watch the entire "Initial D" series (yes, the movie too), than buy a (non-2003-2009-Prius) motor vehicle with the brand Toyota.

Now,under the deception I had the proper tools this time, I did my best not to quiver while holding the phone, and there was a click, and I activated that unnecessary proprietary system.
Success!.......so I thought.

 Did this app just tell me to download itself?

And such is what appeared before me.  Could it be possible, my little paradise?

 I didn't even care to take the effort to "Photoshop" this.

As tempting as this screen looked, the inanimate was triumphant.  I fruitlessly rubbed my fingers across Miku (I fully intended to have that sound wrong), hoping some hidden link was hidden in the image, that would lead me to my goal.

And all it did was jiggle a bit.

This is an actual screenshot on the "Toyota Shopper Tool" page.  From the looks of it, one SHOULD assume that the app would provide a little AR Miku Concert.  

Fake advertising got me agin'!

Also, it says so on the bottom.

Though this was a deavistating blow to my struggle to see something cool, I AM determined to yield some sort of result out of this.  I SHALL peruse even deeper into my googling.  

Do not contemplate failure!

Sooo...check back soon, y'all

Itasha cars for the U.S.? DA-MÉh!

Now, I understand my first post is extraordinarily late and some of you may have already gotten wind of this already, but since no one reads this blog, I have nothing to apologize for.  Still, I really wanted to post this like, two months ago. (ED: be about a year now...)

I presume most of you types who might stumble across my little feed would not deny that the popularity of foreign Anime and Manga is growing in the U.S., evident by the fact that nearly 100,000 people attended the 2010 New York Comic Con, and perhaps some wandered into the coinciding Anime Festival con running somewhere in the basement.  Despite this possible fact, it had no doubt this culture remains obscure in its own niche and has yet to reach the American mainstream conciousness (my Funimation channel is still dubbed, so I never watch it).  ( -_-)

That is until the 2011 4th of July weekend.

If you planned to drive from geologic Long Island to the West Side (...or perhaps, say, New Jersey (e_e')(;e_e)...) that day, and are a cheapstake, more than likely you took the Queensboro Bridge to get into Manhattan.  So, as I was doing so, approaching the Van Dam St/Queens Blvd intersection, I noticed a familiar figure on the billboard, mounted on the 7 Train El.

As with most days, I had my camera on me and the confidence to take photos from a moving car during rush hour:

Lo and behold, to my very delight, I saw an advertisement featuring a certain Hatsune Miku on prominent display!  As my excitement grew, and one knee on the wheel, I fiddled with my camera to get better shots.

As I couldn't really pull my car over without being ticketed at the time, I didn't get a picture from an ideal angle for a photographer.  Yet, since I was at a red light, I think captured everything relevant.



For some reason this picture is the clearest,
despite the next shot being closer in.

Stupid consumer enthusiast camera and its superfluous settings

Now for those of you who've already opened up a new window after seeing that URL, with the frenzied excitement that itasha cars are finally becoming prominent in the U.S........

I'll save you the time of disheartening you, in advance.

What you link to (still up, surprisingly, as of 10/09/12) is fundamentally a website of publicity in the field of advertisement.

Zounds! What a price for a 2011 Corolla!

This vehicle lacks a special kind of paint job.

Pretty much a few Youtube videos and......tweets (if that's current moniker for text posts) I guess.... all existing to PROMOTE a 2-year old (whoops) Corolla.  An occasional link to Facebook that still can't comprehend how to operate.  And the videos pretty much suck.  

(Sorry.  I can't get excited only for nor truly understand the franchise that is Vocaloid.  It's not even anime/manga, yet it is somehow associated to anime/manga...
...but I shouldn't stray into that whole deal...)


The only items of real significance are was a sweeps to win tickets to the Miku concert at Anime Expo using Twitter, such contests which never pan out for me anyways.  I can't even travel to California.
(Well, I guess you still can watch some of it.  And also some Toyota commercials.)


All that's legitimately gets me going is this AR thing. (For those without a Nintendo 3DS yet, that's Augmented Reality....just google it).  Take a picture of this:

instruction fail

, text  it back, and something cool is supposed to happen.  Except it didn't.  Might have to do with my idiot ApplePhone to take 7 meg photos as the only option which're too large to be even sent over text.
Really.

Assuredly....indeed....nothing of importance.

Sorry for annihilating your hopes.

So, in conclusion, I guess if you really want itasha cars over here, you'll have to do the effort yourself at a vehicle decal service.  That also applies if you buy a plastic model, cheapskate.

(Another tidbit: this billboard is actually directed towards Chinese, not your presumably Japanese demographic, as one might think.  No explanation given)
(Really, trust me on this, even though I've severe disabilities in reading Chinese, there's no 'no' [の] character that's like in EVERY Japanese sentence.  The Chinese equivalent 'de' is used instead.  Also, everything is in Kanji.
If someone could translate that for me, I'd thank you.)