A few weeks ago Hinako Tamayouchi the creator of Yugi-Oh: The Lost Saga brought up an interesting point about dubbed anime on her Deviant Art page. She believes that there is nothing wrong with the heavily edited dubs of anime for children. And after some thinking, I believe she is completely right.

Now, before the Otaku community starts sharpening their pitchforks, here me out.

I know that edited series have been a major thorn in a lot of Otaku's side for a long time. The fact that plot points, character relationships or even cultural references are cut out or changed has irritated many a fan, myself included. Modern Anime companies for the most part do a very good job about staying faithful to the original versions in their translations and their dubs, to a point where even tiny changes that were accepted in Japan cause An Uproar in the US and other places. So if even I find majorly edited dubs often times so infuriating, why am I defending heavily edited, cut and spliced series for children?

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Picked up Volume 2 of Black Butler and I continue to be pretty impressed. The art is totally awesome, and it's cool to see Sebastian's point of view on certain things, and why he has such a cat fetish--which was never really explained in the anime. One thing that really annoyed me was the the English text wasn't centered in the speech bubbles. I know this is a really anal, nitpicky thing, but it really bothers me when the text in a speech bubble doesn't look good. Especially since it's not hard to place text centered with software.

This volume also included the Jack the Ripper arc, and introduced some of my favorite characters in the series: Undertaker and Grell. However, in terms of storytelling point goes to the anime. The anime did a much better job in terms of timing, in both in terms of comedy and drama. In the anime Grell was introduced much earlier in the series, so you got a chance to know him, and therefore it was much more shocking when he transformed. Also, because the Jack the Ripper arc lasted several episodes (about 5, I believe) there was much more time to set up the suspects, the evidence and the drama, compared to the 3 chapters that took place in the manga. And also, the Ciel 'dream sequence', one of the single funniest scenes in the entire series was much, much funnier in the anime. Though, I give 400 bonus points to the translators of the manga for their choice in dialog, they really took advantage of some very suggestive English dialog to really fool the reader if they were unfamiliar with the series. I really do think the English dialog worked out a bit better than Japanese, as in the Japanese Ciel just said he's having a hard time breathing.

Gah! Now I have to wait until October for volume 3 to come out.

On Serebii.net they have posted the new starters and trainers for Pokemon Black and White, as well as several screenshots. I have to say I'm pretty impressed with what I see so far. The starters are really cute, all of them, and the trainer designs are nice. I really like the girl trainer, she's darling. The graphics are big step up too, finally looking 3D, and taking advantage of the DS's power. I won't be fooled though, when Ruby/Sapphire came out I thought it was going to be a great game--until I actually started playing it. I will eventually give a full blog on why I hate the 3rd Gen games so much, but all I'll say for now is these things need to happen for the next gen of Pokemon Black/White:

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This marks the last time I will categorize anything under the title 'The Days and Trials of a College Student'. Today was my last day of class, for the final we had to present our production project to the client, Design Within Reach, to be selected to go into a show that will be held at the Denver store. My design wasn't selected, but I'm not too upset about it, my presentation was a bit weak and the department never tends to like my work anyway.

I also picked up my cap and gown for graduation on Sunday. I'm looking forward to it, but it really hasn't sunk in that I'm actually graduating, that I won't be having class next semester. I won't be hanging out with my friend Robyn in the office since she was the work study. No more inhaling Yellow Foam (yay!), no more working in the shops and no more teachers breathing down my neck.

This also means no more Anime Club, having to get a job and finding out a new way to pay bills. It's exciting, but scary too. But then again, I've been wanting this for so long, and now with no school anymore I can really focus on getting my work professionally published. I plan on revamping my site (hence the change in blog layout) start going to conventions and sending my work to more companies. I am serious about being a professionally published artist, it's something I've wanted for a long time.

Finally have the new layout launched. Mostly. This is how the layout looks like, with the exception of me trying to scooch the header about 20 pixels to the right.

But now things are easier to read, aren't they?

It's gonna take me a little time to move that header, and I am not a web developer, and am not good at PHP.