Author Archives: ninjaconsultant

Show #019a Direct Download:

Noah is noticeably absent from part 1 of this show, but rest assured he has a very long opinion on the issue by the time we reach part three.

Otakon – it’s an anime convention held in Baltimore, Maryland. It’s the biggest one on the East Coast, and either the 1st or 2nd biggest in the U.S.

• Otakon’s Official Artist Alley Rules for 2006.
• The Preliminary Rules and The Giant Otakon Thread
• The Giant ANN Thread Regarding the Preliminary Rules
• ZOMFG says the interweb!
• Otakon’s press release in response to all the madness.
• Carl Horn is our hero!
• I don’t know who shax is, but he is also teh awesome. Edit: Read this last link for a more or less incoherent explanation of what we’re talking about in this show. Also I got this link wrong earlier today.

Other conventions mentioned:

• Comiket, or Comic Market
• SPX – Small Press Expo
• MoCCA Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art
• NYCC
• ComicCon

Promos played:

• Anime Pulse EDIT: We seriously did not mean to sound quite so harsh to Anime Pulse in this show and that other show where we discussed something they said. We’ll talk about this more in our Errors/Retractions show, coming soon!
• Randomization Podcast
• Fish in a Barral Podcast Noah wants to know if they’ve misspelled “barrel” wrong on purpose or not.
• AWO mocking WARP
• Anime 101

Can you guess where our music in this show was from? The first person to email me with the correct answer AND the first person to comment on livejournal (with the correct answer) AND the first person to leave voicemail containing the answer all get a free volume of manga (you can’t win twice, one winner per mailing address). So that’s three winners, total. Ms. Wildgoose, Noah, my brother, Derek, and Scott are ineligible to win (you know who you are).

Check out Alison’s buttons at:

http://buttonbutton.biz

Show #018c Direct Download:

• Many Japanese music fans are finding away around the Japanese iTunes store restrictions by buying giftcards from j-list, or similar importers . (Exporters?)

• “The script is available before production even occurs, so the subtitles tracks and everything will be ready as soon as the show is completed to air in Japan.” – Noah

  This is false from an animation production standpoint – the script changes many times over the course of editing in pre and post production. It’s my understanding that in anime, the vocal tracks are recorded after much of the animation has been completed. On the show I work on, we make a final script based on the final cut that we send to the client – but that script isn’t ready until the final version of the show ships out, or sometimes even after the fact, because I think they just use this script for archival purposes, and a different company entirely does the closed captioning.

  The point here is, what Noah is saying in this brief sentence that I missed during the recording is patently false.

• Furthermore, Noah’s idea that the Japanese could produce their own subs cheaply is also way off. Chi from the Tokyo Anime Insider vidcast told us that one Japanese company subbed one episode of their own show and it cost $10,000. The typical budget of one episode of anime is about 5 to 10 million yen, or $42,800 to $85,000. So adding $10,000 is equal to one fourth of the entire budget of a low budget show!

  Why would any Japanese company spend $10,000 when they could earn more than that by doing nothing and waiting for U.S. companies to just give them some money instead?

• Mr. Answerman on the “quality” of fansubs.:
  

  “…I’m going to go ahead and trust the professional, experienced, paid translators anime companies hire instead of GOKU_83474 or whoever decided to do a rush job on this week’s Naruto episode. Most of the fan translations I see are rife with grammar and spelling mistakes, excessive swearing and way too many untranslated words. There are some that are just fine, but honestly, I’m always going to prefer the professional product. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that; to me, it’s the same thing as preferring your doctor’s medical advice over whatever self-diagnosis you can perform using Wikipedia. Yeah, the information MIGHT be right, but you know, better to trust the professionals.

• My assertion that the internet is “the future of television”, might also be somewhat off-base. Check out this article by PBS guy Robert X. Cringely:
  

  “Twenty million viewers, on average, watch “Desperate Housewives” each week in about 10 million U.S. households. That’s 210 megabytes times 10 million downloads, or 2.1 petabytes of data to be downloaded per episode. Fortunately for the download business model, not everyone is trying to watch the show at the same time or in real time, so iTunes, in this example, has some time to do all those downloads. Let’s give them three days. The question on the table is what size Internet pipe would it take to transfer 2.1 petabytes in 72 hours? I did the math, and it requires 64 gigabits-per-second, which would require an OC-768 fiber link and two OC-256s to fulfill.”

  “There isn’t an Internet backbone provider with that much capacity, much less excess capacity.”

• As for “original rights holders” asking fansubbers to stop, “That one company” who recently (2004) wanted School Rumble, Genshiken, and a half dozen other shows to stop being distributed is Media Factory. You can read the much longer statement on animesuki here.
• IGPX is funded in part by Cartoon Network.
• Totally free and legal anime downloads from ADV and CPM.

We’ll probably have a part 3, or 18d, for corrections and retractions, like how to pronounce “asaharakun” and what grade he’s in, or indeed, how to pronounce “Naruto”. In the meantime, you need to watch Tokyo Anime Insider (formerly “Anime for the Lazy Man”) here’s the iTunes link.

P.S.
Yesteryday I saw a dog that looked like Mugi!

Show #018b Direct Download:

Do we cite anything in this show that warrants notes or links? Email me at ninjaconsultant @ gmail.com

Steve complained that we hadn’t used his music in a long time, so you’ll hear a new piece of his in this show. Where’s my Ira Glass impression, huh, Steve?

Analog Lights is a division of “Giant Spider, INC” For more information, email Steve at: GiantSpiderINC@hotmail.com – or you can find him on myspace – I know you kids love myspace: http://www.myspace.com/analoglights.

Show #018a Direct Download:

I’m sure Noah will fix up these show notes later:

Intro: Berserk Intro (Kono sekkai wa…), Pocky song from website.
Sites Mentioned:

• Gaiaonline.com
• Rented from Greencine or Rentanime.com

Anime Mentioned:

• Hols Prince of the Sun
• Samurai Deeper Kyo
• Kenshin
• Mai Hime (My Hime)

Other Podcast Promos/Stuff:

• Happie Random podcast – now called the “Randomization” podcast. Asarakun is in 6th grade, FYI.
• Weekly Anime Review
• Happy Hentai Podcast
• Anime World Order
• Anime Pulse

End Music: From Bleach and Prince, in Erin’s crappy mashup. Call our voicemail: 206-203-ERIN with your reaction, complaints, etc.

Show #017 Direct Download:

No show notes yet, check back later.

That voicemail number, again, is: 206-203-ERIN.

Show #016 Direct Download:

This is the continuation of our interview with Scott Melzer and friends: Matt Pyson, Mike Wall, and Marc McKenzie. Part one of the interview can be found here.

In the meantime I set up a webpage for Steam the Movie. There’s not really any content on it yet, but there will be. Oh, there will be!

My Life in Fandom: It’s the story of how Kakashi and Sexy No Jutsu Kakashi met.

Don’t forget that we now have voicemail if you want to call us: 206-203-ERIN. (All the “ninja” numbers were taken!) This show was actually put up because of a special request from a listener over voicemail that we hurry up and post it.