Return of the Mainichi Junk

Yes, the Mainichi Junk is back. It’s coming back today in preparation for a site renewal in which daily longform posts will reclaim some of their former glory, and other posts will be organized into easily viewable, easily accessible at-a-glance categories, with the intent of making the HD experience more user-friendly and generally useful than ever before.

To that end, starting today I’ll be posting with the goal of making the eventual layout change as smooth as possible. This may mean that some of the stuff that shows up here (like this post) might look a bit odd, but I ask in advance that you bear with me as we make this transition. It might not be pretty in the interim, but the end result should hopefully be worth it. A preview of what the new layout will look like (minus the big blue blob in the middle) can be found at left.

Shifting gears, among the new things I want to do with the return of this daily post is to go a bit off the beaten path mandated by endless strings of “figure news” posts, into some of the other stuff that occupies the interest of people here at HD (that would be me) on a daily basis. “Ye gods, does this mean he’s actually going to blog?” I can hear you saying – and the answer is yes, maybe, if I can think of things to talk about. So, on with it!

Dragonaut ED 2 features Kaneko Hiraku illustrations

I stopped watching Dragonaut after the masterpiece of animation that was episode five, figuring that unless Kaneko Hiraku (designer of Queen’s Blade Cattleya, among other things) was brought on board to supervise the animation for another episode this was the best the series was going to get. He hasn’t come back yet (I’ve been checking his sakuga wiki page every week, just in case), but this week’s check revealed that he’s responsible for a few cuts in the new ED animation, the choicest of which are reproduced here:

Proving once again that Uno Makoto and Kaneko Hiraku are two of the mightiest forces in the known universe.

Anime Rumors: Pretty Menma, Sekirei

Moon Phase Diary notes in a post today that Ramen Tenshi Pretty Menma, the game created to populate the Genshikenverse for the show’s second season, is presented in the upcoming issue of Comp H’s magazine as being an anime “in production”, but details are completely unconfirmed. If this turns out to be the case it could provide a scenario for a second Genshiken OVA to be released along with the Menma DVDs, though with the amount of plot remaining I doubt three OVA episodes would suffice.

In very tangentially related news, Moon Phase speculated back on the 18th that a Sekirei anime would be produced by Arms (the same studio that animated Genshiken season 2), and specifically the unit that worked on Ikkitousen Dragon Destiny. Thematically this would be a good fit in my opinion, though I’d like to see a bit higher quality than they managed to pull off for DD… this is pure speculation based on a single line of Moon Phase text and shouldn’t be given any credence, but it’s fun to dream – I’d bet dollars to donuts that a Sekirei anime is coming sooner or later.

Gundam Watch

Thanks to a hookup from wildarmsheero I am now watching the original Gundam movie trilogy for the first time. It’s largely been a pleasant experience thus far, though an odd one – like I’m fitting one of the few remaining pieces into the jigsaw puzzle of my anime vocabulary, and I already intuitively know where it goes. Being finally able to put faces to names like Zaku, Gouf, Char, Ramba Ral, Hamon, Amuro, and others is a lot of fun.

I’m not sure if there’s enough here to convince me the franchise was worth continuing for 25+ years beyond its initial conception, or enough to inspire me to watch more, but I’m feeling far less antipathy toward the show than I used to (based purely on the hellish experience of suffering through the first 15 episodes of SEED a few years back). Two thirds of the way through the second movie and the Amuro angst factor is getting a bit high, and it’s a bit silly how charismatic women inevitably die by falling out of their vehicles, but it’s still a fun watch and I look forward to seeing how things end.

As a side note, the knowledge that Char will go on to voice Sid Fortenmayer is a source of endless mirth.

Eroge Limiter Release

This makes a nice segue to note that tomorrow, January 25th, is the biggest eroge release day of the year thus far. 37 new and reissued titles will go on sale (by Galge’s reckoning), chief among them August’s long-awaited Fortune Arterial. The game has half a dozen figures and dozens of accessories in production as I type this, and is a virtual shoe-in for a TV anime at some point in the next year or two. I’m not sure if it will be able to stack up to the notoriety of its predecessor, however…

Other games on sale tomorrow (don’t click these links at work) include an ero-ero Prism Ark expansion, a game featuring a time-slipping heroine at multiple ages, a Shimai Tsuma expansion that essentially finishes the original game, a beautifully illustrated offering from Atelier Kaguya, and a bunch of other promising titles. I’ll be getting a shipment of games in tomorrow and will report on them when time allows.

Play-Asia Whoredom

A quick glance through Play-Asia today turned up some stuff that might be of interest, so if you’d like to support the site and something catches your eye I’d be happy if you choose to purchase through the affiliate links below.

Now On Sale

• [ERO] Max Factory POLO System Wendy from Gun x Sword
• Wave’s Tsuruya-san x Kyon’s sister set from Haruhi
• Griffon’s Kanu Unchou (china dress ver.) from Ikkitousen

New Preorders

• Valkyrie Profile Lenneth
• [ERO] Tandem Twin Annerose
• [ERO] Sekirei Musubi (race queen ver.)
• Wafuudou’s Manyuu Chibusa
• Wafuudou’s G-L Yoko

That’s a wrap for today’s edition of Mainichi Junk!

I’m not sure if future posts will be quite this highly produced, but might as well aim high from the start. Things will be changing for the better in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!