Suddenly everyone starts speaking and practicing English leaving Eiko to just smiling and trying to avoid conversation having no idea what anybody is saying but Cindy mistakes Eiko for speaking English and brings her into a conversation mistaking everything she says in Japanese for English.

Cindy (English): Answer me Eiko!

Eiko (Japanese): I don’t care anymore (Having completely different conversation in her head).

Cindy (English): Sit down? Well, if you say so, I’ll sit down.

Clip is a little over 3 minutes long

Costumes

All the costumes were great in this video, I do disagree with non Japanese animation being included in an anime expo especially since the whole point is to promote Japanese animation in America but he really did a great job showcasing the best cos-play costumes.

Video 1

Several good characters like Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon, Mew Mew Lettuce from Tokyo Mew Mew, several others.

Video 2

1:54 ruined the video, why was it included?

Many more good costumes and, as usual, a ton of Hatsune Miku costumes

Video 3

This was the best in my opinion, lot’s of good costumes

Kagamine Len dressed up in the standard outfit on stage with spotlight’s in the background. Very good image. Wish I could find one like this with Len’s sister, Kagamine Rin.

Kagamine Len - Cosplay

This one is of Hatsune Miku, although not as good as the image above, I thought it was still good

Hatsune Miku - Cosplay

I think this looks like an interesting anime, a guy from a family that practices fire magic instead practices wind magic which is a big disgrace to the family. I like anime with a lot of action and wile this had a lot of fighting scenes it just didn’t have that depth other anime have, kind of boring, but I’ll watch a few more episodes to see if that changes. In this episode the main character was also framed for several murders in the family by an unknown entity so his family now thinks he killed the members but he handled it very flatly or in other words he just kind of set back and said oh well, I would have liked to see more emotion involved and maybe some more action. A good rule of thumb is you can’t judge an anime by the first 3 episodes so I’ll watch further into the series but it didn’t seem that interesting.

On a different note, the graphics, drawings, and special effects were pretty good so this anime appears to have a good budget, I’ll see how it plays out.

Last Part of Episode 1 below

Apparently many thousand people applied in Japan for the individual parts and an already famous actor was chosen to play Queen Beryl. It covers interviews of the cast, behind-the-scenes sneak peeks, and even videos of the actual production. It also covers the Japanese press conferences with the cast and the cast getting to know each other personally. Several secrets about filming locations were also revealed plus a lot more.

In case you don’t know, Tokyo Mew Mew is centered around this team who’ve been brought into this experimental project (unknowingly and unwillingly) that mixes endangered species DNA with their DNA (one animal to each member). They “transform” into the mixed DNA version of themselves to fight enemies who threaten life on Earth. Despite the corny sounding description this anime can actually get pretty intensive and it’s because of that why I like it so much. Very original and features a really good story-line.

This is also why I liked this AMV because it picked out a lot of the action in the anime

For those of you who don’t know, Ika Musume is a goofy comedy type anime about a squid-girl who comes from the ocean to punish and rule humanity for polluting it  – it’s not a serious anime but very funny. I’ve made several other posts already about the various aspects of the show and the band that created several of the songs in the anime link here. But below is the promo for the second season

I like the music, the video is a decent length (not too short or long), and the clip selection is great! The video even features what appears to be custom modified animations (or clever clip tricks) that add a lot of originality to the video. the part that really get’s me is the corniness of it, it’s setup to make it look like 2 characters from the anime are the singers of the background song and even singing together – All the clips are from the ~real~ anime so nothing made up, they just used a lot of tricks (playing the right clips in the right order) to make it look like the characters are singing the song — I really find that a bit too corny for me, it’d be great if they left the music but didn’t try to make the characters look like they’re singing the song, other than that part it’s a neat clip.

Here’s one more, it’s filmed live so it’s not computer animation based. The dance quality is good, like the “home-style” setting and wig but the acting isn’t that good (very bland) nor the selected popipo song as it’s a rip from the official popipo music video which contains sound effects.

The song is about a professor who lost his daughter and decided to make a robotic replacement as close as possible to his daughter, his last project was the heart (Kokoro = Heart) but he died before he could finish it, far into the future the robot tried to finish the heart and after doing so placed it within herself. she later learned about his lost daughter and was overcome by emotion to the point where she completely broke down. It’s an interesting song and I liked it in the live concerts but there are other kokoro videos I like a little more.

This caused an uproar among the younger generation as it had become more popular than many native cartoons already airing. Instead of just giving up because of their age they actually started took a stand with their American rights. They started an online fansite which acted like a “Headquarters” so to speak where all the fans who didn’t want the show to get cancelled would go to to figure out exactly how, when, where, and what to do in order to keep it going.

The first thing they did was to do a unanimous vote on an item everybody should by at the exact same day and time to give word on the number of fans exist that want it to stay on air. The item was Strawberry Frosted Kellogg’s pop-tarts. At that exact chosen time, across the nation it seemed that item could not be kept in stock. People were lined up for that item some having no intention of eating it. This very quickly made it to the news, radio, and newspapers nationwide.

The second thing they did was take legal action and start an official petition, by law they had to get 30,000 signatures but they instead nailed it way over. The other issue was that it was too expensive to air this show but the pop-tart incident proved that whatever means necessary is fine to have it aired, even if it meant more commercial breaks, they’re there to watch the show.

After such a series of events, the TV company finally gave into re-airing the show, although SOS wanted it aired till the end of the series, it only went as far as Sailor Moon R. Today the SOS group is officially inactive, but they’re actions have been saved and referenced many times over. Old documents and polls such as the Pop-tart incident have been archived by other organizations for the general public to reference.

To this day, no other event like this has ever been done before, It really shows how great and one-of-a-kind anime this is! The SOS campaign lasted up until 2004 before it finally shutdown (it’s still being updated but it’s more of a news site now)

http://www.saveoursailors.org/

The following are the list of companies who helped SOS get to that level of recognition and even helped voice some of the fans to the nation:

ADV Films, Bandai, Bandai America, The Cartoon Network, Cloverway Inc., DiC Entertainment, The Walt Disney Company, The Forge, Fox Kids, General Mills, The Gersh Agency, The Guardians Of Order, Irwin Toys, Kodansha, Nielsen Media Research, Optimum Productions, Pioneer/Geneon Entertainment, Princess Naoko Planning, The Program Exchange, Saatchi & Saatchi, Toei Animation, USA Cable Television Network, Variety, Video Research Ltd. of Japan, and the YTV Network of Canada.

Varying Sailor Soldiers

Sailor moon has quite a complex and in-depth storyline. To give an example, there’s an entire wiki-based website dedicated to detail the entire storyline and it’s events, it’s been open for some time and the contributors are still adding new information. (Link Here: http://wikimoon.org). I have written 3 other articles for the storyline and the characters:

1. The back-story which covers the core events before the series and that the series is built upon and frequently references.
2. The “Sailor War” which describes the reality of the Sailor Soldiers. That is, the reality of separate kingdoms allied together and the general goals of each kingdom which frequently collide with others causing outbreaks of war including any disagreements and such plus wars over kingdoms wishing to conqueror. This is a big topic by the way, there are actually songs and other articles written on this concept
3. Sailor V which covers the long history both in the storyline and in real-life on Sailor Venus and how she came to be in the Sailor Moon Series from her own series called Codename Sailor V

This will describe the storyline ahead, or the series storyline that the manga, anime, and to some extent, the live-action is based off of.

Codename "Sailor V" Cover

Long after the destruction of the Moon Kingdom and the obliteration of all the allied planets kingdoms and their residents, Most everyone had been reborn most with no recollection of their past lives or “Original” lives before they were killed. Things developed very differently for each person reborn. Sailor Moon and the other Inner Soldiers were reborn with no previous knowledge of the past live. Sailor Venus on the other hand, had been reborn and gained not only her Sailor Power back but all of her past life memories as well long before the other sailor soldiers had realized exactly who they were. Venus even started crime-fighting solo and gained popularity leading to talk of “Sailor V” after which many manga and video games were made from.

Inner Sailor Soldiers

The other Sailor Soldiers realized who they were in general much later on but each shortly after the other (not all at once). The Outer Senshi were actually never reborn, so to speak, they were technically reborn sometime in-between the destruction of the Moon Kingdom and the rebirth of the people killed so they visit the other Sailor Soldiers later on in the series with the help of Sailor Pluto. Pluto is the only exception, she was reborn at the same time as everyone else but not on Earth like the other soldiers. Pluto was reborn on her own planet doing her duties as keeper of time and space. She acts as a midway point for many important events in future episodes.

Tuxedo Mask

Prince Endymion was killed during one of the Moon Kingdom parties when he was courting Princess Serenity, therefore he was reborn a bit differently. He was more or less not reborn but more appeared in the future still in his Tuxedo clothing. He had reappeared with no memory of who he was or his past life so he gave himself the nickname “Tuxedo Mask” since he didn’t know his real name or identity but made it his mission to find out his identity. Queen Beryl had captured and brainwashed Kunzite, Zoisite, and Nephrite into working with and fully obeying her without question. She and them were both reborn on the Dark Moon with all of their memories and thus she rebuilt her empire and tries to launch several attacks and conqueror the planet Earth. Each attack is basically an individual episode.

Princess Serenity

Venus, while working separately from the other soldiers for quite some time, eventually shows up and joins the group. Afterwards, Tuxedo Mask discovers Usagi, Sailor Moon’s civilian name, true identity as Sailor Moon. A metamorphic event happens where Sailor Moon discovers she’s actually also Princess Serenity, upon discovering this Tuxedo Mask finally remembers his identity as Prince Endymion. Shortly after, a final battle with Queen Beryl proves victorious but at the cost of everyone’s life except for Princess Serenity and Prince Endymion.

Sailor Chibi Moon

From there the story arc extends, Sailor Pluto becomes a very important figure as the keeper of time and space and allows Sailor Chibi Moon, Sailor Moon Daughter from the future, to join Sailor Moon and the other Sailor soldiers in the past for protection since the future is in great danger from an impending attack on Tokyo and Sailor Chibi Moon has what they’re looking for. The outer soldiers also come into play later on again through Sailor Pluto, this time from the mid-past. At some point Sailor Pluto was able to hand down her position to someone else temporarily so she could join the Sailor Soldiers.

After many enemies (each in their own story arc), the final enemy turns out to also be a Sailor Soldier and introduces many more foreign soldiers to the picture. Sailor Galaxia is a possessed Sailor Soldier who’s the strongest soldier in the galaxy. She is a good Sailor Scout who conquered all evil in the Galaxy and sealed it inside of herself. Upon doing so evil took possession of her and starting doing the reverse, conquering all good from the Galaxy. The last solar system left to be conquered was the one Earth is in. Another solar system with Sailor Soldiers flee to Earth’s Solar System for shelter and defense against the upcoming attack from Galaxia. Like the other story arcs Galaxia sends other controlled pawns to steadily attack Earth until finally Galaxia herself shows up, she was unable to do so before because the planets protector, Prince Endymion, was still alive so after killing him she was able to show up herself.

Sailor Galaxia

After an all-out war with Galaxia and the death of all the sailor soldiers including the foreign soldiers and mostly Sailor Moon, a tiny window of opportunity arose which Sailor Moon grasped and finally managed to release the evil from Sailor Galaxia freeing her from her prison within her body.

This is just a summary of the storyline – like I said entire projects have been created to put everything down on paper. Below is the final clip of the end of the Sailor Moon series with Galaxia (A really really good and very moving episode). Youtube has put restrictions on it because it didn’t pass the American Rating System so I don’t know how it will play on your end but it plays fine on my end.

The Vocaloid band which started in Japan using real-life holograms and synthesized voices finally started an international tour after becoming increasingly popular with the outside world. Their first stop was Los Angeles California where they performed their 3rd sold-out concert in a row. At the end, Hatsune Miku stood up and said in English for the first time “I hope to see you again”.

The Vocaloid band then moved to Singapore where they performed another sold-out concert, making this their 4th one in a row. Below are some of their highest rated songs and the ones they’re using in the tour.

Kamichama Karin is a short-series Japanese anime that’s in the “Magical Girl” and “Comedy” genre. The anime was very well developed minus a few flaws in the storyline and the production budget and overall quality were high. Some people have not seen this anime either because it is a “Magical Girl” anime or they never heard of it but this is a rare gem in the anime world and worth seeing.

The storyline:

The storyline focuses around the main character Karin who’s life changes forever one random day when her pet cat, shi-chan, died and was buried. A mysterious man walks up and demands she hand her ring her mother gave her to him, in return he will resurrect her dead cat. Immediately after giving him the ring another person runs up and snatches the ring out of his hands getting injured along the way. From there these 2 people start fighting with some form of weapons they appeared to pull out of nowhere.

From then on out Karin learns that she is a goddess who borrows powers from Athena, the Greek god of war. There appears to be only a few other demigods and a split between good and evil. To make matters more interesting nobody’s really sure of -why- they’re fighting in the first place or what the conflict is except for Kazune and Kirio who appear to lead both sides. Another interesting spin is the central character Himeka who is revealed early in the series to be split into two completely separate individuals both appropriately named Himeka. Each side has the other Himeka and when one Himeka is healthy the other is weak and sick, the reverse is also true. Nobody but Kazune and Kirio again know why or how this came to be.

Several more new characters are introduced as the storyline progresses and all of them are built-upon in depth. Throughout the storyline you get this feeling that, somehow, everybody is connected at some level. Like all these events and characters aren’t just random or thrown together. Several more startling discoveries are made over the frequently referenced Mother of Karin who was claimed to have been dead for sometime and the father figure who was never mentioned.

Production:

The graphics and characters quality are unusually high, what I mean by that is they’re drawn very good and are well blended. The design of the characters and scenery are also of a higher quality than I’m used to seeing. The storyline was quite in-depth and wasn’t incomplete and “Hard slapped together” as I refer to some other anime, usually anime with good graphics have really bad story-lines.

The music was well composed and produced, I actually have favorite scenes in the anime purely because the music went so well with the content.

This is a comedy!

Another more interesting aspect compared to other anime is the fact that this makes HEAVY use of many different forms of visual comedy. Basically, in general anime, the characters and scenery can be drawn radically different to give a more feel and atmosphere to the scene. Kamichama Karin takes this into overdrive with almost every few minutes a different emotion and it’s well played to, not overdone, completely adding more to the humor.

Below is a video of the last part of Episode 2 when she first transforms:

There is a constant fight for territory, alliances are always under question and challenge, new compromises are always having to be made, disagreements are always coming up. Basically every kingdom is it's own government and desires to expand it's covered territory. What happens when the new territory crosses into an existing territory from another kingdom? A war breaks out over the territory. Kingdoms often want to destroy other kingdoms for one of many reasons, Sailor Soldiers may want to destroy other soldiers as well. Sometimes a kingdom will want to rule over all the other kingdoms and destroy any that get in it's way. Often kingdoms will cluster together and form sides against other kingdoms which is the case with the Moon Kingdom.

In Sailor Moon, there have been many occasions where they've have sailor invaders who've come to dominate the solar system. Most of the enemies have been Sailor Scouts then there's also Sailor Galaxy (Galaxia) who seeks to dominate the entire Milky-way Galaxy and appears at the very end of the Sailor Moon Series.

In our solar system there are 9 allied planets (Before Earth joined), Mercury, Venus, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Among these planets is a subdivision which was created out of conflict for leadership of the alliance, the "Inner Soldiers" consist of Mercury, Venus, Moon, Mars, and Jupiter. The outer soldiers consist of Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Their are many differences between the 2.

The outer soldiers are more powerful and isolated than the inner soldiers because they are first defense to deal with outside threats. They can also ward off enemies just by themselves. They very often like to be alone and isolated from each other plus they don't attain well to conformance as they, by their nature, like to do things their "own" way so their alliance is very loose with the Moon Kingdom and they believe they would make a better leader than Queen Serenity.

The Inner Soldiers are very different type people, they usually have to fight together to defeat an enemy as a single soldier might not be strong enough to defeat an enemy alone. The Inner Soldiers usually love to always hang out in groups and make deep friendships. They are usually much friendlier than the Outer Soldiers and can often be very outgoing and humorous. The Outer Soldiers are usually very withdrawn and dead serious having little humor.

The division between Inner and Outer soldiers started a very long time ago, Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus claimed they were smarter, more intelligent, and much stronger than the moon kingdom. They should be the leader of the alliance. Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn agreed with Neptune, they were the "elite" group and should be the one making the calls. Sailor Moon disagreed and persisted they were the proper ones to run the alliance, Sailor Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter stood behind Sailor Moon's decision.

After a long time of arguing back and fourth, Sailor Uranus and Neptune finally launched an attack against the Moon Kingdom but were defeated very quickly. Sailor Uranus and Neptune went back to their planets and formed an "unofficial" government between themselves, on many occasions they would selectively choose orders to act upon or ignore from the Moon Kingdom and it really stayed that way onward as a big split between the planets and kingdoms.

The Alliance with the Moon Kingdom was very restrictive on which Sailor soldiers were allowed to live. Basically the Moon Kingdom laid out these rules. The Solar System is the sole domain of the Moon Kingdom, Any Sailor Soldier who lives within the solar system must be allied with the Moon Kingdom or be destroyed and killed. Any Sailor Soldier from outside the Solar System must be killed upon entry as there is no way to know if she's friend or foe. Only under express permission of the Moon Kingdom can an outsider remain unharmed within the domain of the Moon Kingdom.

The outer soldiers ignored the last part "Only under express permission of the Moon Kingdom can an outsider remain unharmed within the domain of the Moon Kingdom." - They believed that the Moon Kingdom wasn't smart enough to determine friend or foe and that any outsider must be killed regardless. They also disagreed with the notion that the solar system is solely the domain of the Moon Kingdom.