Kalafina, Kaji Fes., FictionJunction, Madoka stuff

I just received a ton of stuff these last two days!! :) They were bought over a period of a few months but I asked one of my friends in Japan to hold on to them till our mutual friend from Singapore made a trip to Tokyo. I need to try and save when I can. This is an expensive hobby and I really want to try and go to Japan again this year.

I need to try and do my unboxing posts again... so busy lately... really busy... but I will try... makenaide!! :)

Bye for now!

posted from Bloggeroid

CDJapan ~ Japanese ebooks for sale ~ YAY!!!

Rejoice!!!!  Finally, there is an easy way to purchase Japanese ebooks. :)  CDJapan has just launched their new ebook store and ebooks purchased from them can be read using an application which works on iphones, android phones, tablets and your desktop computer.

Go to CDJapan's ebook store to download the app.  Click me.  If you have a CDJapan account you can use that account.  If not, you'll have to sign up for one.

I tried the app on an Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy S2 and it worked perfectly.  On installing the app, it come with 2 free ebooks and a sample manga.  It's very intuitive to use and is pretty much a basic ebook reader app.  You can access the CDJapan store from this app where you'll be able to make purchases from the store through the app or download sample pages to read before making your purchasing decisions.

I downloaded the Mahou Shoujo Madoka vol.1 manga sample pages just to test it out.  I already own the physical version of the book so am hesitant to buy the ebook version.  But if I had the choice then I would have bought the ebook version to save space in my room and to save on shipping.



The most annoynig thing about it right now is that it doesn't yet run on Jellybean on the Android so I can't check this out on the Nexus 7. :(

I might try and make a purchase soon just to see how it works... but for now... I'll leave those who are interested to test out the service... I need to sleep soon. :)

Manga Time Kirara Magika Vol.1 2012 July Issue

This post is dedicated to the Manga Time Kiara Magika magazine which is a comics magazine that's devoted to the Mahou Shoujo Madoka anime.  I haven't had too much time so haven't really tried reading too much of it.  I read a couple of pages though and the thing that I will have some trouble with is the Kanji.  There is no furigana which is painful for me because there will have to be a lot of dictionary checking.

I realised that I should have shot more photos but the magazine was one of a number of things I shot photos of one hot Wednesday afternoon and I think I wasn't really thinking by the time I got to it, hence, only three photos.

Well, still with 3 photos, I think you can get the picture of what kind of a magazine it is. :)  It's really more or less a collection of comics, something like Shonen Jump or something similar.  The only thing is that this entire volume is dedicated to the Mahou Shoujo Madoka franchise.  This issue starts of with a short announce of the first two movies of the planned three movies for Mahou Shoujo Madoka.

The majority of this magazine is in black & white.  There are several full coloured pages in the beginning.  There is a two page time-line of the events that take place in the anime and CD Drama.  Then there is a three page interview dedicated to Aoi Yuuki, the seiyuu for Kanome Madoka.  That's followed by another 3 page interview with Akiyuki Shinbo,the director of the anime.



The rest of the magazine is mostly made up of various comics.  The majority of the pages are in b&w but there are several full coloured pages scattered throughout the magazine.  Some are serialized comics, some are 4 panel comics and some are one-offs.

As usual, I got my copy from CDJapan.  Here is the direct product page link for those who wish to buy the manga.

unboxing posts - coming soon :)

I didn't think it'll take me so long to post over 400 photos of the recently concluded Japan trip on facebook.  After sorting, labelling, tagging and replying the tons of messages I got since last week, some how it's evening already.  Hmmmm... I still have a ton of "unboxing" photos and posts that I would like to put up soon.

I may do the Kalafina "to the beginning" merchandise post tonight or may do the Mahou Shoujo Madoka Key Animation Note Vol.3 and Vol.4 posts.  I also have photos of several other books and the Nanoha psp game photo done already.  Just need to write posts for them soon.  Lisani vol.9 also has several pages dedicated to Kajiura Yuki and Kalafina and I would like to post those up too.

However, it's almost time for dinner and I still haven't touched my Japanese homework... really need to try schedule the time properly for tonight.

Oh... I found out yesterday that I got my first film credit. :)  I'm quite happy about it.  So far I've already worked on 6 films.  On some of them I only did one shot or partial shots so I don't expect or hope to get credits for those.  But I did work on one film for an entire year but got no film credit for that.  That was my first major project too, so I was understandably a bit disappointed about it. There were just too many artists that worked on the film and not enough space for all of us. :(  But I'm over that already. :)  I wasn't even thinking of film credits when one of my heads told me that I was one of the lucky ones who got a film credit on this film... I'm rather happy about it. :)  I told my parents who were really happy about it too and we're going to watch it together. :)

Okay... I'm going to go off now... time for dinner... but hopefully I will have at least one un-boxing post up tonight.... btw, the Mahou Shoujo Madoka Key Animation Note artbooks come packed with some awesome stuff.  I think fans of the series would like the extras that come packed with vol.3 and vol.4. :)

K... going now... later. :)

p.s. 11pm - in the end, I got too lazy to do anything constructive. :)  I ended up watching 3 episodes of Miyabe Miyuki 4 week SP specials.  Pretty good stuff, got hooked on the first episode and after that, I just could not stop.  Hmmmm.... someday I hope my Japanese will become good enough that I can read these novels.  Going to bed now... getting tired... maybe I'll do some of these posts tomorrow.... oyasumi :)

friday :)

Much as I like my job, I am always glad when the weekend comes. I can't wait for the end of today. We have a monthly company get together thing at the end of the first friday of the month which means that work will end a little earlier today.

I've also scheduled a dinner appointment with one of my best friends tonight. So am really looking forward to that. :) She's not as otaku as me but then, I'm not even as otaku as a lot of other people. :) I'm really looking forward to meeting her tonight though cuz sadly, there doesn't seem to be anyone at my current company quite as into Japanese pop culture as I. Chotto sabishi ne. :)

The speed subbers must really love Mahou Shojo Madoka. The latest ep aired in the wee hours of this morning and the [gg] subs are already out. I tried to download it this morning but there weren't enough seeders yet so I couldn't get a good speed on it. Will try and watch it on a streaming site later at lunch if I have the time.

Volume 4 of the Mahou Shoujo Madoka blu-ray special edition is also available for pre-order on Amazon Japan.  I'll probably order that with Volume 3 and bundle those two together to save shipping.  Am not sure what the special cds are on those, I think they haven't announced it yet on the official website.

Lately, work has been tiring so I have not been watching too much anime. Also, my Japanese homework is getting more challenging these days, so doing it and trying to do some light revision requires more devotion then before. To spice it up, I have been trying to read some manga on my way to work while waiting for the latest ep of Mahou Shoujo Madoka. So far I have been reading Conan. I understand quite a bit of it. The vocab is beyond me quite often but nothing a good dictionary or the internet won't fix. The grammar can get very casual and uses a lot of the conversational forms. So that can get hard even though I have learnt some of it. But it is good practice and I have no real problems understanding the story or the meaning of most of the sentences even if I may miss the nuances.

Okie dokes. That's it for now. Hope to be back later in the day to talk about Mahou Shoujo Madoka. Tried to write last night but worked late and got too tired. Here's hoping today's ep is awesome. :)