O-Hisashiburi desu yo!

Yes indeed, it has been a while. As I posted in the KOR blog, my renewed focus on this site will have me making regular posts in this blog as well as the KOR blog.

And plenty has happened on the anime front since I posted last. Well, mainly that it seems like Funimation is the only company consistently dubbing things and putting them out on a regular basis. Viz is still hanging in there. Bandai ... what a disappointment. The news of a sub-only Hayate the Combat Butler is just so disappointing. Less than a year ago, at Otakon, they were excitedly promising four separate audio tracks for the release. Now, we'll be lucky to get one.

Certainly the economy has affected the entertainment industry as a whole in a big way. Of course, when you are part of a niche branch of entertainment, you can take that effect and multiply it by 1,000. Hence, we get Clannad subtitled instead of receiving what would have likely been a fantastic dub from ADV to go along with Air and Kanon.

But Funimation continues to chug along, for now. Thanks DBZ. The cash from that franchise likely saved Funi's bacon when everyone else was treading water.

And Funimation has continued to look for new ways to get their anime to customers, including a myriad of streaming options (including their own). They were set to show new episodes of One Piece online until some idiots decided they wanted to ruin it for everyone. Should Funimation have taken more care to keep it away from those people? Sure. But growing up, you all knew where your parents kept their money and valuables. That didn't give you license to steal them, did it? Stealing is stealing. The ease of which it was stolen doesn't make it less illegal.

On the convention front, I was able to attend two conventions since my last post. The first was YuleCon in Dallas, TX. This allowed my brother and I to take our first commercial plane trips. It was awesome. Dallas was awesome. Cruising around Southlake, TX in a rented Pontiac Vibe was awesome. I might post a video of our trip to let you know what kind of fun we had.

Honestly, we didn't see much of the con. What we did see was fun. It was held in a hotel in the shadows of the Texas Motor Speedway, which is HUGE. I mean, seriously. It makes Kentucky Speedway look like a dirt track.

In addition to our Texas adventure, we headed to Ohayocon in January. It was our third trip to what we consider our home convention. There were seven of us this time, and for the most part we had a blast. Mike, his buddy Shane and I also took in a Blue Jackets game on Friday night, which was awesome. I'm really excited about Ohayocon 10 next January. I'm sure it will be special.

On the anime watched front, I finished Kanon and watched Clannad. I'm almost finished with Negima!? and I'm about halfway through Cardcaptor Sakura thanks to Netflix. CCS, by the way, has been very good so far. I was a little sceptical, but it has been good. Would be better with a dub, though (are you listening, Funimation?).

I can't remember if was since my last post or not, but I also finished Shuffle, which I really, really liked. Great dub, good story, good ending. I'll post details on that later on (I've got to save some stuff to talk about later).

Since everyone on YouTube has their top 10, 20, million opening and ending themes, I've decided to tackle the same task. Of course, it will only be from shows and songs I'm familiar with, but I've got quite the list. In fact, I did ending themes first because there weren't as many, and the top 50 was nearly impossible to choose.

At the very least, hopefully it will be something that can be discussed. I'll start posting those sometime soon (with videos of the opens as well).

OK, that's all for tonight. I don't know if I'll post here every day. But I'll be back sometime this week with more.