Walking around after lunch we happened upon this garden. The sign outside said "Something Fishy" so we're wondering what's coming up...

Found at the Anime Festival... wtf

Alright, time to finish up with the doujin goods and move on to the official ones. Please note that the doujin goods I am posting about only make up a fraction of the actual amount of fan made product that is covered at Comiket.

Been here for 20 minutes, waiting for a bus that comes every 10. Driving is a must in LA...

CAUSE I LIKE DOUJIN GAMES AND STUFF

I was supposed to type this up yesterday (not during work, really, I do tons of it... at work) however nobody expects the stomach bug, much like the Spanish Inquisition. However, instead of being tortured with true torturous implements like the COMFY CHAIR or the CUSHIONS, I was given a light sentence of being constrained to my bed and toilet all day. That combined with one of my favorite resources, DoujinGame.com, having a month hiatus has led to a sort of drought in links for this year. Luckily, I am OCD enough to scour the net for new information, so onward with the blogging!

Note: Comiket is now instituting a mandatory baggage checkpoint for all attendees of Comic Market 74 due to multiple threats that the organizers have received. A sad sad day for the otaku community when they can't even be safe from their own.

Now that Wonder Festival is over (check out the excellent coverage at Danny Choo's website), it's time to gear up for the next big thing: Comic Market!

This time it'll be held from 8/15/2008 to 8/17/2008 at the traditional Tokyo Big Site convention grounds. And speaking of tradition, I'm going to start on my bi-annual tradition of gathering up goods to keep your eye out for again, starting after the break. This time I'm going to focus on non-official goods distributed by circles.

Vegetation overtakes Akihabara after disaster
This fantastic renderings of a post-apocalyptic Tokyo is brought to you by Tokyo Genso. Considering the nature of this blog, I felt that Akiba would be a good place to start. I wonder what state of decomposition the figures would be in...

Here's an example of before and after:
Shibuya Center-gai 1, Before
Shibuya Center-gai 1, After

Click past the break for more fantastic art by the same guy.

Source: Boing Boing

Eri Kawai, a singer and songwriter for the Aria series, has passed away Monday August 4, 2008 according to her website. The singer passed away after battling illness since earlier this year, and her hospitalization caused her to cancel a live performance last month.

Kawai was an amazing singer and songwriter who got her start in 1991 auditioning with Kitty Records. Her first album was released in 1996. Her songs can be heard in many anime and live action works including Aria The Animation, Utawarerumono, and Bamboo Blade.

As you can probably tell from my post avatar, I'm a big fan of the Aria anime and manga. While Athena was not my favorite character I absolutely adored her voice. "Barcarolle," Athena's signature song that featured Kawai as vocals, was a hauntingly beautiful piece that I still cannot stop listening to. She will be missed.

Source: Anime News Network

According to multiple sources, Yujin Figure in conjunction with Mekke! Shueisha are bringing out a new figure of Melty Bagel from Aoi Nanase's Puchimon.

If you haven't heard of Puchimon before, it's a cute video game RPG parody comic featuring a very moe cast of characters. The main character, Melty Bagel, aspires to be a famous quester like her older brother Custard Bagel. She joins the Quester Academy in order to achieve this goal where she meets her best friends (party) and go on various adventures together.

Anyway, Yujin will be releasing a limited edition of said figure at WonderFest, and since I'm a big fan of the series I thought I'd share it with everyone.

Wonder Festival [official site]. One of a few times a year figure collectors around the world wish that their parents decided to raise them in Japan instead of [insert other country here] or that they had the expendable income to take off for a week trip to Japan.

Or maybe it's just me. If you haven't heard of Wonder Festival [wikipedia] think of it as a giant mecca of figures where amateur circles and professional companies come together to display and sell their latest works. For example, the legendary BUBBA of Thunder Butt Nagato and God Knows Haruhi fame will be attending with his newest creation, Ink-sensei (pictured above, and you can find an alternative picture here. Yes, that is a cat head. No, I don't know where a non-censored version of that is, you fucking lolicon).

Good Smile Company will also be in attendance with a variety of exclusive goods (to be shown after the break).