My main complain about J-music is that it’s too perfect. No notes being missed, no contamination, no tape hiss, it’s perfect. Too perfect. What I really like about Joy Division for instance is that their pieces are not always 100% harmonious, but Japanese music is simply so square that it’s almost sickening most of the time. Which is why I thought I should see them live, can’t play it perfect when you’re on stage, right?

Well, I was half right. Either they’re really good at this playback thing, or they really really hate to be innovative. Almost record-like from what I could hear out of the maximized compressed sound. I can still hear a low buzz over 12 hours later.

I was surprised to see only about two other long haired men. Most people were at the ages between 14 to 20 mostly, dyed hair, dark eyeliner (including males) – they have adopted the Visual Kei style. Their hair was considerably longer than than your average skinhead, but hardly as long as what you would call long. Only one or two smokers.

Concerts are the only form of music I’m willing to pay for. It’s been ages since I bought a CD, and I get all my music lossless. That’s the way it should be. However, if one of those musicians whose music I listen to came by touring in Copenhagen, I’d be the first one to buy a ticket. Similarly, when I go to watch a movie, I don’t pay for the movie, but for the experience in general, the big screen, the superb sound et cetera. If I just wanted to watch the movie, I’d download it. Data is data, no point in selling it, since it can be replicated freely and easily (and perfectly.) I hope my 200 DKK would help D’espairsRay get new dresses and make-up or whatever they’re planning to do with it.

The hilight of the show, for me at least, was getting spat on by a hot Japanese guitarist, Karyu, kill me, but it was awesome. A friend of mine in fact managed to catch a bottle tossed by Karyu to the audience, from which he drank. How lucky of her.

Per se, I enjoyed the concert, and although it ended before 11pm, and I was expecting to go get drunk with a few friends (which never worked out unfortunately), and besides getting ignored, it was worth it.

Don’t pay for information, pay for experience.

Basically me, two friends, and a couple of friends’-friends.

I have a few complaints about the website. Firstly, the design hasn’t changed at all since last year. And then I can’t find any useful information about the timetable. I’m somewhat disappointed, but otherwise it’s OK.

What kind of annoyed me last year was the utter lack of a (proper) garderobe. Even if there was one it was ineffective for me, since I couldn’t find it. Sounds like I’ll just come without a jacket then, otherwise it’s just too much hassle, and I’m not willing to carry it around with me. Awful stuff.

When I came there last year I saw AnimeOnly.TV, which since then sure went somewhere, but I’m still pissed at them since guess what – it’s in Danish. My Japanese is pretty rusty, more like, really bad. They should have named it AnimeInDanishOnly.tv instead. Awful stuff. At least it doesn’t have any DRM (which I know of)..

I hope they’re going to have an interview like last year. I really enjoyed the Junko Mizuno open interview session.

And hopefully it’ll be in English again.

If you see me around there this Saturday, get my attention somehow. I’ll be wearing my new Dushkin.org T-shirt.

There’s no point of you reading this if you haven’t watched/read Chobits, but be assured that it contains no spoilers.

The problem is simple. I haven’t actually watched the last couple of episodes. At first sight it might seem that protagonist being Motosuwa has a conflict – Yumi vs. Chii. There’s an obvious focus problem, since Chii is the character the reader is meant to focus on and empathize with. However Motosuwa gets that title instead.

Chii is pretty, carnal (due to limited knowledge about the social structure), ignorant, and absolutely subservient, not to mention that a relationship with her would be socially unacceptable within the scope of Chobits. On the other hand, Yumi, the real girl, thinks for herself (and demonstrates she can do just that), knows how to behave within the social structure and recognizes the fact that people tend to “go the wrong way” with Persocoms.

The audience simply empathizes with Yumi and Motosuwa, since they’re both going through something – Motosuwa’s frequent soliloquies, which every now and then are simply a cover up for something else that he means to say, but instead says in a different way and Yumi’s sudden sadness when someone talks about a persocom. Chii hardly reveals any feelings besides an occasional suggestion towards Motosuwa and maybe Asimov’s robot law. Chii is just a part of the background, I can’t relate nor empathize with her.

Nice drawings can’t cover up for a bad storyline.

Anyway. Kawaii seems to be taking over. I’ve been to Israel last month and they have an Anime channel in there, and of course Pokémon (but that’s pretty standard). My idea was to replace different authority figures with nice smiley Kawaii figures. Koizumi is a good start, of course. Taking a look at his website, there’s a link on the right to an “E-mail magazine”. What’s going on here? Is Koizumi trying to make himself something like a pop figure? Hello Kitty style. Hello Koizumi. And there we have it. Kawaii politics.

I would personally feel much more guilty, from a dictator point of view, to bomb something if their leaders are so kawaii.

I was back there, I remember the dream from a semi-3rd-person point of view. I was sent there, I don’t really know why or something like that, and it was constantly dark.

Tokyo. I hardly have a recollection of Tokyo at all. All I remember is just what I saw later on, but seems like I knew Tokyo very well in the dream, and that I was actually there.

At a certain point I remember sitting in a bus, thinking “hey, I know that person sitting in the seat in front of me.” The bus looked like a Danish bus, probably like line 14, the one that runs through Norreport and one of the Jordan Rundt cafés.

At another specific point I remember sitting outside. It was an open area, there were a few people saying things and running around. I was standing watching them. It was dark, and the walls of the tall buildings around the pretty-much empty lot were white. There was hardly any light. The ground was damp.

After that, I remember waking up and getting annoyed that I left Tokyo.

The girl in the bus. The person was a girl I’m pretty sure. I don’t know. I think I met her online or so, that’s what I remembered. And I sent her an SMS saying “I knew it was you” or something. I don’t normally send SMSs, but I did in the dream anyway.

What she did was stand up, her and the friend that was with her. She happened to glance at me, and I saw her face. She had a bag on her shoulder. White bag. Expressionless face. Japanese.

She saw me and moved on. I wasn’t angry at her for not recognizing her. Maybe I understood I was just a part of the scenery. It was as if she’s a stranger whose phone number I happen to know.

I think she was a symbol of sensei.

The bag, white. Canvas. Like the ones that appear in Murakami’s novels every now and then. Nakata’s bag; and Yuki’s bag. They shoulder it every time they want to move on. Every time they change their state, they shoulder it. She wanted to get off the bus.

Could she represent people I perceive as unenlightened? She wants to move on and is unresponsive to me.

I don’t know where the bus was going.

Bus number 14. I take it sometimes when I feel Japanese. I take it to Jarmers plads when I want to buy a new novel.

I left Tokyo before I could remember anything. It’s as if she moved on and I didn’t. I have a gap from that part on.

Then comes the empty lot part.

I woke up annoyed in the end because I realized I wasn’t in Tokyo anymore.

Ahhh…

The Americans dropped their little bomb, I don’t even think they were aware of the things it may cause later on. For the Americans, it was like dropping a little bomb in a tiny rice bowl. Hence, the rice bowl, and the nice mushroom coming out of it (the explosion).

The rendered picture (which you can set as your nice wallpaper too) is over here. The SVG is here.

I think this is also an attempt in another genre, but with my own touch to it. Making it was pretty simple by the way, I drew everything in Inkscape digitally, no tracing or anything.

I don’t know what else I should write, so I’ll just say a good-bye and publish this post.

Good bye.

First of all, I was quite surprised by the number of people in there. I expected a way smaller event, although this could have also been since I chose the most expensive day with the most activities. I really don’t know, but the number of people was really nice.

Not to mention – the demographics were interesting too. So many _women_ (yeah, those creatures do exist after all, funny). I don’t think I even saw that many back in iCon (Star Trek and Role-Playing convention) or any Magic the Gathering contest I ever went to. I got to talk to some actually. So many girls jumping around. Let me talk about them later.

You know the type of people those conventions tend to bring – about 40% of the attendents wore a costume of some sort. It really contributed to the environment in my opinion.

All the big ones were there. _Fantask_, _Faraos_ and this Danish manga translator – Mangasim? Something like that. They actually had a pretty good offer – four mangas for 100 DKK. I would have bought eight of them if I only understood Danish a little better, but that’s still one hell of an offer. RitchyT took four although he doesn’t understand Danish that much. RitchyT seems to be a collector person.

RitchyT, you better get me that domo-kun T-Shirt while you’re in Tokyo!!

The reception part was pretty funny. I pre-signed originally for myself as R.G., and for K.M. . RitchyT happened to lose his reservation number (reservation is free anyway) so he ended up gatting K.M.’s tag, so he walked around wearing K.M. . I’m not sure how K.M. himself would respond if he knew about it, but it was absolutely hilarious to call him K.M. the whole day long.

They even approached me. I put it in a nice little story form just to make it look good. But read it and understand my situation.

I was there, picking manga, when I happened to spot a group of girls wearing costumes, one of which was staring directly at me. I returned a puzzled expression back at her before realizing she must have said something to me in Danish and I naturally ignored it assuming it wasn’t aimed at me.

“What?” I said

She asked some kind of question. One of her friends, wearing a costume as well came by now. I couldn’t catch it, but she seemed to be pointing at Chobits 3.

“Chobits, great manga, I read 1 and 2, but I haven’t read 3 yet, it’s really nice.” I said, “you may also want to get this one, it’s Ken Akamatsu, you can never get it wrong you know.”

“I actually asked what the prices were.”

“I don’t know. I don’t work here. It should be 100 per unless it says something else on the book.”

“Right.”

“So what are you going to get?”

She’s ignoring me now, alright. Only later I realised I should have pushed it harder.

And now let’s just say I’m bashing my head against the wall. Damn. I’m an artist, I’m supposed to be über-desireable. If you’re out there reading this post and you do remember a long-haired weirdo going around about what manga he likes and about Ken Akamatsu, contact me – alright?

I’m just not good at making split second descisions. Give me time and I’ll make a choice, but otherwise I’m just going to sit and not do anything.

Eventually I did get Chobits 3 myself. I’ll start reading it as soon as possible.

Next year I’ll also get a costume. Just not sure who to dress up as. I was thinking about akado from Hellsing (Alucard, Arkado, Arkad, Arucad, whatever) since I have long hair, which is not blond.. Either that or Ninnin from La Blue Girl. Don’t say Naru Narusegawa!

Around 15:00 (3 pm) I went upstairs and saw _Junko Mizuno_, in an open interview session with the audience along with a translator. She looked childish, she had one foot on top of the others, legs straight down, sitting on the edge of the seat, reading glasses on the table. She looked childishly interesting. It was a great interview, I found it very interesting to hear her talk about not just manga, but artistic freedom, and it seems like we share similar ideas as to the kinds of jobs we take.

I don’t see why everybody’s so obsessed with Naruto. It’s not that great, it’s just Dragon Ball Z with advanced animations and a stupid (and quite attractive) girl jumping around screaming _”SASUKEKUN!!”_, but in the end I just decided to surrender, no use in staying against it, eh? It’s more powerful than me, and besides, it could get pretty interesting. Assuming it’s not a battle episode, damnit.

I’m definetly going next year. With a costume.

This weekend – Friday through Sunday – it’s J-Popcon 2005. If you live in Denmark, you gotta go there. It’s in Valby this year, probably it was like that last year, but I wouldn’t know really, I only found it this year. Check out their website for more details. I’m very sorry that they don’t have it in English as well, I found it hard to understand what it says too, but I managed to understand it somehow.

Looks like they open the doors at 15:00 (3pm) or so. It costs about 100 kroner or so. Not too bad, something like a night out in Copenhagen – not including dinner and a movie.

Be sure to catch me there. Print out a copy of my self portrait if you don’t know what I look like. I’m the guy with the long hair (which doesn’t appear in the portrait, because it’s in the back of my head tied up in a ponytail of course.

Post a comment if you’re coming too.