Just to see how completely different things are these days, right?

This is the first issue of UK anime magazine Manga Max, originally published at the back end of 1998 (this is the December issue, which I guess means it came out in November). The reason I have it with me, well, I brought it to accost former-editor (and usual SLA guest announcer) Jonathan Clements with – that’s his autograph you see on the front there.

Manga Max probably has something of a storied history which isn’t really worth getting into in any real depth for the sake of this post – it sprang out of Manga Mania, originally a combination anime magazine and manga anthology published by Dark Horse (as a release vector for the Akira manga, amongst other things), which eventually went through three or four different publishers before landing (back with) Titan. This manga-free relaunch under a different moniker had something to do with trying to expand it’s market outside of the UK.
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Yup, it’s that time of year once again, when I decamp to Scotland for another round of anime movie screenings. It’s Glasgow this weekend, which promises a mixture of things you’ve probably seen, things you probably should have seen, and things you almost certainly haven’t.

Likely highlights of the weekend are Patema Inverted although I’ve still not got around to watching Time of Eve and the mysterious Mystery Film, which I’m trying not to get my hopes up for too much. I mean, most of the hints suggest it might be this (in an still-incomplete edit), but that’d probably be too neat, and last time I went to one of these mystery screenings, I was right about what it was supposed to be, but the materials didn’t arrive from Japan in time… so, yeah, I’m trying not to get too enthusiastic in the off-chance it’s something really weird that I’ve never so much as heard of.

(-edit- Actually, the mystery screen is possibly even more likely this thing, which would also be interesting)

Which would certainly be interesting in it’s own right, I guess.
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So apparently it’s that time of year again when I marvel at how long I’ve been running this blog, and do whatever the opposite of marvel is at how infrequently I’ve been updating as of late.

But, really, eight years? Crikey, that’s certainly a depressing thought right there…

So, here I am sat at home on a bank holiday weekend without anything to do.

Well, OK, that isn’t strictly true. I mean, it’s not exactly the high-impact antics of an anime convention double-bill, but I do have some three weeks worth of cartoons to catch up on at this point. Most evenings this last week, however, have followed a pattern of me staring, horrified, at the mountain of content that I’ve got sitting around to be watched, mentally acknowledging that the situation is only going to get worse the more I put it off (particularly given I’ve been watching more this season than any other in recent history), and still electing to go the low-impact, low-effort route of playing more Neptunia Victory instead.

Which is probably why my game clock has jumped up by some twenty five hours, and my anime backlog as gone down by precisely three episodes of Gatchaman Crowds – on the subject of which, episode 6 has some of the most unintentionally hilarious animation that I’ve seen in a while.

This does mean, however, that I’m left somewhat bereft of things to write about. I was going to go through the whole Otakon experience from the point of view of a British guy throwing a whole bunch money at it (others have, frankly, already done a better job of writing things up from a general experience point of view than I would, though I will say that anyone who thinks that Skybridge is congested should try visiting London MCM on the height of a Saturday evening), but now that the accommodation feeding frenzy has already taken place, it’s probably a bit too late to jump on that. Maybe next year, if the stars align correctly once again, and I make it back to Otakon again in 2014.

Which pretty much means that this post is simply to acknowledge that I didn’t die at some point over the last three weeks. Yay!

PS – Yeah, the Yoko Kanno concert was great.
PPS – I now know more about anime Penguins than I ever thought I would!

Well, not exactly AFK, obviously, because I’m typing this, but presently I find myself in the land where over-the-counter painkillers are sold FREEly almost entirely in quantities that’d be illegal to sell in the UK, and where adverts are FREE to blatantly slander their competitors by name.

Yes, I’m in jolly Baltimore this weekend for Otakon, and then I’m back home in Blighty for Ayacon the weekend afterwards. And by “Jolly”, I mean “ludicrously humid”. Oh, boy, it’s not like it’s any warmer than it’s been back home recently, thanks to the recent British heatwave, but that humidity is pretty overwhelming for someone from my part of the world.

Anyway, what this would normally mean is that, well, you shouldn’t be expecting the usual frequency of updates for the next couple of weeks. Of course, it’s not like I’ve actually updated much in the last couple of months, so it’s not like there’s going to be much difference.

I would also say that this means that you should say “Hi” if you see me around, but I guess you wouldn’t know what I look like unless you’ve met me previously, particularly given I’ll be endeavouring to protect my baldy head from the sun by doing my best impression of a Yorkshire farmer. You might get me on the 3DS Streetpass if you’re looking to fill out the UK on your world map, anyway!

(PS – Yup, I know there’s been some new iM@S trademark registrations, but I have not comment on something so vague right now)