Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be in an anime.  I could choose to be some mech pilot, or have powers to fight crime and do random shit to people, or even be surrounded by tons of girls who would fight over me.  You know, all the things that could never happen in real life (especially number 3).  But then I remembered what age groups all of the people who take these roles are:  teenagers.

Being twenty means I no longer have the suffix -teen at the end of my age.  As I've always said, you can fix just about any problem by throwing enough acne ridden, sexually frustrated, and mentally unprepared teenagers at it.  But what good does a twenty-year old do, experienced with adult responsibility, not to mention the ability to make decisions rationally with one's brain rather than the libido.  Logic is the enemy of success, especially in settings where the person who can yell the loudest is often the winner. Besides, who has to be around to pay taxes to fix all the shit that these kids go and destroy.  Freaking brats on my lawn.

Even outside of anime, I can no longer have my own slice of life introduction, where I get to stand in front of the class and write my name on the board, then spout something stupid that everyone will remember.

You better keep good on this one.

There are no self introductions in college, only the mutual awkwardness shared by a large group of strangers, hoping that you won't get paired up with that "one guy" for the group project.  You're lucky if you meet one person in your classes.  I will never be able to be known as "the transfer student."  At the very best, I could be "that white guy..." 

There's certain limits to things.  The amount of unlimited pancakes you can get from the 4$ unlimited pancake meal at Denny's isn't limited.  Unfortunately, this isn't a 'Humboldt Hijinks' post explaining in syrup dipped details of how me and my friends somehow find ourselves there at least one a week.  This is about anime.

I sometime tell myself 'You've watched too much anime today, it's time to get up and do something productive.'  Then I feel my feet being asleep after sitting on them for hours, and forget about trying to move.  After this season of anime, I felt as if I had watched like months of anime, when in actuality, it had only been three months.  And wouldn't you know it, another season of anime is starting up.  And I'm probably going to watch like half of them.

I remember saying sometime a long, long time ago that I would stop trying to watch as many shows per season that I could.  Then somehow I end up going to 4chan or some place, seeing some enthralling battle scene or a particularly erotic panty-shot, making me want to pick it up.  (True story; I have started many an anime because of this.  Not just panty-shots, you pervs.  Boobs work too.)

Sometimes I wish I could watch all the animes.  At the same time.
Unfortunately, I only have two screens and two eyes.  Until I have a full wall filled with monitors, unlimited bandwidth, and a set of compound eyes, then I guess I'll have to stick to marathoning full animes deep into the night, over and over until it starts interfering with my classes/real life/porn watching.  For the record, I've marathoned three anime series overnight since moving off to college.

So my predicament is whether I'm watching too much or too little anime.  It probably goes back to me just not being able to watch every single anime that I want or have wanted to watch all at the same time.  Having a real life is hard on my nerd-cred.

I don't even know why I watch anime in the first place.  Am I that attracted to giant robots and cute little girls doing cute things, and overall just weird shit?
Yeah, probably.

Motivation takes many forms;  the only real kind being from already motivated individuals themselves, and not anti-social drudge from the internet.  So why am I talking about it?  Because I have indeed, experienced it.  Actually, not really.  I'm more of a self motivator, by way of "shit if I don't get this done my mom's gonna be all over me."  But I've seen plenty in anime.

Behind every wimpy little guy is a bad-ass motivating him.

Pictured: Wimp (top); Badass (bottom).

Look at this guy.  He's assured, of course, and why shouldn't he be?  He controls the freaking Super God Cannon.  Nothing goes wrong when you have a badass like him behind the controls, Mr. Wimp up top just doesn't understand.

So how do you make them understand?  You beat it into them.
Like Kamina, Gendo, or any other manly man that had to stand watch over a little sissy boy that would somehow eventually take charge and save the world, they smack sense into people.


Of course, in real life they bring up things like "child abuse" and "child services" but none of that shit matters in post-apocalyptic settings.  Children are of course the only way to save the world, after all.

You can learn a lot from anime. Personally, I've learned a lot of Japanese from them. Not that you baka would know any. Sugoi monogatari, onii-chan. But anime also teaches you about Japanese culture as well as the rich language.

For instance, the fact that nobody knows how to knock in Japan. “I know the door to the bathroom is closed, and I can hear the sound of running water, but I know there’s no way there could be naked girls in their soaping each other up.”

Well, I've been wrong before.  Alt: Best mistake ever!

Despite their cleanliness, Japanese people can catch a cold from just about anywhere.  Not sleeping under the blankets?  Catch a cold.  Going outside when it's cold?  Kaze o hikimasu.  And to think, all this time the common cold actually came from actually being cold, and not a virus.

And what happens when an actual virus or other potentially dangerous foe comes to destroy humanity?  Of course, throw a bunch of teenage high school students at it.  (Their parents are NEVER in town or even present anyways.)  Those who don't die will develop some sort of superpower, or find some mech that they mysteriously know how pilot perfectly (unless their name is Shinji).  The more hair they have or the louder they can scream also helps. 

A true hero.

We can't forget about important life lessons from hentai either.  A man's erection is very painful, and the only way to solve it is via blowjob.   It can't be helped.  Hips really do move on their own, eating someone's poop means that you love them, and all demons want to secretly impregnate every single human female, and somehow have the correct (but oversized) genitalia to do so.

Did I miss anything?

Well while Erika was doing dirty things with the Troll Cave (thanks, by the way!) I was down at an Anime convention. I know, I’m so cool. Well, I'm back and my brain pretty much functions on on only anime now.

The trip started out with me and a friend on a 5 hour car trip down to San Jose California. It was made slightly worse by blasting Anime Music, and playing tricks on each other while driving.

After many hours of “Uhwa uwaha” we made it to our hotel. However, there would be no rest for us- we had to go to the convention. After about an hour, we finally made it to the convention center (I say finally because we could have gotten there a lot faster it it weren’t for bad directions and getting the even worse idea to follow some idiots around.) However, as we reached the outside, I gazed upon the crowds, and was only able to say one thing: “I am home.”

More after the jump:

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Since there is only little over a week before Fanime, I thought I'd give you a final update on my cosplay: everything is finished. Yes, my costume is complete, including the most important item for my roll as a suicidal teacher: a noose.

You would be surprised how easy it is to tie a noose. There are even plenty of sites online to help you out. The hard part is trying to explain to people why you're making a noose. I went to the hardware store to buy rope, but there are some things you shouldn't say, including: "What's the best rope to make a noose with?" or "I need some rope to make a noose." It's like going to the gun counter of Walmart, picking up and inspecting one of the guns, then asking where they stock the anti-depressants.  So I just went back to the place where they kept the rope and bought about 8 feet (If I said 13 feet like a regular noose they might have gotten suspicious.)  Luckily I don't actually need to to hang myself up.

Sadly I'm not going to post any picture of the full outfit until after the convention.  Only one of my friends, the one who is cosplaying with me, has seen it.  For those of you who are wondering, he is going as Kyon from Haruhi.

Being bored was never this epic.

As for me, I've been preparing my lines for my character, including:
SHINDARA DOU SURU? -What if I had died???
Ittan desu ka?  (Talking to the stalker girl) You were there?  (To be followed up with "Yes, always")
And of course, ZETSUBOUSHITA!!- I'm in despair!!!

As I explained in an earlier post, I will be going to Fanime Convention here in California at the end of this month, and just to be like the greasy-pimply people there, I'm going to cosplay, or dress up like an anime character.  Which sounds completely nerdy.  Believe me, it is.  But I'm going to make it look good.

I'm going as this bamf right here.

Itoshiki Nozomu, the manic-suicidal teacher from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei.  He is just so awesome, he inadvertently makes all the girls in his class fall in love with him.  Kind of like me, which is why I chose him.  Also because I have similar hair length and glasses as him.

Because this is AMERICA and there is no real way to get a kimono and a hakama (the pants) other than paying 200 dollars to buy and ship them over seas, me and my mom, who just happens to be an excellent sewer, decided to make them.

So far the Kimono is done, leaving only the Hakama and loads of heir gel between me and my transformation into an anime character.  When it is all put together, I will be sure to post it!

I'm all for cute anime characters, so when someone makes a video specifically for looping all of their cute lines together, that makes me happy.  This role in Stein's Gate might make me like Kana Hanazawa more than Chiaka Omigawa. Tuturu~~~


Of course this video reminded me of this video, with a less cuteness, but just as many random one-liners autotuned into a song.

Oh Light, you yell so much, but it makes for a good adaptation of the K-On! op.

As I finish up my last semester of schooling here before I go off to a four year college, I have realized one thing about community college:  It's just like an anime.

Nobody takes a community college seriously.  It's like I'm living in my own little slice of life comedy, minus the comedy part.  And probably a smaller slice since I'm here in the cave most of the time anyways.  But there are some connections made nevertheless:

Sometimes the teachers are younger than the students. 

No, unlike Pani Poni Dash, we don't have any 10-year-old geniuses who graduated MIT teaching us.  It's almost the opposite, with the teachers professors having only a degree just above what we would be getting once we complete the class.  Why am I not the one teaching this class?  On top of that, there's always the old geezers trying to take a class for the "fun of it," then asking questions well into the passing period.

There are also those "people."  You know those people.  Those people that fall into their own group.  Usually, this group includes themselves only.  In anime, they're usually the main character, usually not in class because they are out engaged in card battles l or something.  Or they could be the character that runs around and randomly bursts into song.  In anime, these people are normal.  In Community College, these are "those people."

In the cafeteria during lunch, I can already pick out these people easily, especially since they always sit at the same tables permanently marked by the greasy stains from their Magic cards. The Micheal Jackson kid sings very loud, and is really not hard to miss either.  Also, we can't forget about the pokemanz.
Class?  What class?  Nobody goes to class.  Mostly because community college is just a repeat of high school, except that your parents won't get a call when you do skip.  Anime characters of course have things like fighting evil to do, so they really can't come to class either.  Either that, or they're in the back corner having a plot-progressing monologue.  Plot?  I just want to play Minecraft on my laptop.

It's that time again!  The spring 2011 animes are out, and it's my turn to take a steamy dump on all the hype, or lack thereof..

This season we actually have pretty a good distribution.  We have the trademark loli anime, the shojo anime, and to top it off, a gag anime with moeblobs.

Oretachi na Tsubasa wa Nai:  By the description, I thought this was going to be another Clannad (which I loved)  but after the opening sequence involved panty shots, I kind of just closed it.

Gintama: Oh boy, a continuation of an already long series... I will probably never finish this in my life.

Stein's Gate: If you took Death Note and  Welcome to the NHK and mashed them together, it would make Stein's Gate.  It's pretty goofy, but there's an air of mystery behind it.  I like it.

Hanasaku Iroha- This is the shojou type one, but still has a good enough story so that guys won't feel weird watching it.  Plus one of the characters is voiced by Omigawa Chiaki, one of my favorite female seiyuu.

Nichijou- I love this one already.  It's like watching Azumanga Daioh all over again, except that they have guns.  And it's adorable.

Um so yeah, everything else, I'm too lazy to write about, nor will I probably watch.  But that's what synopsis are for...

So you're watching anime, and you see this cute girl. You say to yourself, "Hey, she's pretty cute, I wish I could have someone like that as my wife." Well now you can.

The Waifu is all the rage over at 4chan /a/, with all the neckbeards and other no lifers who are to afraid to go out and chat up a real girl grabbing them up as fast as they can. That way, they can find comfort in their favorite body pillow (printed with the picture of their waifu of course) while they cry themselves to sleep.

Real women = do not want.

With animation studios like KyoAni pooping out series after series of cute-girls-doing-cute-things, there will always be people looking for their waifu, trying to snatch it up before the other fools put their greasy hands on her.  Until they get yelled at by their uber-macho-meat-head dads to stop watching their girl-cartoons, or otherwise get told that they're being stupid.

But what about all of those fatty anime watching girls wearing their "I love Yaoi" shirts?  What about their husbandos?  No, I don't want to go there.  Next thing you know, they're knocking at my door with their fan-fiction, and once they tire themselves out, my wifi acess key.  My Internet is already slow enough, you bovine. 

Next time your curl up to your loved one, make sure that it's the heat from their body and not the heat of your monitor. 

3d/2d  Learn the difference!

The only thing I do more than troll the internet is watch anime.  And troll the anime board on 4chan.  But that isn't the only place anime trolls hang out.  No, sometimes, they're in the anime themselves.  A stat that I made up just now says that whenever there is a group of 3 or more people, at least one of them is a troll.  This even applies to Japan (or Soul Society, or outer space, or in some hole somewhere.)  Wherever there is someone that could be pissed off, there is someone that will piss them off.

One of the anime characters I consider the greatest anime troll of all time is Sosuke Aizen from Bleach.  The fact that he's in one of the Big Three anime is enough to piss on at least one third of /a/ already, but that isn't the point. Look at this picture first.

Just look at him.  He has not just one, but two popped collars.  Total douche material.  Also, not featured in the picture is him wearing socks with sandals.  Oh ya, he also killed a bunch of people after betraying them, but they're really pissed about the socks.  [Oh wait, did I say he killed people, I forgot that nobody dies in Bleach because of plot armor.  Forgive me.]

His sword, much like a gif of bouncing breasts, makes you fall under complete hypnosis and makes you believe you are doing things that you actually aren't (like studying for a test tomorrow).  Not only that, he embeds a gem inside of his chest which is basically a deus ex machina machine, making him into more of a troll, and that much harder to kill just when he is about to di... be defeated.    "I know I've said it before, but you know you can't beat me because I'm like already this much better than you."

Secret code for "Troll"

I think he takes after the writer a bit...

As you can probably guess, I'm a fan of video editing. You can make things appear totally different- there's plenty of filters out there to make things appear different than they actually are. For instance, in my last video, I had to tone down my sexiness a bit just so people won't fall in love with me. Some things are to be desired though, which is why I came up with a few new filters that you could use to make things appear awesome:

The Michael Bay Effect: Explosions. Explosions everywhere.

The Gainax Effect: All female characters breast's grow to twice their size, and proceed to jiggle at random times for no apparent reason.

The Peter Jackson Effect: All characters seem smaller and have pointed ears.

The Tite Kubo Effect: All backgrounds disappear and get replaced by white pillars and lines.

I guess it's called Bleach for a reason.

The Inception Filter: Dramatic music starts at random times, the camera randomly tilts and shakes, and it randomly zooms to closeups on people's faces. 

Anyone who watches anime who doesn't speak Japanese has two different options: subtitles, or English voice dubs.

Personally, I'm a fast reader, and I can already speak Japanese fairly well, so I prefer subs. With dubs, you don't have to read, but a lot of people don't like them. For one thing, they seems so bland and dry. Translating things like "sou desu ka" from Japanese and putting it in a script for an English voice actor to read is repetitive, and doesn't even sound like anything you would normally say in English. In Japanese, however, it's a normal figure of speech.

Dubs are also less common, since it does take a full team of voice actors, editors, translators, writers, and various other people to take out the Japanese voices (while leaving the ambient sound) then translating the episode into a script with the same idea for people to act out.  Also, many dubs tend to dumb things down for an American audience.  A bad case of this is 4kids taking One Piece, an excellent anime (at least in my opinion), butchering everything including the story, censoring the hell out of it, and turning it into a horrible kid's cartoon.  Just listen to this incredibly corny sounding opening they made.

Why are is there random rapping? And an Australian sounding guy? Di oh di oh? Really?

Many subs are done by fansubbers, which is exactly how it sounds, people doing it just for the sake of fellow fans. An episode can be subbed for others to watch in just a few days, rather than months for an entire series. And no, there are no fandubs, unless you want to hear some 12 year old trying to act out 5 different parts on Youtube.  Subs aren't perfect though:

I think I'm getting the gist of what you're trying to tell me...

So, when's the dub coming out again?

There are some series with good dubs that I like, such as Ghost in the Shell (pictured above), FLCL, Eureka Seven, as well as voice actors such as Johnny Yong Bosch or Crispin Freeman, but Japanese seiyuu (voice actors) speaking the original audio is still my favorite.  I can even identify some of them in different roles just by their voice.

Here at the Troll Cave, I like to be well versed in the things that I talk about, such as Trolling, the internet, being random, and last but not least, anime. However, in a bad case of "the blind leading the blind," I bring you this.

If you can ignore all of the unrelated pictures leading to pop-up hell, the hugely over-sized header, and the random Youtube video embedded there, you will find yourself staring at what looks like an anime review, but is actually a mash of words that I really really hope is actually meant to be this bad.

The first problem is see here is someone who has probably never actually watched any of them trying to explain them to other people who have never watched them.  It's like whoever wrote this took the synopsis right from Wikipedia.  But I know that's not the case, because even Wiki doesn't have this bad of grammar.

"...Ichigo Kurosaki who accidentally powers of a Shinigami."

Accidentally what?   You accidentally the whole thing?  I know I the whole thing sometimes, but this is just crazy.  While we're at it, let's not forget how Narutards got here.

Naruto is a sequel to the popular anime series Naruto.

If I didn't know already, some of the questions I would probably be asking would include:
What's anime?  Where does it come from?  What's manga? Why would I want to watch this? 
Does the person writing all this even know the answers to these?  Are all the people who read this going to think that the big three shonen animes are the only things out there?  Everything is ruined.

You know what day it is.  You know!!!!  Don't look at me like that.  It's 4chan Friday.

Tonight, we have /y/ and /u/.

No, this has no connection to the creepy "y u no" guy.  It's actually about homosexuality.  Yes, they stand for Yuri and Yaoi.  If you don't speak Japanese, then you're probably better off.  Yuri and Yaoi stand for gay relationships in anime between women and men, respectively. 

Yaoi is a funny word, but after scrolling quickly through one page of penises, I quickly closed it.  I prefer Yuri, even though the word isn't as commonly used or nearly as funny sounding.  As I've said before, boobs usually rank higher on the interest scale than other things. 

Of course there is no shortage of boobs in anime.  It's common in animes to see many males (and some females)  get a nosebleed whenever they happen to see them as well, sometimes causing them to become "overdrawn at the blood bank."
I just gave blood today, so I'm familiar with donating, but Characters like Zoro from One Piece need to think about a withdrawal program, especially after losing five or six pints of blood in one fight, despite the human body only containing that much.  But as long as he has enough bandages, he should be fine.

There are several types of anime openings and endings. Barring a few such as the Ghost in the Shell and Serial Experiments Lain openings which have openings in Russian and English, most of them are in Japanese, usually with some Engrish thrown in. Just as in western music, there are different genres. In general, there are three genres of anime music; rock, pop, and moé (cutesy).

The Japanese J-pop scene is probably the most popular, recognizable pretty much all over the world. Any opening of ending by groups like Flow, L’Arc En Ciel, Asian Kung-Fu Generation, Orange Range, or any other J-Pop group falls under this category. Patty and Konata can probably explain it better.


Rock is kind of similar to pop, especially in the instrumentation, but rock has more power to it. In other words, the music has a different feel to it, even with a similar sound. Take the Xam’d opening, by one of my favorite J-rock bands, Boom Boom Satellites.


Moé, the final type, is hard to define in English, but if you hear it, it becomes clear.

I personally like some of these, especially when voice actors from the series sing the theme songs themselves, such as what happens here or in others such as K-On. Sometimes it sounds like the singers are little girls, and despite voicing them, they actually aren’t. Of course, there are female Japanese singers who don’t sound like little girls, and some males singers who do.

Another one of my favorite Op’s is an oddball, being that it is sung by a Japanese artist, but it is done completely in English. Some of you may recognize it.

I know I have some Bleach fans out here.

This season's anime list will be a more "for your information" than anything else.  I don't plan to watch as near as much anime as I did in 2010.  In fact, I've already picked out two to watch, Kimi ni Todoke and Mitsudomoe season 2.  It's kind of a mix of me being burnt out, and that this season doesn't seem incredibly interesting.  But I know I will be watching other animes that I have been wanting to see.  For anyone who is keeping up with the various series, here is a great site to see when the various shows get broadcasted.  Anyways, that's it for now.

Well, this season I watched even more than the last season (11 animes in total, on top of regular stuff) , and believe me, it was a workout, but totally worth it. Looking back on it now, last season I wrote way too much so I’m gonna cut this down a lot. As for rating the individual series, I figured out a better scale as well, based on how much I looked forwards to watching them each week. 1 being “Man, I can’t wait,” 2’s being nothing special, and 3 as “Ugh, Do I really have to watch this?,” or something along those lines. You get it.

1
Arakawa Under the Bridge Season 2
I almost gave this a two, just because it always took forever to get subbed, and I kind of forgot about it.  However, every episode I said to myself ‘This is the best episode ever,” especially the last two, which were epically hilarious.

Nino in a bikini was a plus too.

Lesbians not included

Bakuman
This bored me a bit at first, but after they got past the introduction and got into the real story, I really liked it. I guess a plot based anime with no action or fan service is fine too. Looking forwards to the second half.

Ika Musume
This one was always fun and cute- a nice change from a lot of stressful action anime with lots of yelling and stuff. Plus, almost every episode being a beach episode was cool too.

Ika and Index?  Twins?

Index Season 2
All I can say is that this wasn’t as good as the first season. I probably will watch the second half, just so I can see some Accelerator action if they ever progress beyond chasing around scantily clad large breasted women.

Ore no Imotou ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai
I think this would be better called “My Older Brother Can’t be this Understanding” or “My Little Sister can’t be this much of a Bitch.” I have to give them a bit and say that Kirini definitely was cute, but she was just as annoying. It had some good moments, but in the end it was more moé junk.

3
Panty and Stocking
I’ve always been a Gainex fan, but I felt let down with this. The humor was vulgar and overly sexual, and even grossed me out a couple times. The animation was horrible, and only turned good for a second while they turned into stripper-angels. I actually liked the Chuck and Garterbelt episodes more than the regular ones. The only saving grace was the last two episodes where the geeky boy turned into a stud, and the slut angel suddenly turned pure, creating some diversity.
I actually liked the music, one of the better elements, as well the fan art that popped up everywhere, both of which helped a bit, but not enough to save it.

Star Driver
I felt like every episode of this was the same thing. The same transformation and fight scene, with a slightly different lead-up and if you were lucky, different characters. And what characters they were, with their stupidly colorful and often revealing outfits. I dropped it after I saw that I would have more than 12 episodes. I might watch the last one though, just to see what happens. I don’t think I’ll miss anything.

And there we go!  As far as all of 2010 went, there was some good anime, then there was some bad anime.  While I didn't start following what was coming out until the summer, I picked some of my favorites.

Summer was my first season here on the blog, and I only really watched two- Working! and Arakawa Season one.  Both of these were great, and I don't really know if I could pick just one.  For the Fall, many of you already know my favorite, Seitokai Yakuindomo.  Finally, this season would have to be Soredemo Machi wa Mawateiru.  Lots of long names in there, but as for my pick for my favorite anime of the year, it has a slightly shorter name, and that name would be Shiki. 

And now it's time for 2011 and all if its anime.  I'll be here to keep trollin' and provide all your anime needs, so stick around.  Remember these are only my opinions, so don't hate me!

If you never watched "Invader Zim" as a child, you probably missed out on a large chunk of other demented television programming that probably irreversibly effed-up your childhood. But then again if that were the case, you probably wouldn't be reading this blog.

Considering that the humor between Invader Zim and one of this season's animes, Panty and Stocking, are very similar, you would also notice how Gir, the mentally retarded robot in a dog suit, and Chuck, the mentally retarded punching bag/ragdoll, are pretty much the same exact character. Too bad he doesn't make waffles.

Speaking of dirty humor, there is some you can just see coming (see wut I did there)? Then there's some you can't. This falls into the category of "Why would you do that???"

Ok, I know Konata is an Otaku, but I think a perv is stretching it. Oh well, you never know.