Since Nekogami Yaoyorozu is the only show that I had expectations for this season and met those (moderately high) expectations, I’m very excited about it. I came for a fake Touhou anime, and that’s what I got—lazy immortal gods grappling with poverty, awesome character designs, yuri hijinks, and a very “yukkuri shiteite ne” vibe of comedy—but also well thought-out classifications and fighting systems for the occasional lighthearted battle. This is exactly how I imagine a Touhou anime would be.
Even though I talk to anime fans about many other things, it’s hard to divide those conversations from anime as a whole because more often than not, anime fans use anime avatars. On Twitter, I used to distinguish my spam followers from real ones simply because all the followers with human images were spam, with the exception of famous people (not my followers, people I follow).
One of my occasional variants. Actually my Tumblr account avatar fwr.
I know that a lot of people use images from their favorite shows or of their favorite characters. Some stick with the same avatar forever (ghostlightning since settling on the skull leader toy; chii’s had the same one on every site as long as I’ve known her). Others change their avatars every season to whatever their favorite character of the season is (Fall ’10 seemed like mostly Ikamusume, and Spring ’11 seems like mostly Kyuubei).
No matter the case, these images aren’t chosen at random. It could be that they’re simply the best-looking image a person found of whatever character, but I think more often people chose images to represent a certain aspect of the character that they appreciate most, or one that represents their favorite moment featuring that character. (My co-blogger Thoughtcannon chooses his Twitter avatars from memorable scenes in current shows.) There’s a reason that GL is using a blurry picture of a dusty action figure for his avatar rather than just a piece of series art. (I suspect it’s the same reason he has a twinkling space background on his site.)
I’m definitely one to dramatically overthink my choices of header, avatar, etc. (big surprise there). I don’t want to talk about it all day, so I’ll stick with the avatars and site header that I currently use.
Art by Mizuki Makoto
1. Tsukuyomi Komoe-sensei with a cigarette and a beer.
Used as: Facebook avatar, MAL avatar, Image on this blog’s intro page, Twitter background
A few months ago I decided that Tsukuyomi Komoe would become my “mascot character,” because she’s the perfect representation of my bias. Komoe is one of my alltime-favorite anime characters in spite of being a decidedly minor cast member in To Aru Majutsu no Index. (Just so happens that her big moment in episode three is one of my favorite scenes ever.) I’ve already explained exactly what my bias constitutes in my post about her, and this image shows everything I love about her at once, which, combined with being from a great artist, makes it my favorite Komoe-sensei image.
2. Tsukuyomi Komoe moeblob version
Used as: Twitter avatar
Another part of using Komoe-sensei as my mascot character has to do with changing my theme colors from darks to lights—more specifically from red to pink. Red has been my theme color for a long time because I feel all of the emotions derived from red perfectly describe my personality, especially in writing. However, I’ve calmed down a lot and become less intense and more chill about things, so I want to lighten up my image. Because of this, I’ve shifted focus to cute, brightly-colored images. This image was chosen for being very pink and for being recognizable even at minimum size.
3. Remilia Scarlet over the bay of blood
Used as: Gravatar, Scarlet Monochrome header
This is my oldest avatar currently in use, and I’m unwilling to change it on Gravatar simply because Gravatar effects such a large number of sites. Remilia Scarlet is my favorite character (no matter what I may say otherwise), and while she has an infinitely vast wealth of spectacular fanart, this was one of the first pieces that I saw and first used as a desktop background on my old piece-of-shit mac. It was some time later when I came up with the phrase “scarlet monochrome” that this image took on a special meaning.
Scarlet monochrome is a vision I have of the world as “black, white, and red.” (I realize that “scarlet monochrome” inappropriately describes such a concept, though black and white will exist within the spectrum of scarlet monochrome). I’ve totally latched onto that phrase and use it like a sort of genre title for my work (like Guitar Wolf calling their music “jet rock and roll,” or Static X calling theirs “evil disco”). Because the term is so important to me, it became the title of my personal tumblr; the image followed. I find it captivating, and of course, besides Remilia, the whole thing is literally set in scarlet monochrome. I also used this image as my custom badge for Otakon 2010, since I always use a symbolic image. (Accordingly, the Komoe-sensei image will be my badge for Otakon 2011.)
Art by petenshi
4. Konpaku Youmu examining her sword while naked for some reason
Used as: Header for this site
If you never visited the intro page before I put Komoe-sensei up, then I bet you didn’t know Youmu was naked in this pic! There’s a fun story behind this one: I went to gelbooru and searched the tags “loli sword absurdres,” which turned up two pages of images, not one of which was worksafe. Not even the official Shana art. I needed an image that showed the character’s face and their sword close enough together, but without having to include any naughty bits. I also didn’t want the image to take itself too seriously, since the aim of this site design was more relaxed. That I happened to find a cute picture of a character I like examining her sword at eye level was a tiny miracle. I can imagine her saying to herself “my sword is unbelievably dull!”
That about covers my active images—I try to be consistent so it’s easy to tell who I am wherever you go. Do your image choices have any personal significance?
By こぬま. Source at http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=big&illust_id=13125574
(Thanks BigN)
I’m gonna be segmenting my Otakon coverage, partly because the thing as a whole is so massive, and partly because I want the sense of accomplishment from writing an Otakon post tonight without the incredible amount of work it’d take to do it all at once. So first up, I’ll start with the easy stuff: my haul.
Here's all of it together~
Rolling time? (art by om http://gelbooru.com/index.php?page=post&s=list&tags=om_%28artist%29)
I grow weary of blogroll convention. You give a list of blogs, and it’s basically just a shout-out to friends. You give an annotated blogroll, but who really cares? How much can you really say in your one little paragraph that actually gives people a sense of the blogger? Not fucking much. I grow weary of this shout-out style of blogroll. I love you guys – you know that. There’s no real meaning in my linking to your blog and trying to say something about it if I don’t really read your blog.
^my most listened-to anison of the month.
The month ends tomorrow? Too bad, I’m ending it now. Enough February. Let’s have us some March! It’s the Nuttbladder thing again, which went well I guess last month. That time I talked about some currently airing shows. I haven’t watched but one of those in February, which was Sora no Woto. Yikes. First, let’s talk about some peculiar things.
This is the only result I got for 'Gensokyo map' ROFL
One of the things that anime is surprisingly not very good at is creating a fully-realized fictional ‘world.’ When you open up a fantasy book (and fantasy is of course the best genre for fictional worlds) you are often confronted with a ‘world map’ right off the bat. You will be given details about all sorts of countries and locations and customs, etc., to bring this world to life as you read. The reason that this doesn’t really happen in anime is for the same reason it does happen a whole lot in JRPGs – time.
Art by takahero http://gelbooru.com/index.php?page=post&s=list&tags=takahero
I’ve been playing/listening to a lot of Touhou-related stuff in the past few days, and I began to think about why it was that I never feel compelled to post about anything from this franchise, which is without a doubt one of my favorites. What makes Touhou so fun is, of course, only a little bit to do with the canonical games, and more to do with the endless whirlpool of series fanon. Looking through Touhou-related goods, you could find something to say ‘woah, that’s badass!’ about just about every minute of every day, but if I love to post about things I find awesome so much, then what’s with the lack of Touhou posts? And then I realized that it is simply because I have nothing to add to them.
In the world of American comics, fantasy, and sci-fi, most of the big stuff consists of assloads of stories set in one central universe. Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Warcraft – stuff like this has a big universe of works that fans can devote themselves to. Anime has it’s fair share of universes as well, ranging from immensely huge and decade-crossing, some of a great size that are relevant only to otaku, and many smaller universes lying around.
Standing high above anything else are the big guns like the Gundam Universe(s), the Macross Universe, the Leijiverse, the Pokemon Universe and so on. Then we have some universes that are less universally known but still enormous, especially for otaku. The Type-Moon Universe is certainly up there, but for sheer unbridled scope, the Touhou Universe stands above everything. I want to talk about my own favorite universes, most of which are a little smaller and more homely but still large enough that they should be called a universe and popular enough for a strong cult following. (NOTE: Please don’t comment in regards to what should or shouldn’t be called a universe or metaseries, I’m just trying to make a post.)
On one of my other artist highlights, ETERNAL commented that he was surprised to see Remillia Scarlet actually acting like a vampire instead of looking all moe. I found this a little funny, since the dark side is how I know the Scarlet family. I first got interested in Touhou when I kept running into Remillia pictures when I was searching the tag ‘blood’ (don’t ask), and seeing this captivating, dark beauty. Remillia has always been my favorite Touhou girl because of her tendency to be in dark images (which I love). So I decided I’d do my next artist highlight on someone who delights in depicting the Scarlet family in a darker way (as well as others like Hatsune Miku – yes, there is a trend in my artist highlights!) ban akira is an amazing artist, which makes me pissed that I couldn’t find a pixiv account or anything like it. You’ll have to settle for gelbooru.
My Sword Is Unbelievably Dull 