A Japanese woman addicted to comics reportedly turned to the Internet to look for someone to kill her parents, after they asked her to clear out her cartoon-filled room.

News reports say the 36-year-old woman – who is unemployed and lives at home – filled up three rooms with several thousand comic books and videotapes she had collected with an allowance her grandmother sent her.

She reportedly became angry after her parents told her to throw away some of her comic books to make space for her sister who was planning to move in.

The reports say she posted a message on the Internet asking for someone to kill her mother, who manages a bar in Tokyo, and her father.

Police intervened after being notified are seeking to charge her with intimidation.

Landed last night and ended up in, where else, Akihabara! I was so zonked that I went in to the capsule hotel, changed into sleep clothes, and hit the sack like a dead man. Woke up at 2:20 AM, realized I wasn’t going to go back to bed, and then started reading up about Windows Servers so that I can make a better network for people.

Anyway, we’re just getting going here with our lists and setup, so stay tuned. I’ve already taken a much-needed morning jaunt around Akihabara so that I could get some Mcdonald’s pancakes (NEVER the set… no potatoes while you travel!) and stop off at the UDX building to visit my favorite bathroom. I didn’t say it was ALL glamour, did I?

Pictures and other goodies to follow soon.

1. Hurricane Ike destroyed Houston, which is TG’s spiritual home. Note that when we say ’spiritual’ home, we mean ‘place we have to visit when somebody dies.’ Our marketing manager’s DVDs and comics are floating in 3 feet of water, and thus he has nothing left to live for and has been placed on suicide watch.

ADV was placed under duress as well, but really, we’ve been hoping that company doesn’t get the Old Yeller treatment for about 2 years now. Sorry Stacy. : /

2. Taro Aso is now prime minister of Japan. Geeks are all excited because home dude reads comics. We welcome his devolution into impotent figurehead with open arms.

3. We will have buttons (see the above design), coupons, raffle items, and possibly gloms available at yaoi con this weekend in, where else, SAN FRANCISCO. RAGE!

4. On a personal note, we’d like to spend a moment commemorating the passing of Toonami. 11 years of really cool shows buoyed by inventive bumpers finally got the bozzack thanks to schedule changes, politics, and licensing and monetization.

Sure, sure… we’re reading enough posts and getting enough IMs and emails (aim us at tokyogetter sometime if yer bored and don’t mind random) to choke a donkey about it, but the fact of the matter is: times are changing. Perhaps people just don’t enjoy turning on a box and seeing their favorites anymore. I couldn’t tell you what’s on Cartoon Network right now and Gurren Lagann’s ending soon anyway, so I’ve handed my soul over to the total ennui that is… *gasp*… actually buying stuff or borrowing it from my friends.

All things aside, the Toonami scorecard? Ridiculous. Let’s go over the ROCK ACTION:

Voltron, Robotech, Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, Ronin Warriors, G-Force: Guardians of Space, Blue Submarine No. 6, Tenchi Muyo!, Naruto, Cardcaptors, Zoids, .hack//SIGN, Yu Yu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin, The Big O, Outlaw Star, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Cyborg 009, Duel Masters, Astro Boy, Gundam, Rave Master, Zatch Bell, One Piece, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, Pokémon, MÄR, The Prince of Tennis, Megaman Star Force, Bakugan Battle Brawlers, and Blue Dragon.

(Tell me you didn’t like one of those series enough to fall in love with anime. BTW, we carry doujin for many of the fine, fine series mentioned above at Tokyogetter.com…)

Enjoy your week ya’ll. Be safe.

We love you, we honestly do… but you’re scaring us.

Tokyogetter will be rushing into your heart next week at Yaoi Con 2008 in San Francisco! We’ve provided an assortment of goods for prizes, and we’ll also be distributing discount certificates AND buttons to anybody who asks us. Don’t worry, we’re not hard to spot… or are we?

As part of our ‘contractual obligation’ to intermixi.com ’s head honcho Isaac, Tokyogetter.com’s team of crack reporters and buying agents will be heading over to Tokyo after our scheduled dance of doom at yaoicon 2008. By crack team, we mean ‘the one guy without a solid day job’, but hey, it’s us or nobody.

Told ya.

Anyway, this is our last trip for the Fall, so we’re collating lists, doing interviews, checking it twice, and preparing to bring home a ton of goodies for you and yours. Prepare for more doujin! More CDs! More buttons! More toys! Clothing! Fifty-foot tall robots! And of course, AKIBA RAGE!!

In the meantime, we are preparing to update our pay systems so we may take Credit cards. We will also be carrying some more left-field items for all of you out there who like rare goods. No kidding, you’re going to be STOKED.

* = We show some people around for a bit, get cheap airfare, and spend the rest of our time drinking and shopping. Not unlike our everyday lives stateside.

BECAUSE I LOVE NOISE…

Japan’s Nayutawave Records, a subsidiary label of Universal Music Japan, has set an October 22 release date for its upcoming METALLICA tribute album, “Metal-Ikka” (literally meaning “The Metal Family” — bad pun indeed).

Apart from the Japanese metal veterans OUTRAGE, all the bands featured on the album are not “heavy metal” bands, though they show respect for METALLICA in their own ways.

“Metal-Ikka” track listing is as follows:

01. Sad but True - 10-FEET
02. Motorbreath - 9mm Parabellum Bullet (*1)
03. Creeping Death - RAZORS EDGE
04. Metal Militia - FUCK YOU HEROES
05. One - BEAT CRUSADERS
06. Through The Never – UZUMAKI
07. Seek and Destroy – INSOLENCE
08. Fuel – TOTALFAT
09. Enter Sandman – POLYSICS
10. St. Anger - 2side1BRAIN (*2)
11. Fight Fire with Fire - OUTRAGE

All the bands are Japanese except California’s INSOLENCE, who toured Japan with the organizer of this tribute album project, 10-FEET, in March this year.

10-FEET vocalist/guitarist Takuma says: “I’ve listened to a lot of METALLICA tribute albums — some are good and some are not. I’d say this album turned out to be a really good and interesting one, and I’m proud of that. Each and every track is great and I was especially impressed with the last two tracks. 2side1BRAIN’s ‘St. Anger’ — I just can’t get it off my head. OUTRAGE’s ‘Fight Fire with Fire’ sounds more METALLICA than METALLICA and it completely blew me away!”

As previously reported, the OUTRAGE track was recorded in July at Sound Farm Studio in Jamaica, Iowa, where SLIPKNOT recorded its new album “All Hope Is Gone”.

OUTRAGE is currently working on material for its new album, which is expected to be recorded this winter.

…

Well, it’s an interesting idea. I have a hard time imagining Beat Crusaders doing some more metal tunes, but 9mm may be one of my favorite new bands so I look forward to hearing that. Polysics I fall in and out of love with, but I’m still excited to hear them going all Devo on another band’s ’suck era’ signature tune.

What the hell is Insolence doing there? : /

Adult Swim was America’s go-to for mass market anime for years and definitely brought a ton of new fans to the industry and to us. The FMA love alone was staggering, and a lot of of early days here at TG HQ were centered around collecting FMA books for people.

Now?

Not so much.

Even with the return of FMA to an earlier slot, it’s still a frustrating mess. At one point you could turn on Adult Swim and get some of the best stuff out there. Now Sci-Fi is eating their lunch with Gurren Lagann and the comfort food that was GITS is long-gone. Do they even show special showings of Gundam like they used to?

Anyway, it’s cool that Bleach is still there, since it’s a fun show and it’s quite likable, but from an anime fan standpoint the new Saturday night schedule may as well be referred to as ‘throw your hands up in frustration and buy the DVD night.’ I’m not going to knock the humor shows… I love Robot Chicken and ATHF kills me, but Code Geass catches the bozzack with this one completely, and Moribito may as well get the Old Yeller treatment.

AS should’ve launched it’s own channel in 2004. : /

Time Title
11:00 Bleach
11:30 Fullmetal Alchemist
12:00 Robot Chicken
12:15 Aqua Teen Hunger Force
12:30 Metalocalypse
01:00 Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
01:15 Assy McGee
01:30 Squidbillies
01:45 12oz Mouse
02:00 Bleach
02:30 Fullmetal Alchemist
03:00 Robot Chicken
03:15 Aqua Teen Hunger Force
03:30 Metalocalypse
04:00 Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
04:15 Assy McGee
04:30 Squidbillies
04:45 12oz Mouse
05:00 Code Geass
05:30 Moribito - Guardian of the Spirit

Gather round, kids! Today we’re having a history lesson. Don’t worry, I promise to shoot my mouth off and talk some poo!

Prime Minister Fukuda has stepped down, and our favorite candidate gearing up for a run at the Prime Minister position (which may as well be dubbed the “most visible and powerless figurehead in Japan!”) is avowed manga fan Taro Aso (麻生太郎), who is currently the secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party. To call Aso ‘colorful’ is like saying I’m not adverse to drinking 2 bud lights on a study break during Weds. afternoon to celebrate my re-reading of this tech handbook and our upcoming Japan trip. Not that I’m speaking out of experience or anything.

Ahem.

Despite being a career politician since 1979, Aso kept his geek beef strong by having his family ship him manga so he’d have something to read while he was studying at Stanford university. His favorite book is purported to be Golgo 13, which certainly makes him a man after my own heart, and after he was spotted reading Rozen Maiden* in an airport he was dubbed “Rozen Aso,” which just sounds wrong to me on so many levels when I say it out loud in English.

Outside of his manga interests, the Roman Catholic Olympic shooting team member Aso has a reputation for being hawkish and a bit, um, foot-in-mouth friendly. Some of his controversial statements include:

“The Japanese were trusted because they had never been involved in exploitation there, or been involved in fights or fired machine guns. Japan is doing what the Americans can’t do. It would probably be no good to have blue eyes and blond hair. Luckily, we Japanese have yellow faces.”

While economics minister, he also said that he wanted to turn Japan into a country where “rich Jews” would want to live.

*blink*

Anyway, I guess that’s what happens when you take your cues from Duke Golgo’s “find, hump, shoot, get paid, kill the guy that hired you” book. I’m not even going to whip out the pictures of the inter-office eye-roll that shook TG headquarters this afternoon when we read the second one. It’s called henken in Japanese, ya’ll.

The world turns…

* = Dude you were on A SHOOTING TEAM. What you doing reading Rozen Maiden?!?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

INTERMIXI JAPAN TOURS AND TOKYOGETTER PAY HOMAGE TO OLD-SCHOOL FANDOM WITH THE “SHOW US YOUR DUBS” CONTEST!
Japanese travel company teams with extreme culture purveyors to acknowledge the oft-ignored roots of North American fandom.

LOS ANGELES, CA - September 3, 2008 - In celebration of Intermixi.com’s upcoming Tokyo Game Show tour, America’s leading Japanese pop-culture travel company has paired up with the irreverent Tokyogetter.com webstore to run a contest celebrating the source of modern fandom: the old-school VHS tape. Prizes include shirts from Intermixi and Tokyogetter, as well as Tokyogetter stock, custom-shopping coupons, and various other special prizes which will be announced at a later date.

Intermixi.com has always been about promoting Japan and every facet of the culture, not just the glossiest new idol or the shiniest robot toy. Standard analog video cassettes were the lifeblood of anime for well over a decade, and trading and collecting them exposed wave after wave of great shows to people all across the globe who had the willingness to investigate the once-secretive “underground” phenomenon of anime. In keeping with that philosophy, participants are asked to send in their best photo of their VHS collections along with their name and contact information. Stack ‘em high and get your cameras clicking! Extra points for those of you with mammoth black walls of plastic goodness!

Contestants are asked to submit their photos to contest@intermixi.com . The cut-off date will be October 6th, right before Intermixi ships off to Japan for the awe-inspiring Tokyo Game Show. For those of you interested (and who wouldn’t be?), don’t worry! There’s still a bit of time to join Intermixi’s Tokyo Game Show 2008 tour, so please contact IM via their website. Tokyogetter will continue to provide updates, blog posts, pictures, and everything else that they can organize with regard to the jaunt both on their store blog and on intermixi’s site in the interim. It’s going to be a good one, as always.

Isaac Lew, Intermixi: “I happened to be talking with Evan (Tokyogetter) about how I used to dub VHS back in the day. Evan’s from Houston and was an 11 year-old kid when ADV started, so he knew what was up with collecting tapes and trading with people back before stores or the web. Now it’s just a dark black dusty wall in one side of my home, but it brought about Intermixi and my continued interest in Japan. This, if anything, is more of cultural experiment.”

Evan Jones, Tokyogetter: “I’m a fan and a pack-rat, so you better believe I have quite a few tapes lying around from the 80s and 90s. As much as I get excited about seeing my friends’ DVD stacks, there was something really striking and exciting about getting some 3rd generation tape in the mail from goodness-knows-where back in the day before you could even dream of buying it. I think a lot of us fans remember that period really fondly, and we want to salute that spirit.”

ABOUT INTERMIXI: Intermixi Japan Tours was established to provide both the casual and intermediate traveler an alternative, pop culture-based look at the “Land of the Rising Sun.” While not ignoring the cultural history of Japan, Intermixi Japan Tours shows you the side that you will never see anywhere else. Intermixi Japan Tours’ current yearly schedule includes trips during the summer, fall, and winter season. Please contact us via our website at www.intermixi.com for special tour inquiries.

ABOUT TOKYOGETTER: Founded in July 2006 in Kumamoto City, Tokyogetter was originally a post-business school experiment for a group of language students. Now headed by journalist and researcher Evan Jones (Intermixi.com, False Prophet Campaign, Akibanana.com, Oriental Cinema Magazine, TV Tokyo, etc.), Tokyogetter simultaneously employs a small staff of associates in Japan and America who provide customers all over the world with extreme culture goods from the streets of Japan.

Intermixi and Tokyogetter contest announcement
URL: intermixi.com , tokyogetter.om
Posted: Weds., September 3, 2008
Cost to Read: Free

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Intermixi Japan Tours

www.intermixi.com
tours@intermixi.com
p: 310 237 - MIXI (6494)
f: 310 300 - 0633