'I love ... cows ...' by Kara
Wednesday, March 8, 2006 at 8:40 AM

So I made my (approximately) monthly bookstore run last night after going out for sushi, picked up a few volumes of the Initial D manga - finally - and had a look at a few other things. (Unfortunately, most of the series I'm reading are missing volumes that I need, so I either have to wait 'til they're restocked or go online at some point.) Also saw the first volume of Kanji de Manga, which I figured might do me some good - seeing as the only kanji I know are the ones used to spell character names in Lupin III and one whose rarest pronunciation equates to my name.

Basically, the first little book - the cover of which has a picture of a fearsome bright pink catgirl with what appear to be extremely progressed bubonic lymph nodes - teaches you the first 80 kanji Japanese schoolkids need to learn. Fortunately, the book interior is several pages of very benign kids' manga, with the majority of the text written in kana and some quickie translations at the bottom (more than enough to get me by). Let's see if I actually use this thing. Looks like fun waiting room reading, if nothing else.

Speaking of Lupin III, I'm still trying to get (what I think is) last summer's movie. Unfortunately, the majority of fansub groups are switching to .mp4 and .mkv files. For those unfamiliar with video file formats, these are supposedly better quality and more convenient. I wouldn't know, seeing as they play on absolutely nothing and occasionally cause my system to crash. These new codecs singlehandedly caused me to give up on Space Symphony Maetel. I'm hoping this new version I'm downloading will actually work.

See, that's the thing about video fansubs (and even raws). Sure they take eight months to get to you and are crap quality, but you never have to worry about a new VHS tape possibly not playing and causing your VCR to go up in flames. Well, not normally.

If you have been, throw it away.