I'm proud to announce that Ian Miller's incredible website, Dies Gaudii, has a new home on our servers.
We're honored that Ian has chosen us for his new home. Please be sure to update your links.
I've taken this opportunity to create a network map of all the sites we host. Check it out. You can also find it on the "About Us" tab.
Last, Moon Chase has an interesting article on a recent campaign by Japanese fans to get Takeuchi's husband to restart his Hunter X Hunter series. Many Japanese fans were upset by the abrupt stop of the series and have been writing to the editor of Shonen Jump to bring it back. Thing is, it's Yoshihiro's decision, not the editor's.
Third, a new book on American anime fans (written by an American and translated into Japanese) will be hitting Japan next month. Inside there's a section which discusses how, "Sailor Moon was bashed as pornography, but revived like a phoenix by fan power!" I'll pick up the book next month and let you know what's mentioned there. (Thanks Brant)
Fourth, we will be fixing some spelling mistakes and minor errata in the second edition of Warriors of Legend: Reflections of Japan. We expect to make the update next week, and the new version will be Third Edition. Once this happens, you will be unable to order the book for a week as the changes are made. If you spotted any typos in RoJ Second Edition, please let us know ASAP, as maybe you caught something we didn't. No significant changes are being made to the book, and we will list the typos corrected on the website.
Last, a reminder: be sure to check out the tour diary!
Once again, myself, Yosenex (WoL's photographer), and Brad from MoonKitty went to a Japanese doujinshi event together. This time it was called "Amichan no Ochakai" which translates to "Ami's Tea Party" and was located in Akihabara. Pictures in this article were taken by Yosenex (except when they're of him.)
We also had a fourth person in attendance, a friend of Yosenex's named Jared, who came cosplaying for the event. He drew crowds in the main "Electric Town" entrance of Akihabara, with everyone from tourists to the girls in maid costumes that hand out flyers asking to take photos.
With a can of Chu-Hi in hand, anyone can become a sailor senshi, and wind up having that permanently recorded in internet form.
Hurricane Lohan '06 seems to have passed with little damage. This wasn't a storm of the magnitude of Davis '98 or even Sailor Moon X '01, but it was our first one in quite a while. I want to talk now not about the contents of the rumor, but about the rumor itself and reactions to it.
The thing that really amazed me about this story, and I think Chris at Anime News Network has covered it pretty well in some of his forum posts, is the power that one site had to spread a rumor that could have easily been checked, as ANN did. All of a sudden five other rumor mill sites pick up the story that another person wrote, forums start talking, and meanwhile the only proof is a couple words on a blog which (and I don't know about any of you but) I'd never heard of before nor plan to visit after.
Apr. 20, 2006 - (Royal Palm Beach, FL) Genvid L.L.C. is proud to announce that its "Sailor Moon" based reality tour, the "Warriors of Legend Tour of Tokyo" has sold out. The tour is based on sites described in Genvid L.L.C.'s book "Warriors of Legend: Reflections of Japan in Sailor Moon."
The Warriors of Legend Tour of Tokyo is a for-fans, by-fans tour which promises devotees of the blockbuster series an inside look at the life of the characters in a way seldom experienced by even Japanese otaku. The ten tour attendees are flying into Tokyo from cities around the globe, from San Francisco and New York to Toronto, Sydney, Okinawa, and Bagdad, for a 4 night, 3 day adventure of a lifetime.
Before we begin, let me mention that we've filled 9 of the Warriors of Legend Tour's 10 slots, and will be closing the tour for registration within the next few days. The level of commitment from Sailor Moon's fans blows me away and I'm honored to be guiding this group.
If everything goes well, when the tour concludes on June 30th, 2006 (Usagi's birthday), I'll be writing a letter to Takeuchi, explaining what we did on the tour and including some photographs of those in attendance. I think she will be absolutely thrilled by it.
You may recall I and several others attended a Sailor Moon doujinshi event last fall in Kawasaki, near Tokyo. Six months later the same group has held another event in Tokyo proper, which WoL photographer Yosenex and I went to yesterday.
The directions to the place were pretty confusing and we were lost for a little while, wandering the streets of Mitaka, an area located slightly west of Shinjuku. Entering a building on an uncrowded side-street, we saw a small color sign near the elevator featuring the same artwork that had been on the March flyer that had been handed out in October. We knew we'd arrived.
