As usual, I had a blast at TFCon. But maybe this year was the best year yet! I had an awesome time. Didn’t need to buy anything, I just enjoyed the convention.

Everybody really loved the comic. I was slightly taken aback by the positive response. It gave me a big boost and made the hard work I put into it worthwhile. I gave voice actor guest Gregg Berger the only copy I printed and he was thrilled by it. He was totally a cool guy and a class act all around.

Great to see all my friends there, and to make new ones. People came from all over the place and everyone had a good time.

Now for some freaking serious business!

On June 14th, while I was still working on the comic, I got this awesome message through my contact page.

Hey weaboo, some of us are coming up from the west end to Transformerscon to make sure you don’t act creepy around people…. I see your art still sucks. Why do you even BOTHER with Transformers…. your so mainstream gay now.

Wow, in the 11 years that I have had my own website, I’ve gotten TONS of hate mail. But I had never gotten one where the sender claimed to be going to the same place as I was going with the sole intention of making sure I don’t act creepy around people. That’s big. That’s epic!

But, nothing happened. That’s an EPIC FAIL for the WEST END.

Too bad, I was looking forward to destroying having a conversation with someone like this in person for the very first time. I was somewhat disappointed, but not entirely surprised. I figured nothing would happen. Even though I wasn’t that hard to find (having been wearing a shirt that said “Ninjatron” on the back and “SykoGrafix” on the front, and having been twice pointed out to the audience at the script reading where I was showered with applause), but at no point did anyone come up to me with anything bad to say, nor did anyone attempt to stop me from exercising my cultural rights as a ninja through acting creepy. Oh well. It could have been fun to be confronted by someone like this, but I guess these Internet Tough Guys from the WEST END chickened out after seeing my Super Saiyan-esque golden mane. Yeah, that’s what I’ll go with. They would have been stupid to have started any shenanigans with me anyway. TFCon is pretty much the only place on Earth where just about everyone knows me and likes me. Not that I would have needed much help because history has proven time and again that I own, or rather, “pwn” anyone who’s attacked me and been an idiot about it, and real life would be no different. What did they think was going to happen?

Anyway, TFCon was fun. See you there next year.

Sayonara.

So, I’m finished the project that I had mentioned last post, and now I can talk about it. If you have not figured it out by now, once again I provided illustration duties on the TFCon prelude comic. However, due to time restrictions, it was decided that instead of printing the comic, it would be shown online a week before the convention. I didn’t have much time to finish, as I only had 3 weeks to fully complete 6 pages, but having it online instead of in print did afford me the opportunity to work with color and have it online for viewing by everyone. So take a look at the TFCon 2008 Prelude comic “Ground Effects”!

It’s not everything it could have been, but I pretty much went far beyond the threshold of human endurance to finish on time, and I’m paying for it now. I needed 2 Red Bulls to help me along towards the end, and by the time I was finished, I was really messed up! So I hope you enjoy it! The story will be concluded in the Live Script reading with Greg Berger, and even I don’t know what’s going to happen next. See you there at TFCon in Toronto this weekend!

In less important news, today is my birthday. I am now much older then I was before. I have no energy to party.

Also, it has been 11 years since the first incarnation of SykoGrafix hit the web. This makes me feel even older. Kids these days with their Web 2.0. Well back in my day…. zzzzzzzz….

Sayonara.

I was not really expecting to have that great of a time at Anime North this year. Now that it’s finished I can say that it exceeded my expectations, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it was that great. While it was good to see some familiar faces, I was pretty much on my own for the entire show and didn’t really hang out with anyone for any significant length of time. I didn’t have a lot of money due to an unrelated matter outside of my control that popped up unexpectedly, so I couldn’t afford to buy very much. Last year I spoke on 4 discussion panels and it was a lot of fun and they were all well attended. I had volunteered to be on panels this year too, but for some reason I was only on 1. Topics like classic anime and Transformers didn’t have a panel at all this year, despite being successful last year. Meanwhile, other topics, which will go nameless, were overexposed. That’s just stupid. I don’t understand the reasoning behind that, and it makes it seem that the people in charge really don’t care.

So, for all those reasons it wasn’t that great. However, the main reason why I go to Anime North is Anime Hell, which was hilarious this year. On Sunday there was also a Super Robot presentation that went through almost every 70’s robot anime. After it ended there was still time left, so it just kept going onto 80’s anime. I sang along with the theme songs and it was a lot of fun. I did manage to scrape up enough money to buy all of Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix anime, which is great. I also go what must have been the deal of the century. I bought the entire 2004 Tetsujin 28 remake anime, 26 episodes on 6 disks with art box, official, brand new, sealed, licensed by the now bankrupt Geneon and thus out of print, for $10. Yeah, $10. I thought it was some kind of mistake, but that’s how much I paid. Can’t really feel bad about going to a disappointing convention when you walk home with a deal like that.

There was also free live wrestling, and that’s always fun to watch.

So that’s my Anime North experience. Not great, but still OK in the end.

Sayonara.

It’s been awhile since I’ve sat down and watched an Anime series from the first episode to the last, and even longer since I’ve blogged about it. I just finished watching Bamboo Blade. It’s a 26 episode series about 5 high school girls and their kendo club. The 5 characters, the instructor, and the other club members all go through their own personal dilemmas and challenges, and they are made into better people by way of the sport of kendo. Kendo is sort of like Japanese fencing. As the characters learn about kendo, the audience does too, so it’s an interesting look into the cultural aspect. All of this, in and of itself, is decently entertaining while typical of the sports anime genre. What really makes this show fun is that the lead character, who is the most skilled yet the most reserved personality on the team, loves anime and is crazy about a tokusatsu super hero show called “Blade Braver“. While the viewer only gets brief glimpses of this show-within-a-show as the main character watches it, it’s clear that there is a history to it and there are parallels between the heroes fighting their rivals and the actual kendo matches she’s in. The girls even assign themselves colours like a sentai team!

It’s pretty appropriate that a show about kendo would have references to anime and tokusatsu. Now that I know a little bit about kendo through watching Bamboo Blade, I can see how much influence the sport has had on Japanese pop culture. The visual similarities between kendo practitioners in full gear and masked heroes like Kamen Rider are pretty obvious, whether they were intentional or not. Koji Kabuto yelling “ROCKETO PUNCH!” while piloting Mazinger Z and other anime characters who call out their attacks is much like kendo, where the two fighters yell certain words depending on what part of the opponent’s body they are striking at. Actually, there’s a lot of yelling in kendo in general, which reminds me of a “powering up” sequence in any given fighting anime.

Anyway, Bamboo Blade is a fun and enlightening show. Apparently the original manga is being released into English. The anime adaptation is unlikely to be licensed in North America, but the fansubs are out there. I hope there’s a sequel. I’ll watch it. But I’m probably not going to take up kendo anytime soon, because I don’t think my brittle wrist could handle it!

Of course, what I’d really like if for “Blade Braver” to become a real show, because that would be awesome!

Sayonara.

I had been working on this for a long, long time. And now it is done. It is my newest artwork, born out of love for the classic characters of anime. It is my masterpiece.

It is THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF ANIME.

THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF ANIME by ninjatron on DeviantArt

Inspired by the animated tv series and based off of a famous piece of art by Bruce Timm, I replaced Superman, Batman, and the rest of the League members with famous anime characters from throughout history.

So far it’s gotten 12 +favs and 10 comments within the past 7 hours. Pretty good, but we can do better! Check it out, read the artist’s comments, and if you like what you see and have a deviantART account, you know what to do.

Sayonara.