***December 28th bump*** It’s better late than never to wrangle this sort of thing, so what the heck: if you’re reading this and you’re going to be at the Tokyo Big Sight on Saturday, December 29th, why not stop by the coin lockers near the Big Sight entrance at 3:00 PM? The plan at this point is simply to meet up, exchange a round of introductions, and figure out what to do next (if anything); I’m not going to put in reservations anywhere as I have no clue how many people will show, and I know many of us (myself included) might not want to drop 3,000 yen on food when there’s doujin to be had instead. If you’d like to meet a few fellow Comiketting gaijin though this could be a good chance, and if you’re up for something afterwards I’m sure some of us will be too. Meeting spot details below:

Will come back and brush this up in the evening, but for now here’s the bare details: Update: no time to brush up due to frenzied Comiket preparations this evening, so I’ll just note that Amiami has confirmed the castoff of Orchid Seed’s Tsuzuki Shiori from Witchblade, and that Wafuudou Ganguten’s Gurren Lagann Yoko and Manyuu Chibusa PVCs are now up for preorder. Updates will be a bit thin over the next few days as Comiket is in full swing, but expect a full debriefing (one that does not involve undergarment removal) shortly thereafter!

With production first announced in August of ’06, Light’s long-delayed “gakuen romance battle opera ADV” Dies irae finally hit store shelves on December 21st. In the past week the game has been met with a storm of criticism, much of which is reflected in reviews on its Erogamescape page; while there are many who rated the game in the 70th percentile based on its independent merits, an equal number have declared it a “land mine” and a “betrayal of expectations” (two possible tags in the EGS system). The chief complaints appear to be threefold: first, art used in promotional material and magazine articles was either altered or omitted entirely from the game’s final release; second, characters expected to be possible romantic targets were not; and third, prior to release the game’s writing credit was given to a single popular author, but the ending credit roll revealed a team of six additional writers on staff. More below: