I stopped buying the weekly Famitsu

(tags magazine, Famitsu)

I stopped buying the weekly Famitsu game magazine.

This is my third week going without.

I don't even try to tachiyomi.

Rozen Maiden is back again

(tags manga, magazine, Rozen Maiden)

I eagerly picked up a copy of Weekly Young Jump today, because Peach Pit's Rozen Maiden restarted.

The first part of the 34 page section was totally different (eg no dolls) so I thought it was the wrong issue. Even the main character's name was different. But this is all about the series reset, that is to say, Birz Comics dropped this hot product for some reason and WYJ is here to front it again.

What if?!? :-)

The next episode will be featured in about a month's time. It's not a stellar start, but I am interested in what happens next.

Couldn't find a Comic Blade: Aria, Fairial Garden

(tags manga, magazine, Japan, Fairial Garden, failure)

I forgot to get the latest Monthly Comic Blade issue (2008-04), which has the latest episode of Fairial Garden. Woops. I checked today (after its been on the stands for two weeks) but it seems to be sold out at all the shops. Why?

(Monthly Comic Blade 2008-04)

According to a user review at Amazon and of course the front cover, it's the last episode for Aria. I don't follow Aria, but any manga that gets a third season anime TV series must be a cash cow.

I'm going to go to the less trafficked stores during the weekend. I hope there'll be a copy for me.

Buy confident: Fairial Garden

(tags manga, character goods, Fairial Garden, magazine)

Fairial Garden (FG) has got a hold on me. I've been looking for FG stuff on the net. I even prepped a RSS feed on the search words at Yahoo Auction JP (keyword: 「フェアリアル ガーデン」), which currently returns nothing. Only a few weeks back did I spot this in Den Den Town:

It's Comic Blade (bishoujo) and Comic Blade Avarus (boys life) magazine's informal tribute to Comic Market 73 (Winter 2007). It comes with a flimsy cloth bag and I paid too much for the set. :-/ FG's Claire graces the cover in a Santa outfit. Unfortunately Sakurano's illustrations only gets the cover and one page.

I assume this is supposed to be a blending of FG and a neko theme. Notice there are only cat ears, not the regular ears. Four ears looks strange?

I really wanted to read the next episode of this story. But I didn't know what episode was available in the current Comic Blade. I contemplated buying a back issue at one local used book store, but they didn't have it. So I took a chance and bought the 2008-02 (January) monthly issue.

Yokatta. Lucky for me it is the next episode, so there are no story breaks. Here I am cutting up the thick magazine so I save the manga that I want to keep.

I also clipped some seperate color illustrations and ads. The right most clipping shows a pink-themed illustration, nice. The original illustration is a green background on the manga. The middle clipping shows a raffle telephone card for 20 winners. Argh, want.

BTW, the issue held the last manga episode of Akazukin. I don't follow it, though. I did try to get into the DVDs because of the POP illustrations. With this issue, I just clipped the color parts. Talk about levelled up armor, the antithesis of kawaii. Heh.

Comic Blade is a monthly magazine that distributes every 30th. So next time I go out I'm gonna pick it up and clip it.

telephone card ordering follies: Megami Magazine, Geemaga

(tags telephone card, failure, magazine, mail order)

I wrote this around 2008-01-02. :-)

I ordered the 2008-01 issue telephone cards from Megami Magazine via the usual mail order fixed price money order (定額小為替) but I put the envelopes in the nengajyou only (年賀状, New Year's Postcards) postal box. It needed to be stamped with that day's date, too, but will it be done? I made the mistake because the same box is usually used for domestic mail. :-(

Also I paid for those 2008-01 Geemaga Noboru Kannatsuki telephone cards through the self-service post office ATM (ゆうちょ銀行振り込み) but I forgot to mark which telephone cards I wanted on the sheet. Stupid stupid. Because I marked the wrong places on the paper (I was in a rush, not grasping at straws!), the ATM machine couldn't read it, and verifying with human help I figured out I need better aiming skills. :-/ How am I going to follow this up? I'll give them a call on Friday or next week.

Update (?): I gave them a call today and they got my name, address, phone and money transfer number. "Wait until March" Hm. All I can do is believe them, right?

Since that mail in thing is two month offer, I bought the 2008-02 issue (available end of 2007-12) to get just one more telephone card. Very nice cover. There was even a poster of the cover, which is currently hanging on my refrigerator. Happy new year, indeed.

Polyphonica-themed telephone cards from Geemaga

(tags illustrator, sexy, anime, telephone card, magazine)

Geemaga, that monthly game magazine that I might be confusing for an old Dreamcast-focused magazine, is offering Noboru Kannatsuki (神奈月昇, Light of Night) telephone cards. I would have never known about it except for the announcement on the Geemaga blog, "ゲーマガ2007～8年末年始「応募者全員サービステレカ」企画を見逃すべからず".

Truly hawt. Gotta pickup this magazine now.

My computer's wallpaper rotation hits the Polyphonica illustrations (神曲奏界ポリフォニカ), quite nice.

Free magazine, but expensive collectables: A-Station Telephone Cards

(tags magazine, free, anime, illustrator, telephone card)

A-Station magazine is a free glossy magazine "for the Akiba-otaku". They just celebrated 1 year of publication. It has some reviews of recent and upcoming anime/manga, as well as maid cafe and poster inserts. It is pretty limited distribution here in Kobe, but I am able to obtain a copy at "otaku" stores like Gamers, since they have increased their publication to 10_0000 copies. Pretty much I collect it based on the magazine cover illustrations alone:

These are the work of illustrator Atsushi Yoshinari (吉成篤). Moe!

Actually these are scans of the collectable telephone cards up for sale right now at the web store. They have online ordering by debit-prepay card, but I am doing the old-fashioned way by sending them postal checks (定額小為替). 1200 yen per card, ouch. There is a limited print run of 200 cards per design, on a first-come first-served basis. For the whole Japan. This is not a familiar system. It's either a limited print run by draw, or all-applicants print run. I sent my money last month pretty quickly, but I wonder if it got through. They are doing the same run this month, so I'm buying an incomplete second set. Heheh.

Before this, I was able to buy A-Station's first three issue covers reprinted onto telephone cards. It was totally easy to obtain it by postal check order, so I hope its the same for the above 9 cards.