It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here (I blame ArcheAge), but last, last week was Sakura-Con 2015. Sakura-con is the largest anime convention in the north west, with over 20,000 attendees and held at the Washington State Convention Center (Seattle, Washington) between April 3-5th. I went last yearand took tons of cosplay photos as an attendee, but this year, I decided to attend not only as volunteer staff, but also as a panelist! Since I spent most of my time helping out in the console gaming room (I was part of tournament gaming staff), I was only able …

This came in one of the huge AmiAmi boxes that I finally got around to unboxing along with the rest of my June 2014 backlog loot. I’m a huge fan of mechas and mechamusume, so I was pretty excited way back when AmiAmi Zero announced their Infinite Stratos line (though right now all they have is Akatsubaki and Blue Tears). While I was ultimately quite disappointed with the show (especially its sequel, “Infinite Fanservice 2” as I call it), the IS designs are apparently inspired by various Mobile Suit Gundam designs, with Akatsubaki very likely inspired by the ZGMF-X19A Infinite …

Been pretty busy lately with work and planning the upcoming Comiket/Japan trip but I finally got a chance to sit down and unbox/go through all the loot backlog that has accumulated over the past while. Normally I don’t bother posting loot blog posts, but this time around there were some pretty big items I had been looking quite forward to getting. And so, here’s the rundown, with the lovely Arc as eyecandy ^_^ Pile of loot boxes, from AmiAmi, Suruga-ya, Rakuten, Yahoo Japan Auctions, and more! Everything opened up and all together! Mostly TYPE-MOON stuff (of course) but a few …

Happy Chinese New Year! Happy Chinese New Year everyone! For those who don’t know, January 31st is this year’s Chinese New Year, also known as the “Spring Festival”. It marks as the first day of the Lunar New Year, which is based on the lunar cycles of the lunar calendar rather than the solar cycles of the Gregarian calendar. While most of the world uses the Gregarian calendar as an international standard, the lunar calendar is still used for many traditional holidays in many asian and middle-eastern cultures (including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, etc.) although the degree of celebration …

See MyAnimeList for my list of watching/completed anime. Check out AnimeCalendar for a nifty tool to keep up-to-date with airing anime. In my past anime chart blog posts, I would make predictions for the upcoming season prior to the first airing week, then update my comments at random points through the season. This time around, however, I’ve decided to first go through all the EP1s (and a few EP2s) so that I’d be able to give actual first impressions based on the actual episodes rather than just PVs + descriptions. I’ll probably end up updating this post a few times …

Keripo, pronounced /ˈkeˈriˈpo/ (sounds like “curry-poe”) or ケリポ Like most, I am a wearer of many hats. If I had to summarize, I would probably be described as a programmer, engineer, gamer, and otaku. But since you came here expecting more, here’s the list. My professional profile can be found on LinkedIn. Wearing my favourite bunny hoodie, visiting Matsumotou Castle during my 2012 Japan trip Programmer: Hacker: My programming roots started in hacking embedded devices. I am mostly self-taught, learning C at the start of high school when I joined the iPodLinux team (hacking oldschool clickwheel iPods), then later moved …

Latest figure reviews, Dollfie Dream photoshoots, anime season thoughts, and other anime-related rants. I’m a pretty hardcore TYPE-MOON otaku and old-school Gundam fanboy so you’ll see plenty of both here. Check out my full collection at MyFigureCollection. Blog posts here are often cross-posted on MFC and/or Figure.fm Photos are usually uploaded to both MFC and Flickr. Up-to-date anime list can be found at MyAnimeList. Crappy amateur cosplay pics can be found at WorldCosplay. Here’s some useful anime-related links: Spoiler: Anime-related blogs Strife’s Domain OhnoRaptor’s Tumblr mr.ROBOTTO Jadepixel Doll Lab Climbatize’s sources Soth’s Blog StrayWolf’s Blog J.The.E Blog Wolfheinrich’s World Figurawrs …

A few weeks ago (Oct 25-27th), I attended Akicon 2013 as my first big anime convention since moving to Washington last year. In the northwest, there are two large anime conventions, Sakura-con and Akicon. I somehow managed to miss both last year, but made sure to attend this year (and plan on attending Sakura-con 2014).

Fall 2013 anime season chart + comments. Reposted from neregate. See MyAnimeList for my list of watching/completed anime. Check out AnimeCalendar for a nifty tool to keep up-to-date with airing anime.

The Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) is a series of gaming conventions held in three different locations every year and one of the biggest in North America (right after E3). The biggest of the three, PAX Prime, is held in Seattle, with PAX Prime 2013 held last long weekend (Friday Aug 31 to Monday Sept 2nd). I have previously attended plenty of anime cons, but this would be my first PAX and video game convention. Got a 4-day pass from a friend but was only able to attend 3 of the days since I had work on Friday (Monday was Labour …