Midori na Silhouette

Pardon my absence again. ^^; The one thing I’ve been able to keep (fairly) up-to-date with during my absence, is events. And so, here’s one that’s just around the corner: 100% Gempak Starz.

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Upcoming soon, is the Malaysian Comic Fiesta- an event that’s organized and run by fans and volunteers.

First off, the details-

Comic Fiesta 2008
Sunway Pyramid Convention Hall
20th - 21st December 2008
11 AM to 7 PM

To enter, you will require tickets, and there are three kinds of tickets for you to get- Edu-Bulk, Pre-Order, and On-the-spot tickets. Two day tickets (Edu-Bulk and Pre-Order) cost RM25 each, while one day tickets (On-the-spot) cost RM15. If you’d like more info, please refer to their respective links.

And for those who intend to go there just to cover the event, you will first need to take a look at the strict photography rules and regulations over here.

For more info, you can check out their website here.

There will be cosplayers there to see, doujins to buy, and I believe some booths will be bringing figures too (I think the figures are only on display though).

So, who’s going to be there? I’m still juggling with the idea, though it’s pretty likely that I will be attending.

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Any fans of TTGL here? If so, this manga might interest you…

TTGL: Gurren Gakuenhen is a manga that features TTGL characters in a school setting.

It just started recently, so there is currently only one chapter. As far as the story goes, it’s just average. There’s nothing great to say about this manga, besides, “You get to see Yoko in sailor fuku, and Simon GATTAI with Nia” XD

You can read this manga here. You can continue reading for my review (Spoilers!)


The manga starts off with Simon praying to his mother for an extremely normal life.

But as he’s praying, Kamina breaks in through the window, and tries to get Simon to be “moe” (note: moe can mean “burn up”, or the otaku’s expression of cute)

Then, as suddenly as he came, Kamina grabs Simon, and jumps out of his apartment.. breaking another window in the process.

They arrive at Dai Gurren Gakuen, where they meet Yoko, childhood friend of Simon.

Yoko and Kamina began to argue over Simon, when Kittan shows up, and challenges Kamina.

Kamina agrees to this challenge, and drags Simon into the fight.

But before anyone can deal any hurt, they are stopped by Rossiu.

Rossiu points out that anyone unjustifiably late for class will be punished to washing ALL the toilets in Dai Gurren Gakuen. Kamina, Yoko, Kittan and his gang quickly flee the scene, leaving Simon behind, and thus, sentencing him to wash all the toilets.

On his way home, Simon runs into is run into by Nia.

Nia and Simon chat for a bit, until they are interrupted by Viral.

A wild Viral appears!

Viral gives Simon two options, give Nia back, or fight him. Nia volunteers Simon to fight. LOL

Simon doesn’t believe he can win, but Nia says through gattai (unite) with her, he can win.

In spite of Simon’s objections, they do gattai, and beat Viral.

The next day, Nia transfers into Dai Gurren Gakuen, from Teppelin Gakuen, and says she has a husband-wife-like “Gurren lagann gattai” relationship with Simon. (WTH is that?! lol)

And that ends chapter 1.

It’s nice to see them all in school uniforms, but, like I said, nothing too great about this manga. Regardless, I will wait for the next issue.

According to the scanlation team, the artist, Kikkawa Kabao, is known for his ecchi… You know what that means, LOL.

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Sorry for the long absence ^^;

Here’s the doujin, “Project: Durian” from the ACGC 2008 Finale.

Honestly, I found this doujin to be.. bad.

Intro page. At least the editor’s note is funny

This doujin contains 4 unrelated stories, with durians being the common theme.

IMHO, the quality of the stories went from: relatively funny > boring > bad > I regret this purchase.

Before I talk more about the doujin, let’s take a brief look at the stories…

“A Durian Flavoured Drink” starts off introducing Sharry. No matter what he does, he is unable to find a life partner attract girls.

One day, after talking to “God”, he is given a durian flavoured drink.

He buys more of this drink (which turns out to be available in convenience stores), and by drinking it, he manages to attract more women. However, he did not read the warning label on the can, which says not to drink it “after 10 PM sharp”.

So one day, he goes to meet a girl, but he finds out that she he it’s really a guy!

He later realizes that the durian drink has been making him hallucinate, and all the while he was dating ah quas (ah qua= slang for gay). And that’s how “A Durian Flavoured Drink” ends.

Next is “Impossi-durian”, the longest story in the doujin.

The story begins with the Black Suits gang being attacked and robbed by Mr. Mercenary.

Mr. Mercenary did his job for the Mamak gang, and took the box, which was supposed to be full of gold. But when the boss of the Mamak gang opened the box, all that was inside was a durian. Meanwhile, Clyde of the Black Suits gang explains that the gold is actually hidden inside an empty durian shell, and that Mr. Mercenary has taken a decoy.

Unfortunately for the Black Suits gang, Mr. Mercenary did get the right one. When he RAGE’d got angry and threw the durian…

It split open and gold spilled out. The Black Suit gang finally realizes that Mr. Mercenary took the right box, and starts to hunt down Mr. Mercenary.

Now being chased by both the Mamak gang and the black suits gang, Mr. Mercenary gets onto Abu Bakar’s lorry, and asks him to drive, saying he’s an undercover cop.

The Mamak and Black Suits gangs continue to chase after him, when Abu Bakar, a former “raja mat motor” (King of Bikers), decides to use his skills to get rid of them.

So with the Mamak and Black Suits gangs off their tail, Abu Bakar takes Mr. Mercenary to a safe place: the police station (LOL).

Mr. Mercenary is caught, and that’s the end of “Impossi-Durian”.

Next up, “Something Begins” (Title is parody of Batman Begins).

Kiddy, whose parents get killed one day, decides to train himself to fight evil. After training for years, he wants to choose his secret identity, when he sees a bat.

It appears that he was about to choose a bat to represent his secret identity, but then a durian falls and kills the bat.

Later, the pirate king of movies is visited by Kiddy, and we see that he chose for his secret identity to be represented by a durian.

His name: Durianman.

Forgot to rotate this image, and can’t be bothered to

He fights by using headbutts, because of his spiky helm. But that’s all we get to see him use. There isn’t even a durian mobile.

In the next few pages, we see the pirate king of movies all tied up, with a durian left behind in the scene, and that ends “Something Begins”

The next story, “Keeper of the Grave”, is so bad, I don’t want to talk about the story. I shall let the ugly (but detailed) art, and lameness of it all talk for itself.

And I refuse to show any more than that.

This doujin was done by TeamWorks, and I purchased it for RM6. When I saw the cover, and browsed through and saw Durianman, I thought it was worth a shot. But by the time I reached the last page, I wanted a refund. I could have spent that RM6 in better ways, like buying more of Kid chan’s art!

I will now be even more weary of Malaysian doujins.

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Last Saturday and Sunday, the ACGC 2008 Finale (Anime Comics Games Convetion) was held here in Malaysia, at the Mid Valley Exhibition Center.

But before I continue, I must warn you- I have photography skills at superb as a blind potato, so what you’ll see in the following is a mixture of clear pictures, blur pictures and very blur pictures.

I arrived at Mid Valley at 9AM. The convention was scheduled to start at 10AM, so I loitered around until about 9:30 AM.

At 9:30, I snuck in through the staff entrance (LOL), so I got to take a look around before the crowd arrived.

The stage where the events were held

Note that the pictures from this point on are out of chronological order.

Some games I expected hoped to see were Red Alert 3, Emil Chronicle Online, SPORE, Dead Space, and Soul Calibur 4. But let’s take a look at the booths there…

The U Mobile booth. As far as I know, they are a 3G service provider. And they support orenji.

Poser.. =_=ll

The Mo Siang booth. Some MMORPG in English and Chinese.

Top Speed - some MMO racing game by IAH

A couple of chibis playing the game. Looked like an average racing game to me.

Being advertised as one of the features of the ACGC, here’s the Nintendo booth.

The WiiFit. I did not get a chance to try this.

Aside from the Wii and WiiFit, Nintendo also had a couple of DS Lites (5 of them) for trial.

They attached the DS Lites to platforms, and in such a way that you couldn’t take out the stylus to use. So while everyone was using their fingers to try and play, I took out my phone’s stylus, and started laughing at everyone.. in my heart.

This booth, OffGamers, was pretty lulz. In the morning, almost NO ONE was paying any attention to it. But after people started to find out that you could get “Panda Hammers” (the thing the girl is holding in the top picture) at this booth for free, a QUEUE started to form. No other booth had a queue.

The panda hammers. They’re pretty cute, no? XD

Fantagetar. Another MMO I know nothing about, and want to know nothing about.

As I moved along the convention area, I was delighted to see an ECO booth.

*BUT* all the computers were down. YAY.
In fact, just about all the computers in the convention were down til lunchtime (or later).

At 2 PM, I get back to see this.

All screens blacked out except for one, which was playing an ECO trailer.

20 minutes after that, and all the computers are playing trailers. I pretty much gave up on this booth at that time.

Later still, at 5PM, I decided to just take another look at the booth, and guess what I see?

YES!! ECO!!

But then I noticed it was all in Chinese. orz

On the outside of the ECO booth, we had Angels Online (and some other game, which I’ve forgotten about already).

Because it was an Anime Comics Games Convention, I had expected this (following) booth to be there.

ANIME TECH

I refuse to upload any more pictures of their booth.

Except maybe this poster.

Sasuke - a traine and teammate of Narut

There was this booth, Michael Soft, that constantly had people hanging around.

Their product was this system that would let your computer run without a hard disk. Not something that would normally attract many people, right?

What? Over 200? You mean it’s not over 9000?

The real reason this booth could attract so many visitors, was probably because they had WORKING computers. And all the gamers wanted to leech off of that.

Towards the end of the convention site, there were the CoD4 computers.

Unfortunately for the CoD4 players, the tournament, which was supposed to start in the morning, started at 4 PM, and lasted until past 10 PM (Note that the convention was scheduled to end at 9 PM). Why?

Because their computers were rendered useless too

They ended up using only one row of computers, which really slowed down the speed of the tournament.

As one of the better booths around, there was d_code Toys & Hobby.

A figure, gunpla, etc. online store. They had some pretty cool stuff up for display.

Is Haruhi supposed to be sitting on Nagato’s chair? O_O

There was also this coolsome car, which was mostly ignored throughout the convention.

At one booth, there was this SC4 banner, that made me think that I would get a chance to play the game. But noooooo. There wasn’t even a single PS3 at the convention site.

For PS2 as well aye? I must get this game then

Right at the end, there was a whole row of tables that were rented to artists and the like to sell their goods.

But honestly.. Their goods aren’t that great. ^^;
Not quite up to standard (unless you’re talking about Malaysian standard).

X chains. When I saw this, I immediately thought of Squee ^^;

I bought this comic, Project: Durian. I will talk about it some other time.

Another doujin. The cover is.. honestly, quite a turn off.

The woman who was selling the above doujin! Keroro Lady!

Well, there were a couple other booths there, but that’s all I’m willing to show. The rest were pretty minor.

Those who go to conventions regularly/have been to a convention would know that there is always at least a lady model or two, there to pass out flyers, provide assisstance, and the like.

This convention was no exception, and thankfully, there were PRETTY ladies.

The Wii girls were veeeewii pwiitty. *shoots self for lame pun*

As I was trying to get pictures of this cute girl, another girl at the same booth was glaring at me. I soon got too freaked out by her glare to try and take any more pictures.

This girl on the left was pretty much glaring at everyone too.

Race queens?!

She’s so pretty!

I realized only later that I had stopped her twice for pictures. How embarrassing of me.

Even though the cosplay competition was not on this day, there were a couple of cosplayers around. I’ll need help identifying them, so don’t hesistate to point out a familiar character.

Kikyo(?) and Luffy

This Luffy cosplayer was a rather hilarious guy. Throughout the first day of the convention, he was taking other characters props and playing around with them.

I could be wrong, but… Mulan?

Reverse trap Gino Weiberg!

Moar reverse traps. Himura Kenshin on the right.

Yet another reverse trap. Some character from Prince of Tennis I think?

As identified earlier, Himura Kenshin.

Axel (who later “switched” costumes to become Spitfire)

Kurosaki Ichigo on the right.

Everytime Luffy tried to shoot, the arrow would drop

Ichigo’s props

Wahaha

The mask Ichigo is holding belongs to Hirako Shinji. Did not see any Shinji cosplayers though.

Yaoi shot?!

Well, overall, I’d say that the ACGC 2008 Finale day 1 was pretty fail. Most of the computers, as I mentioned, were not set up properly until 12 PM+, the people there for the CoD4 tournament had to wait WAY overtime, and they had so little GOOD games to play there. I really wanted to give RA3 and SPORE a go, but this convention didn’t have either. :\

Day 2, on the other hand, was much better. Stick around for a post on that.

Albums: Day 1 Day 2

Day 2 coverage here.

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Remember the ACGC in March?

Well, this coming weekend (27th-28th September), the ACGC 2008 Finale will be held in Hall 3 Mid Valley Exhibition Centre (MVEC), Mid Valley. The event will last from 10 AM to 9 PM.

There will be a Nintendo Wii showcase, so if you’ve yet to see/try a Nintendo Wii, come on over and check out the Wii. They will also be selling the Wii at a “very special promotion price” during this event, so you might wanna take advantage of that.

Well, it’s a games convention, so you can expect lots of game publishers to be there showcasing their new games (awesomeness not guaranteed). There will also be game tournaments, though currently, it’s only clear that there will be a Call of Duty 4 tournament.

There are prizes for the winners of the CoD4 tournament, and are as follows:

Champion - RM500 + products
1st Runner Up - RM250 + products
2nd Runner Up - RM100 + products
Consolation - RM50 x 3

The CoD4 tournament is separated into two days, so there will be prizes for each day. If you intend to join the CoD4 tournament, you will need to take a look at these rules & regulations first.

I wonder what products they’re giving away.. ^^;

The next feature of the ACGC Finale is the cosplay performance and competition. The cosplay in March’s ACGC was.. pretty okay, but I hope to see some better cosplays this time.

They will also be giving prizes for the winners of the cosplay competition, and are as follows:

Best Cosplayer - Nintendo Wii
Best Craftsmanship - Nintendo DS Lite
Crowd Favorite - RM200 Cash
Consolation Prize - RM100 x 3

Cosplayer’s rules & regulations are not out yet. Anyway, good luck to all cosplayers! ^^

Maybe I should try cosplaying as Mizunaga… LOL.

Lastly, there will be doujinshi booths, so make sure you bring some cash in case you see something interesting.

So, who’s going? ^^ I’m definitely going to be there for both days.

BTW- Thanks to Iruka for notifying me of this event. ^^;

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This manhwa is Cyber Doll.

The artist of this manga is Park Sung Woo while the story is done by Orebalgum. BTW- This is the Malay translation.

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Here’s an otaku shop I discovered recently.

This place is called suncomic. If one had heard of the name alone, one would’ve probably thought it’s a comic store.

Far from being *just* a comic store, suncomic sells pirated DVDs, art books, figures, Gunpla (and some other plamo), cosplay outfits/accessories, ita-shirts (shirts with anime characters printed on them ^^;), and yes, comics too.

The store consists of two “floors”- the first floor is where the gunpla, artbooks, figures, DVDs, and ita-shirts are. The comics and cosplay accessories are found on the second floor.

But what I really wanna highlight about this store is this-

Suncosplay Cafe

This cafe, located at the back of the first floor, is, as the name indicates, a cosplay cafe. When I saw this I thought, “WHAT? A COSPLAY CAFE IN MALAYSIA?” I was at this store after watching Eva 1.0, and the cafe was closed then.

So I mailed them to ask about the suncosplay cafe, and this is what they said:

Yes, the Cosplay Cafe was intended to be a true cosplay outlet for cosplayers. We used to have part time cosplayers working there but unfortunately, the crowd in Cineleisure has been poor and we were unable to realize our intention for that place. Right now the cafe is functioning as a normal cafe with food and drinks without any cosplay elements at the moment.

We do hope someday the crowd in Cineleisure will improve and we can then bring back part-time cosplayers as waiters / waitresses, even organise cosplay events as well.

T’was very disappointing to hear that. I think we’re gonna need to support them a lot more before they can resume activities as a cosplay cafe.

Maybe they should have some meidos outside Cineleisure to give out flyers or something. That would surely attract tons of Malaysian otaku.

Anyway, if you wanna visit this store, it’s located at Cineleisure, Damansara, on the lowest(?) floor. It’s just two lots away from ShiokToys.com.

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Image from eroge Sono Hanabira ni Kuchizuke wo Watashi no Oujisama

A week ago, Kosmo!, a local newspaper, this article was published.. (English translation right below the one in Malay)

KUALA LUMPUR – Sepasukan unit penguat kuasa Kementerian Dalam Negeri kelmarin, bertindak ‘menyerbu’ beberapa premis yang didapati menjual komik gay di sebuah pusat beli-belah di Damansara.

Serbuan itu dibuat ekoran pendedahan Kosmo! kelmarin dan hasilnya mereka berjaya merampas sebanyak 50 buah komik gay pelbagai tajuk dengan isi kandungan menjurus kepada keruntuhan moral di kalangan generasi muda.

Pemeriksaan itu diketuai Timbalan Ketua Unit Penguat Kuasa Baha- gian Kawalan Penerbitan & Teks al-Quran KDN, Faizal Mohd. Ali bersama empat anggota penguat kuasa lain dengan kesemua barangan rampasan tersebut bernilai RM2,400.

Menurutnya, buku-buku tersebut dirampas di bawah Akta Mesin Cetak & Penerbitan 1984 dan bagi tujuan kajian lanjut.“Ekoran pendedahan Kosmo! sebelum ini, kami telah memeriksa premis berkenaan dan mendapati mereka menjual komik gay dan beberapa komik yang boleh meruntuhkan moral remaja yang lain.

“Dengan itu, bahan bacaan tersebut dirampas dan akan dihantar ke Bahagian Penerbitan untuk kajian selanjutnya di mana penentuan sama ada bahan tersebut sesuai untuk pembacaan umum atau sebaliknya,” katanya ketika dihubungi semalam.

Kelmarin, Kosmo! melaporkan mengenai kegiatan beberapa premis sekitar Damansara yang menjual lebih 20 jenis komik gay dengan harga mencecah RM50 setiap satu.

Malah, komik-komik tersebut ternyata mendapat sambutan daripada generasi muda yang gemar membaca komik tersebut.

Tambah Faizal, bahan bacaan ini tidak sepatutnya dijual di premis berkenaan atau di mana sahaja kerana ia boleh mempengaruhi golongan muda dalam aktiviti yang tidak bermoral.

Sehubungan itu katanya, orang ramai yang mempunyai maklumat mengenai sebarang jualan bahan bacaan yang meragukan boleh membuat aduan terus ke Bahagian Penguat Kuasa di talian 03-88868420.

Here’s a translation I did of the article above- I probably made a few mistakes, so please correct me.

KUALA LUMPUR - A unit of enforcers of the Domestic Ministry(?) yesterday ‘raided’ several premises found to be selling gay comics in a shopping mall at Damansara.

The raids yesterday that was followed by Kosmo! resulted in successfully confiscating as much as 50 gay comics of various topics and content that lead to the decay of moral among the young generation.

The inspection was led by the Deputy Head (?) of the Enforcment unit (?) of the division Control of Publication & Text al-Quran KDN, Faizal Mohd. Ali, along with four other enforcers confiscated items worth RM2,400.

According to Faizal, the said books were confiscated under the Reprinting & Publication Act of 1984 and will be used for further reasearch. “When Kosmo! followed us the last time, we checked the related premises and found them selling gay comics and other comics that could decay the moral of other youths.

“With that, the said reading materials were confiscated and will be sent to the Publication Department for further study and to determine if the said materials are appropriate for the public or not,” he said when contacted last night.

Yesterday, Kosmo! reported about several premises around Damansara that sold over 20 types of gay comics reaching prices of RM50 each.

Moreover, these comics are popular among the young generation who like reading the said comics.

Faizal adds that this material should not be sold in these premises or anywhere else because it can influence many young people to participate in immoral activities.

In connection with that, if the public should have information regarding any suspicious reading material being sold, they can make a direct report to the Enforcement Division at 03-88868420.

Source: Kosmo! Online via I crave for seme(s).

So how does this relate to us otaku? Well, the said “gay comics” are really BL manga.

Doesn’t this feel like Toshokan Sensou? Now, I never liked BL manga, but to me, this seems like an attack on fujoshi (who are, in a way, related to otaku) by people who don’t understand BL.

What do you think of this situation?

BTW, top picture- because I’m so much more of a yuri guy.

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