Catch Up with FALL! January 15-16 Anime-Planet’s Monthly Marathon

It's that time for another Monthly Marathon Event called Catch Up, with Anime-Planet hosted by me. Click on the image below to see the anime list. It's all Fall 2010 anime so if you haven't watched everything you wanted to now is the perfect time to do it as there will be people around to chat with!

I've been hosting these events over on Anime-Planet for a whole year now and I gotta say it's been a blast. If you haven't checked out Anime-Planet in general you should as it is always growing! It's a great place to keep all your watched, watching, etc anime in check so you always know what you are doing with each show you watch. You can love and hate anime characters and even voice actors. New features and improvements are added pretty often and it generally doesn't take that long for a minor request to be filled. The newest feature is anime badges which are similar to X-box ones that you can unlock with certain anime that are watched or other random accomplishments. Tis all very fun stuff and more of those are going to be added soon. If you are the winner of this event you'll even win one!

Happy viewing!

Happy New Year and Look! More Anime Resolutions

First of all Happy New Year!

I spent my new years eve countdown in a house with lots of friends somewhere in Vermont. We stayed there for 5 days and had a lot of fun. While there I didn't think about anime or blogging very much and I have now returned ready to face the new year with some fun goals. I have some personal goals in here again along with my lovely anime blogging ones. Last year I did this as well and I'm happy to say I pretty much have completed everything on the Anime side of the goals list. I do still have Gundam Seed and Chrono Crusade to finish off but they are slow watches because I've been buddy group watching them. The only goal I flat out failed was reading manga that wasn't just One Shots. It's really hard for me to sit down and read I guess which is hilarious considering watching anime is basically reading!

One thing I would like to talk about while I got your attention is my 365 Days of Anime Characters posts. They are complete now and I seriously had a lot of fun doing it. I hope everyone had fun reading them even if I choose a character from a show you haven't seen. The goal was to make some lesser known series more known or to at least have people say to me "I'm gonna check this out, thanks!" I got quite a few of those responses which pleased me very much. I won't be continuing this project this year but I might bring it back again in 2012 or later. (Don't hold me to that though haha.) So instead, in the next week or so I'll be starting a new series that will be only once a week. I don't have a name for this project yet but it'll probably be along the lines of chii's Movie Pick or something like that. So look forward to it. If you have a movie suggestion leave a comment and I'll add it to my list! Once again, THANK YOU for reading the Anime Character Series!

Here's my goals for 2011!

Anime:

1. Read more manga (not just one shots)
2. Watch all anime that starts airing in 2011 (some exceptions apply)
3. Watch the titles I have not seen on Digiboy's top 100 list
4. Watch the straggler anime I still haven't finished from 2009 to present
5. Make more crazy top whatever anime lists
6. Instead of just reading everyones blog posts actually comment on them more
7. Attack Shinmaru and Prede's Anime-Planet lists and watch all that they have that I haven't
8. Watch those really popular shows I have been putting off for some reason
9. Pick ONE show from each season and episodically blog it (hopefully keep it to 12-13 episodes)

Suggestions for which shows to blog each season will be most appreciated! Level E is in the lead so far for Winter.

List of anime on Digiboy's list I will watch:

1. Pani Poni Dash
2. Kyouran Kazoku Nikki
3. Darker Than Black*
4. Bamboo Blade
5. Kamichu
6. Neo Ranga*
7. Genshiken*
8. The SoulTaker

* means I'm looking forward to it and was going to watch this year anyway

List of popular shows I will watch plus super long ones:

1. Blood+
2. Ergo Proxy*
3. Great Teacher Onizuka*
4. History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi*
5. Nana*
6. Shakugan no Shana
7. Da Capo
8. Zero no Tsukaima
9. Negima!?
10. Ghost in the Shell
11. Tsubasa Chronicle
12. XXXHOLiC*
13. Lupin III*
14. Hajime no Ippo
15. City Hunter
16. Touch
17. Yu Yu Hakusho*
18. Saint Seiya*
19. Maison Ikkoku
20. Black Jack
21. Saint Seiya*
22. Mazinger Z*
23. Prince of Tennis
24. Fist of the North Star*
25. Kyo Kara Maoh*

* means I'm looking forward to it

If anyone has suggestions for other possible popular stuff that I haven't already seen just leave a comment. This obviously isn't a complete list but I thought 25 titles up there were good enough for the moment off the top of my head.

Personal:

1. Continue Pokemon Workout to loose that weight
2. Try to get into a proper routine
3. Still figure out more ways to make money working from home
4. Try to get in better health so I'm able to get a job (STILL not too sure how to handle this one)
5. BE HAPPY

12 Days of Christmas and the Not so Secret Santa Projects

It's that time of year again! Bloggers are called to gather and remember some awesome anime moments that they have experienced throughout the year and sum it up in 12 awesome posts. Last year I did some "Romance Gushy Moments" because I was new at the whole blog thing and didn't quite get what was going on, but it looked fun! This year I've decided to take a look at a few things from this year that I have experienced along with some fun favourite stuff. I'm going to follow Desu ex Machina's way from last year and actually use the song lyrics in my post titles. I thought that was an extra cute touch. Look forward to it starting on December 14th of next week, going straight till the 25th!

Reverse Thieves will be again doing their Secret Santa Project this year. It's been in the planning since October and for some reason I never noticed in time till the very end when everyone actually started talking a lot about it, so I'm not actually part of this particular project. I will however, be doing something fun that I have named Not so Secret Santa. During late November I picked 7 blog buddies of mine to pick one series each that they thought I should have watched by now. My only restriction on this was it had to be a 12-26 episode series and have no related series attached to it. Who and which anime they have chosen will be a secret until I start publishing the reviews. They will start on December 19th and run straight till the 25th. So far these titles have given me much fun while watching and I can't wait to get these fun reviews out there. ^_^ Look forward to them!

Oh and one more little extra bit of news here. I'll once again be doing 4 posts starting on the 28th reviewing all the past 2010 anime by which season they aired in. I had a lot of fun doing that last year and I know it'll be even more fun this year!

Lots of fun stuff coming up in the month of December! Gonna be busy, busy!

Pokemon Workout!

So, I've been planning this exercise thing for a good long time now. It was one of my new years personal goals to accomplish this year but I didn't take it to the level I'm about to (the most I've done is go out for walks) because like always my health is so up and down. I was also doing some pretty wacky stuff with my back earlier on this year medical wise so I didn't really want to interfere with that. Since things have eased lately I've decided to finally start working out.

I'm going to start attempting a regular schedule for getting into better shape starting next week. I figure I'll start off with 2 or 3 days a week in the beginning and hopefully I'll be able to start doing more days after a while. Why is this called "Pokemon Workout" you are asking at this point I'm sure. Well the goal is to watch one or 2 episodes of Pokemon while working out. Why not mix what I love watching with actually making me a little more fit? I will be posting after each workout about 1 or 2 Pokemon episodes along with my getting fit thoughts and what I feel my progress is like. I will not be posting any weird videos like this or images of me actually working out. XD I'm going to start off with the very first Pokemon series. I look at this as trying to get back to those younger years.

I've made this little starters list that I'll be following at first. I hope to be adding more "challenges" to this as I progress to see what works and what doesn't.

Workout Plan

"Fun" challenges:

Push ups or curl ups during the opening and ending credits.
Jumping jacks when team rocket appears and they say their catch phrase.
At the halfway point while "guess that Pokemon" is happening speed up whatever doing at the time.

Main exercises during the first half and second half of show:

- Ride bike
- Arm/ leg weight training / planks
- Special stretching that I learned from my physiotherapist to not hurt my back
- Ball exercises

The above main exercises are made for 2 Pokemon episodes in a row. It will most likely just be one at first so I'll pick and choose which I feel like doing. I do hope to get it up to a whole hour at some point but baby steps first for me.

Fitness is always on a person's mind that sits behind a computer. Office workers especially are always looking for ways to keep them from turning chubby. So after being basically stuck doing nothing for about 3+ years now due to my decline in health, I do not wish to turn into a fat blob at all. I'm no where near being overweight but I don't want to get there either. With this I hope to prevent what happens to most of us with little activity and keep the pounds from creeping higher and higher till it's too late. Even though it's never too late to start loosing weight and get back into shape!

I suppose we can call this a tad inspired by Training with Hinako, although I won't need to watch her on the screen each time I do my workouts. I think cute little Pokemon will do the trick nicely for me instead of bouncing boobies. Even the cute Wakey Wakey Exercise that Sumomo does, I think is just a little too annoying for me.

Also since I've got people here, starting next week I'm going to be doing a series of posts every Tuesday called "Tuesday Tally". Since I watch a lot of anime I thought it would be fun to keep a list around for a while to see just how much I've actually watched in a week going by each day. I'll be keeping a list over on my small blog on AnimePlanet and at the end of each week I will post a bigger one over here with more thoughts and reaction to what I have viewed. Thinking about adding a "Manga Monday" or maybe more suited to me a "Movie Monday". I'm still debating over which project to start for that.

If anyone has any suggestions out there for workout tips, I'm all ears. ^_^ Pokemon Workout here I come!

An Anime Convention in my own Backyard – Anime North 2010

Well more like one about 8 hours away from where I live. Hilarious how Anime Boston is closer to me and it's out of the country. Anyway, Anime North is Canada's largest anime convention. Somewhere on twitter after it all I saw someone say that there was total attendance of about 18, 500. Which, when I really think about it, that's pretty darn good considering last year it did seem a little smaller (about 16,000 I think). Anime North was my first anime con and that was last year. So really I'm kinda still a con goer noob but either way I find them fun. It was interesting going back again this year knowing what to expect a little more.

We decided to go in late Thursday night from Quebec, Canada and make our way to Toronto. We drove all through the night which worked out to be the best option for us because during the day would have sucked with all of the crazy traffic, let alone all the weird construction randomly spread out through the highways. It's always good getting there a day before or early the day of so you can relax a bit before a super busy weekend. Like in Boston I have friends in Toronto so we stayed with them for the weekend. It was great being with them for the entire weekend (and Monday) especially since these friends are into anime too and came with us to the con. All pictures in this post were taken by my friend. ^_^" I have no issues with Toronto except the crazy traffic that turns a 10 minute drive into a 30 minute one but at least the drivers around us weren't crazy.

Unlike many other con's where it's all in one building, Anime North is spread out between about 4-5 different buildings and there just happens to be very busy roads in the way of each, not to mention the highway it's self. It was A LOT of walking and I'm not made for walking sadly because of my back problems so it was highly inconvenient to attempt to go anywhere other than the double tree hotel and the main hall where all the big events / dealers were. Friday night (because during the day we got there late and mainly just wondered around looking at cosplayers) we did manage to get across the highway (likely because I had a lot to drink and I feel less back pain when in that state...) We checked out some gaming rooms and the Nominoichi, basically a huge garage sale but for anime stuff. I didn't find anything I liked there because we got there late. Generally you show up for those kind of things right when doors open to see all the stuff and get first dibs. After that we made our way back to the main area.

Otakubaloo = The Parking Lot Rave. It was basically a small enclosed patio taken over by a dj booth. My boyfriend was booked to play at this the following night so we decided to check it out Friday as well. Right beside this stage, indoors, there was the Friday Night J-Rave and I gotta say outside was WAY better. The stage set up indoors was to say the least lackluster. They had so much fog in there you couldn't even see the stage unless you were like 3 meters away. The lighting sucked and I'm pretty sure the "DJ's" that were in there were just playing tracks off of winamp... It was ungodly hot in there as well. Would it have really hurt to put some large industrial fans in there? After some night shenanigans in the hentai rooms we went back home.

Saturday of every con is generally the day everyone shows up fully in their cosplay. There was easily thousands of new people to look and take pictures of. I love just walking around (or sitting in a heavy traffic spot) just to see the cosplayers. Laugh at really bad ones and stare in awe at some amazing ones. For the rest of the day we popped in and out of The Double Tree's panels and sat through The 404s. They are comedy improve from all across Canada that preform every year at Anime North. I find them to be quite funny and they have many shows throughout the weekend. My favourite is the 18+ showing at night in one of the huge stage rooms. There are generally more "sexual" jokes and a lack of pants for this performance. Highly amusing. My bf had to leave early during their late performance to go and preform at Otakubaloo. We joined him a little later to see a nice crowd dancing away to what he was playing. One thing I really liked about Otakubaloo on Saturday was that a lot more of my friends showed up to see my bf play. The promoter had put this really cool video projector on the side of the buildings wall showing a lovely mix of anime shots that was maybe 30 minutes or slightly longer. It was fun trying to pick out who came from what anime.

After Otakubaloo we made our way back into some hentai panels. These were highly amusing because people were generally in there just to make fun of it. There were of course a lot of people just sleeping in there and I'm pretty sure there was one dude jerking off  in one of the corners. lol... Nothing really beats one guy getting pissed off at everyone when they were laughing during Bible Black. He kept going on and on about how the story was SO good and that's why he was in there. Yeah ok there buddy! XD The best part during one of these shows was when the guy was getting a blow job from this chick and just before he came she switched to using her hands and there was this dramatic dodge she did while his sperm sprinkled past her face... LOL the room erupted with laughter for a good 5+ minutes afterwards. After we had our fill of hentai giggles we wandered on home, stopped to get some food along the way. One thing I noticed is that Toronto has sweet potato fries everywhere. Certainly makes up for their lack of good poutine.

Sunday was a slow day for us and there wasn't anything interesting going on anyway so we arrived late. We checked out the dealers room to see if anyone had anything good to offer but for the most part there was nothing interesting. My boyfriend did get something he's been waiting so long to get. He bought a Cactar from Final Fantasy. It was slightly over priced in my opinion but well worth all the joy that little guy has brought us since then. We were going to get the Tonberry as well but we thought one silly purchase was enough for the weekend.

Overall this con is fun but very unorganized. I enjoy it because it's in Canada and I get to see a lot of my Ottawa and Toronto friends in one place. The lack of anyone really interesting from the industry was a little disappointing but not overly concerning to me. I look at this con more so to see friends, cosplayers, and enjoy music more than anything else. It really drives me crazy how everything is so separated too. I was spoiled with Anime Boston having everything in once large building. The volunteers again this year were very rude. Do NOT get kids of volunteer if they aren't mature enough to handle a situation with a lot of people around. I do not need to get yelled at by some kid because I wandered through an out door even though that door was NOT labeled as an out door and the 10's of people in front of me were doing the same. If you want to do crowd control think it through properly damn-it.

Anyway good con and lots of good times were had. Of course I shall return next year. Here is a thread on the forum site for Anime North with a lot more pictures from the con.^__^

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