Canned Dogs

Back in early May, a player on the MMORPG Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE had spent 100,000 yen (830 USD) on their newly introduced lottery but failed in an attempt to win a set of clothes that resembled the uniform from Persona 2.

He soon complained to Cave for not properly labeling the uniforms as a rare item in the lottery as it was listed among all the normal prizes with no indication that it was so rare that it could not be won even after 1,000 tries in the lottery.

Cave admitted that they made a mistake in not labelling the uniforms as a rare item and changed the list, but they replied that any money that was spent by the players was their own responsibility and not that of the company.

The man tried to sue the company soon after regarding this matter, but the case was thrown out of court early this month due to lack of evidence in proving that the company was attempting to scam the customers. So in protest, the man burns his own face. (??????????)

His blog can be found here. The latest post has a picture of his face, so don’t look if you don’t want to see it.

These megaten fans ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

A student from Kanagawa University reported in 2ch a few days back that a professor had named The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi as his favorite novel in their university newsletter. The guy specializes in AI and natural language, so he’s probably going to make a Nagato or something.

I couldn’t find anything to post today!

The latest issue of Oh SUPER JUMP had a short story called Reibaishi Izuna by Okano Takeshi and Makura Shou, featuring Haduki Izuna from the Jigoku Sensei Nube. It has been 8 years since the original manga ended so it’s quite surprising that they’d run this short story out of nowhere.

This is also the first time the authors are working together since 2000. The authors had supposedly went their separate ways soon after Nube ended because of some disputes and also because their 2nd comic was received very badly (partly also because Shounen Jump instructed them to write about a crappy topic).

Maybe they’ll run it as a regular manga after the short story is received well! Maybe.

The summer Comic Market’s catalog has been released and the date for the winter Comic Market has been announced to be on the 29th-31st December, same as in 2006 winter.

The increasing popularity of Lucky Star has apparently started raising some concerns with the residents of Kuki city, as mentioned in this blog post by a resident. There have been an increasingly large number of fans who have been visiting the local Washinomiya Shrine which was featured in the anime.

This particular resident however is worried about security concerns in the town as he wonders how the general unknowing public would think of these anime fans walking around with their rucksacks and cameras, and mentions that there have been reports of an increasing number of suspicious people lingering around their schools.

The particular post has caused a heated discussion in the comments as anime fans protest the negative stereotype of otaku and that they should not be perceived as dangerous people.

There were a lot of people visiting Shirakawa village because of Higurashi too, I wonder if the people living there felt the same.

Doujin circle Studio Siesta has released a downloadable demo for their upcoming side scrolling shooter, Trouble Witches. It looks like the game is confirmed for release at the summer comiket, it has been such a long wait for a new shooter from Studio Siesta…

Apparently they’re going to release a 2nd ED collection CD for Lucky Star and this time it’s going to be all Shiraishi. I guess this means all the EDs in the 2nd half of Lucky Star will be all about Shiraishi…

No it’s not Moetan. 4 years after the release of Iyarashii Kyoukashou, doujin circle Oekaki no uchi has announced that they will be releasing Shin Iyarashii Kyoukashou at the coming summer Comic Market.

Edit: I made a mistake on the circle name and it’s actually released under circle name “Iyarashii kyoukasho wo tsukuru kai”

Konami has announced that on the 31st of July, they will be having a graduation ceremony for their MMO game, Tokimeki Memorial Online. Basically that means they’re closing the server. Everybody that has previously had an account on the game can play for free from now till the 31st of July.

It has actually already been known since early this year that it was going to close in July, but now it’s called a graduation ceremony so everybody feels better. There were a lot of mess ups in game features, server problems and administration that caused the game to close in such a short period of time, but one of the biggest problems with the game was their treatment of fansites.

Websites that were not recognized as official fansites were not allowed to post any screenshots, and the list of requirements to qualify as a official fansite was not easy to achieve. Of the requirements, the biggest hurdles were that you are not allowed to talk about any other game aside from Tokimeki Memorial on your site, you are not allowed to link to any part of the official website aside from the main homepage, and that your site cannot allow user-submitted content.

Basically that means that all the large popular websites that talked about games could not qualify. And as anybody familiar with doujin would know, if you touch Konami’s intellectual property you will die. There was even a case where a large gaming site tried to post screenshots of the game but was ordered by Konami to close their site while threatening legal action.

So yeah, while the game was basically a game which focused on building a community, Konami destroyed their own community.

A new character CD called a “Feeling” CD has been announced for Zero no Tsukaima, featuring the characters Louise, Tabitha and Kirche. Basically in this CD, you listen to the characters breathe in your ear, whisper messages to you, or verbally abuse you.

The entire CD is done via dummy head recording so you can be completely sure of the realism! This isn’t the first time that something like that has been released, as the mousou CD series has had a lot of similar stuff, but this is definitely the first time that a mainstream anime is doing it.

If this CD is a big success, we can probably expect a boom in such CDs being released, but I’m not sure if I want that happening…