Starting Right Out Here...

Hey folks. I'm going to assume that most of the people reading this, if you're reading it at all, are going to be the people I talk with online at Giant In The Playground and TV Tropes. I'm going to keep this out of my Facebook and non-online life, so this is its own monster. If you stumble across this, hey! I'm Rogue 7, a general geek who tends to focus on Anime, Video Games, and tabletop games. I've got so much geek stuff that I tend to talk about that I feel the need to get this down somewhere, even if no one else is reading it. If anything, It'll be interesting to go back and read it.

This blog is gonna focus on anime and manga for the most part. I'll throw up reviews of stuff I like, and maybe gush about the new manga chapters coming out each week (or month in the case of Fullmetal Alchemist), and throw around a few recommendations of stuff I've found online.

So the trigger that I got to starting this blog was functionally two things. The first is that I was listening to the "Anime Counterpoint" podcast by a bunch of the guys behind various Abridged Series- MasakoX, Hbi2k, and KaiserNeko, who all collaborate on DragonBall Z Abridged, which is, by and large, the funniest thing I've seen in a good long while. Check it out. They're doing a general anime talk, which got me thinking. And anyone who knows me knows that I'm always thinking. So I'm putting things down in electronic form. (I'd say on paper, but I haven't really written anything seriously on paper in a damn long while)* But their podcast is really good, they've got a lot of insight into fandom and the industry, and a lot of the time they can be pretty damn funny.

The second is something I really want to advertise. I like Naruto quite a lot. It has some fantastic world building, some great action sequences, and some great characters. It's got problems, lord knows it's got problems- the pacing is bad, there used to be far too much focus on Sasuke (*shakes his fist in anger*), and several issues don't appear to be getting close to being resolved. I'm talking more about the manga here, as that's what I tend to focus on, particularly since Shippuden has dragged on a ridiculously long time. But I'll keep watching, I'll keep reading, and gorramit, I'll keep complaining! But that's getting a bit long-winded, and not really what I want to talk about. I'm sure that most people in the U.S. are familliar with Hulu for TV broadcasting online. It's got a ton of series, both new and old- they've got Firefly up there, which I will most certainly gush about at some point. But they've also got a good deal of Anime, most of it from Viz or Funimation (Funimation recently has really done a fantastic job of getting anime out- they released Nanoha for cripe's sake!), but I just looked and it turns out that they've somehow cut a deal with whoever it is does the Japanese broadcasts, and quite possibly the fansubbers over at Dattebayo** and have both the last filler arc of the original series (my favorite filler arc) and the new Shippuden episodes, one week delayed. It's free, it's legal, and you actually support Kishimoto and the official release. Plus, you don't have to deal with the assholes over at Dattebayo. You can wait one week, can't you? Please do.

I indulge in fansubs and scanslations myself (I can't live without my weekly Negima fix), but I've never had any illusions that it's legal. It's not. I'm not gonna condemn it, but I'm not gonna support it. I try to go out to buy series I watch fansubbed. (That reminds me, I've gotta pick up Nanoha)- Full Metal Panic and Haruhi Suzumiya being the two most recent (I'm a poor college student), but this is a big deal for the Anime industry, particularly since I think Cartoon Network dropped Shippuden- they're going to be back-releasing the episodes on Hulu, 8 per week. Naruto's freakin' huge. There are a ton of dub fans who watched it on Toonami (RIP) who now can't get their ninja fix, who probably went online and found it on Hulu or started getting fansubs. Now they've got a legal option to watch the series, and those who watched the fansubs now also have a legal means to watch without having to wait for the dub/DVDs to catch up. So if you like Naruto, make sure to watch it on Hulu. It's legal, and it's probably going to be better than the fansubs. Now Im'a go watch it. Later!

Ironic point- what I'm talking about here just came up on the Anime Counterpoint podcast I'm listening to. They're talking about fansubs and getting a quick legal version up on some site (this aired back in August '08, and here I am talking about the legal quicksub of Naruto up. Funny.


* I think I'll take this opportunity to mention that online, when I'm talking, I use parentheses a lot. I don't really know why, I certainly try not to do it when I write formally. I just tend to inject a sentence with tangential relevance into whatever I'm talking about, and the quickest way to do that is just stick in some parentheses.
** Those guys do a really good fansub job, but Dear Lord, they're assholes. I say this from just browsing around their site to get to the episodes. They're total assholes, really rude. I'm glad I don't have to use them if I want a Naruto fix.