Funimation Is Finally Redundant and Fall Season Update

Hello again! It feels like a long time since I’ve posted.

I was distracted from the end of September until mid-October getting ready for a convention where I was one of the official authors. I had to order promo cards and arrange for my books to be sent to the convention, etc.

Now I’m back... and just today I took care of some leftover business with my anime subscriptions... namely Funimation.

Last year I wrote about the Crunchyroll-Funimation merger and how clumsily Sony was handling the whole thing. It took so long for Funimation’s catalog of titles to be transferred over to Crunchyroll that after a while I literally forgot about it.

I’ve done this before. I paid for a subscription to the Anime Network (anyone remember them?) back when they were the only site that streamed Zettai Karen Children (Psychic Squad). I kept the subscription long after I bought the entire series on DVD until I finally remembered to cancel it.

So after my convention was over and I had the time to take care of some things, I recalled that I still had my paid Funimation subscription and decided to check whether every series I cared about had been transferred to Crunchyroll by now.

I actually hadn’t logged in to Crunchyroll in months. Remember, my mainstay anime Boruto is currently on a long hiatus. The most recent cour of Bleach ended last month, but Bleach is on Hulu now and not Crunchyroll.

For years, logging in to Crunchyroll was a daily thing for me. It felt odd to log in again after months away.

It was a task to compare the Funimation and Crunchyroll catalogs. (It had been even longer since I’d logged in to Funimation.) I looked at my watchlists on both sites and tried to remember if there were other anime series on Funimation that weren’t on my watchlist but that I’d wanted to watch.

I’d kept the Funimation subscription mainly for four series: 1) Dragon Ball; 2) Junjou Romantica; 3) Hetalia; and 4) Heaven Official’s Blessing.

Funimation had all of the Dragon Ball series, while Crunchyroll only had Dragon Ball Super. I was relieved to see that Crunchyroll now has all of the Dragon Ball titles.

After I’d cross-checked that Junjou Romantica, Hetalia, and Heaven Official’s Blessing were now on Crunchyroll as well, I suddenly remembered The Prince of Tennis, one of my old favorites.

The Prince of Tennis has always been on Funimation but not Crunchyroll - or at least not consistently on Crunchyroll. However, the good news is that the whole series is now available on Crunchyroll... for the moment anyway. I get that licenses can and do end, but it’s good to know that Crunchyroll has it for the time being.

So I canceled my Funimation subscription today. I will be saving a whole $5.99 a month (lol). Well, it starts to add up if you include my now-deceased Netflix DVD subscription which was $7.99 a month.

And speaking of Netflix DVD... I was hoping that Netflix would have some kind of offer for loyal DVD subscribers after Netflix DVD bit the dust, something like a special discount for Netflix streaming for example. And then in early October I received an email from them that offered three free months for streaming with ads and $6.99 a month thereafter, which I’d say is a good offer from them. I also have a whole 12 months to accept the offer, which is cool.

Now that I’ve logged back in to Crunchyroll and updated my watchlist to include all the titles ported over from Funimation as well as everything I wanted to watch in the current season, I feel plugged into the animesphere again. And I have a ton of stuff lined up to watch.

I have to wonder when the Funimation site will be shut down for good. I’m not sure what it has these days that Crunchyroll doesn’t have. I hope people who still have paid subscriptions there will do what I did and cross-check their watchlists with Crunchyroll. Honestly, there doesn’t appear to be any reason to pay for both anymore.

Revisiting Zettai Karen Children and The Unlimited

I’ve been rewatching some of my favorite anime series, a list which includes Zettai Karen Children and its remarkable spinoff series, The Unlimited.

I think we Western anime fans find everything Japanese is vibrant and wonderful at first, similar in some ways to American culture and yet so different—in all the right ways. The history, the Tokyo cityscape, the beautiful pastoral landscapes of Japan, samurai, ninja, mecha. The amazing foods, the weird and inexplicable traditions (like drinking coffee milk after bathing at the public baths – how does a tradition like that even get started?).

Then we start noticing the cultural differences that aren’t so, well—funny or colorful or benign. The things we’re shocked by, or really don’t understand, not only because we weren’t raised in Japan but also because our culture is not that way at all.

Zettai Karen Children (Absolutely Lovely Children) is a good case in point.

The series takes place in an alternative universe Earth where two groups exist: humans and espers.

Espers are human beings with various paranormal powers: telepathy, psychometry, enormous strength, etc. The governments of the world—and their citizens—are divided on how to treat espers, whose special powers many regular people find threatening and dangerous.

In many places, espers are treated as second-class citizens or worse, their civil liberties restricted or denied altogether. Espers are often forced to live on the margins of a society that hates and fears them.

Under the guise of “research,” some espers are captured and subjected to experiments, torture and brainwashing by government agencies or other groups seeking to use them as weapons against their enemies.

Against this backdrop, two organizations symbolize the conflict in this alternate Earth: Babel and Pandra.

B.A.B.E.L. (Base of Backing ESP Laboratory) is the Japanese governmental agency tasked with supporting research into espers and their abilities. Headed by Fujiko Tsubomi (more on her later), Babel sponsors three special esper children.

Shiho, the white-haired girl, is a psychometrist: she gathers information by touching objects. Aoi is a telepath who can transport herself and others to another location in an instant.

The main character is Kaoru, the redhaired girl. Kaoru has massive power in her small body, enough to destroy buildings and lift battleships at sea. The primary narrative driver in Zettai Karen Children is the battle between Babel and Pandra for the heart and mind of Kaoru, whose power has been foreseen in a premonition as being the deciding factor in a future war between humans and espers.

Babel employs the three girls called the Children (named so and spoken in English: “the Children”) for investigations and rescue missions, wherever their powers can be used for good purposes. Their supervisor, Koichi Minamoto, is a twenty year-old non-esper human who learns to his shock at the beginning of the series that not only will he supervise the Children at work, but that the three girls will also be living with him.

It’s an outlandish situation—and made even more so by how the creators handle it.

The three girls who make up the Children are ten years old, right at the age where they’re getting curious about sex and romance and all that adult stuff; and here they are, living with Minamoto, a handsome and accomplished research expert at Babel who now is tasked with cooking and cleaning and keeping house for the girls.

All three girls fall in love with Minamoto, but it’s Kaoru, the wildly aggressive tomboy of the three, that constantly goes over the top, flirting with Minamoto and trying to kiss him on the lips. To Minamoto’s credit, he’s a straight arrow on the subject, pulling Kaoru off of him (or he tries to – she has massive strength, remember) and telling her to knock it off; but the joke, such as it is, goes beyond one’s comfort level pretty quickly.

Kaoru is shown to be curious about women’s bodies, too. She grabs women’s breasts at Babel's headquarters, causing Shiho and Aoi to jest about her “ji-ji” tendencies (as if old men grabbing women’s body parts is just an accepted thing in society - yet another thing I’d rather not see as “normal”).

There are many other examples from Zettai Karen Children of what Western audiences would find objectionable and inappropriate, and they occur frequently throughout every episode.

I’m not saying children approaching puberty aren’t curious about sex: of course they are. There’s apparently just a clear-line difference between how Japanese culture handles that and how American culture would handle it, and I guess saying anything more about that would just be one culture judging another culture, and that’s, well - wrong.

I should explain who Pandra is, as they are the opposition force in Zettai Karen Children and the main characters in The Unlimited.

P.A.N.D.R.A. (I cannot find any translation of what the letters stand for...) is a criminal esper organization headed by Kyosuke Hyobu. He’s the world’s most powerful esper, who the premonition states will one day fall to second in power to an adult Kaoru.

He has the short, slender body of a preteen boy, with a bishonen’s face. Kyosuke is actually in his 80s, however. He uses his esper abilities to remain young-looking, with his white hair being the only sign of his real age.

Kyosuke was recruited into a secret esper squad during World War II when he was a boy. At the end of the war, his human commanding officer shot and killed him.

Or he tried to. Somehow Kyosuke survived being shot at point-blank range, and went on in his rage and bitterness to form Pandra, a group that rescues captive espers around the world, and commits crimes in the name of esper rights.

Kyosuke knows of the premonition, and that Kaoru might one day be known as the “Queen of Catastrophe,” the savior of the espers. He seeks to bring Kaoru over to Pandra’s side, frequently addressing her as “Queen,” which confuses her. (The Children don’t find out about the premonition until later in the series.) Sometimes he rescues Kaoru and the other two girls from danger; other times, he’s the instigator of schemes that endanger Minamoto who he particularly hates as the human he sees as the girls’ controller. With Kyosuke’s past, it’s understandable that he hates humans controlling espers in any way.

In fact, a lot of what Pandra does is understandable. Espers are a despised, feared minority with few defenders, and Pandra rescues espers, including orphaned esper children, giving them a place where they’re loved and valued.

It’s easy to want to see Babel as the “good” organization and Pandra as the “bad” one, but fortunately this story universe is more nuanced. When Kyosuke taunts Minamoto about how Babel exploits the Children, and whatever Babel does against esper interests will one day backfire when Kaoru makes her choice who to stand with - the conflict and stakes couldn’t be more clear.

The Unlimited (full Japanese title: Courtesy of Zettai Karen Children – The Unlimited – Hyobu Kyosuke) does a complete tone shift from its parent series. Where Zettai Karen Children is a comedy—sometimes wildly over-the-top and frequently a sex farce to boot—The Unlimited is a drama, a dark, sophisticated take on the same characters and universe, with better visuals, fantastic music and a great set-up for conflict between Kyosuke and Andy Hinomiya, a half-Japanese, half-American esper.

(Incidentally, Zettai Karen Children’s English title is Psychic Squad; The Unlimited's is Psychic Squad: The Unlimited. Sentai Filmworks distributes the DVDs in the U.S.)

The Unlimited is set some time after the end of Zettai Karen Children. Kyosuke plots to get himself arrested and taken to a special island prison for espers where one of his people, Yuugiri, a young esper girl with extraordinary powers, has been taken captive.

He breaks Yuugiri out, frees the esper prisoners and escapes the island, but not before taking with him Andy Hinomiya, an esper with an unusual ability. His power is that he can neutralize or even nullify esper attacks, making him the ultimate defensive weapon for Pandra.

The end of the first episode brings a twist: it’s revealed that Andy Hinomiya is actually a spy for a secret U.S. organization, with a mission to infiltrate Pandra.

The Unlimited is only 12 episodes long, but maintains a taut narrative tension until the very end, even given that two full episodes in the middle are a flashback to World War II, telling the origin story of Kyosuke Hyobu.

At the beginning of the war, Kyosuke was adopted into the Tsubomi family, and the teenaged Fujiko became his older sister. Both are powerful espers even at their young ages, and they’re recruited into a special esper squad headed by Eiji Saotome, a human who values them, the young Kyosuke in particular, for who they are. Kyosuke, used to being hated for being an esper, places his trust in Saotome.

When it becomes clear that Japan is about to lose the war, Saotome tells thirteen year-old Kyosuke that he has to kill him to prevent him and his great powers from falling into the enemy’s hands. As he shoots Kyosuke, he calls him a monster, thus revealing that he actually hated espers all along.

Fujiko is wounded but escapes. Later, she collaborates with the very humans who ordered the special esper squad to be killed, in order to form Babel.

In Zettai Karen Children, Fujiko is almost a joke character, using her sex appeal to manipulate—or try to manipulate—others, and generally being obnoxious. Like Kyosuke, though she’s now in her 90s, she uses her esper powers to appear youthful with her white hair being the only giveaway as to her true age.

Thus we have the sister who founded Babel and the brother who founded Pandra. Though their respective positions have them at each other’s throats in Zettai Karen Children, their relationship is more nuanced in The Unlimited. At one point, Fujiko tells Andy Hinomiya that she turned her back on the idea of avenging Kyosuke and the others in the WWII esper squad in order to achieve the greater good of starting Babel. The regret in her voice makes it clear she understands that Kyosuke saw this as betraying him, and that’s why he can’t forgive her even all these years later.

The Unlimited was produced four years after Zettai Karen Children, but the look of it is completely different. It’s like the production committee had more money and twice the time to do the animation, and the effect is awesome. The character and production designs are gorgeous, and make what is already a great story into a great anime viewing experience.

I could go on and on about The Unlimited, but I’ll finish with this. You know how some anime series end on a flat note? The final episode is sort of a letdown? Well, get ready and fasten your seat belts, because The Unlimited has a killer last episode, one that hits all the right notes in terms of action scenes and emotional payoffs. The climactic scene takes place on a rooftop between Kyosuke and Andy, and it’s unforgettable. When the end credits roll, the only thought in your mind will be: now that’s how you end an anime series.

If my list of completed anime series I’ve watched is accurate, I’ve seen 131 series. I’d easily put The Unlimited in the top 15 of that list. You don’t have to watch Zettai Karen Children first in order to understand The Unlimited: I didn’t. I saw The Unlimited first, and then took out a paid subscription to the Anime Network for a few months to marathon Zettai Karen Children. (I later bought the DVDs for both series.)

And Zettai Karen Children, despite my earlier criticism of it, is really worth watching too. If you can accept and/or look past its wildly inappropriate moments, it’s a fun and entertaining series. It’s fast paced and there’s an irrepressible verve and energy to it.

The world of espers and humans in Zettai Karen Children and The Unlimited is a fascinating one, and I think both series are overlooked by Western fans. So consider giving either or both series a try. I think you’ll be glad you did. :-)

Supporting the Industry - What I Did in March 2015

Spring came early for me, in the form of a favorite series arriving on my doorstep.

The Unlimited’s release date was supposed to be in April, but I got an email from Right Stuf in March saying my Unlimited DVDs were already on their way. Yes!

I can’t say enough about how much I love The Unlimited, but this review of it comes close. A thriller featuring a powerful “esper” or paranormal powers user, and a reluctant esper sent to join his group to secretly spy on him - The Unlimited had everything. A fascinating world of espers, and the rest of us, known as “normals.” Espers having their civil rights taken away and experimented on in secret government labs. A nearly-invincible antihero, Kyosuke Hyobu (Koji Yusa), and the embittered spy Andy Hinomiya (Junichi Suwabe). A great build-up of suspense to the climax and an unforgettable final episode.

Silently supporting The Unlimited was the fascinating universe it sprung from: Zettai Karen Children, or Psychic Squad as it’s known in the U.S. Set in an alternative future where espers are feared and hated, three young girls whose esper abilities are off the charts are code-named “The Children.” Throughout the original series, the girls are torn between their stalwart, on the side of the angels supervisor Minamoto, and the devil on their other shoulder, Kyosuke Hyobu, who wants to start an esper revolution and kill all the normals.

Pictured above are the DVDs from The Unlimited and K.

Why have I put these two together in the same picture?

Ever since I began buying anime DVD box sets a few years ago, with the conscious aim of supporting the industry as I talk about in these posts, I’ve noticed there’s not only a pride of ownership that comes with some of these purchases but almost a fetishistic thrill.

I’ve loved many anime series since I became an anime fan ten years ago. Mirage of Blaze, Naruto, Gundam 00, Hakuouki - too many to list. But some series just hit me a certain way, where – I can’t really articulate it, but – once the DVDs become available I must buy them. I have to own the series.

The Unlimited is that way for me. K is that way for me. It wasn’t enough for me to watch them streaming. I had to own them.

I own a lot of box sets now, including Mirage of Blaze, Gundam 00 and Hakuouki. But while it satisfies me to own those series, it totally jazzes me that I now have The Unlimited and K in my house.

Am I making sense? Probably not.

Unless you’re a true anime fan. In which case – I had you at “fetishistic thrill.” =)

Supporting the Industry - What I Did in February 2015

February was a quiet month for supporting the industry.

Volume 2 of Zettai Karen Children (North American title: Psychic Squad), the volume that was out of stock when I ordered the box set from Right Stuf, finally arrived and my account was duly charged for it.

And as I reviewed in my most recent post directly below this one - I saw Naruto - The Last Movie at a local theater with a crowd of happy Naruto fans.

I did want to discuss another way I supported the industry in February that people often don't remember is really supporting the industry in the most direct way possible, since Japanese anime producers are the ones backing Daisuki.  Since Kuroko's Basketball's third season began streaming in January, I've been watching it at Daisuki.net.

Kuroko's Basketball this season is being streamed first at Daisuki, and then Crunchyroll gets the episodes on a two-week delay.

I think I read somewhere that the anime producers consortium behind Daisuki is doing this to test the U.S. market. They want to see first-hand how many of us will watch streaming anime at Daisuki, using a very popular series.

First of all, if that's the reason - I'm all for it. I watch the new Kuroko's Basketball episode at Daisuki every Saturday as soon as I can, and generally rewatch the episode at least a few times during the week while waiting for the new episode the next Saturday. I rewatch it because I want to see it, not to give Daisuki more proof of how we're all supporting the industry over here, but that's obviously a side benefit. And besides - the new episodes are available only at Daisuki for the first two weeks, so I can only watch them there. XD

Initially, the subs bothered me at Daisuki. They seemed hastily assembled and not as good or accurate as Crunchyroll's subs. But when the episodes finally ran on Crunchyroll, I realized the Daisuki subs actually weren't that bad. In fact, sometimes they were better.

A case in point: Hayakawa of Kaijo's basketball team.

Yeah, intense kind of guy. XD He's the comic relief character at Kaijo with a loud, squawking excitable voice. He speaks fast and with... an accent? ... or maybe he just enunciates really poorly? but at Daisuki his dialogue is usually translated something like this.

"(Come) on, Ki(se), (you) can (do) it, we(re) all (be)hind (y)ou!!!"

The running joke is that no one on his team can understand him. But at Crunchyroll, they're just translating his lines at face value, in other words, "Come on, Kise, you can do it, we're all behind you!"

Crunchyroll's subs are usually excellent, but I've noticed other examples of Daisuki's subs being more complete as well as more nuanced, i.e. giving the full meaning of the sentence and using slang or colloquialisms when necessary to get the flavor of the character's line across.

Daisuki's interface leaves much to be desired. They're featuring Gundam: The Origin right now on their landing page, and if you don't click quickly enough on the "Anime" button on the left-hand column to get to Kuroko at their list of other anime series, Gundam: The Origin will start playing. There are ads, which is fine and I watch them, but do they have to play at 200% the volume of the anime episode?

It's an odd set-up, having the episodes debut at Daisuki and then air at Crunchyroll two weeks later. I find myself watching the "new" episode each week at Crunchyroll to support Crunchyroll even though I already support them since I'm a paid subscriber. (So actually, I guess I'm watching to support Kuroko's Basketball then ;-) They do count the views each episode gets.) It's like parallel universes of Kuroko episodes with slightly different translations.

If you've never watched any series at Daisuki before, you might want to give the site a try. Their interface is actually better than it used to be, plus they have many more series available than they did when they first started out. When you watch anime at Daisuki, the Japanese anime industry is watching you (in a good way, I mean). Every view tells them the North American audience counts, and is behind what they do. And it's free.

Supporting the Industry - What I Did in December 2014

Here's the Supporting the Industry post for December, even though it's nearly February. I meant to do this before now but the other posts for January got in the way.

I spent quite a bit of money supporting anime and manga in December. Starting with the small stuff...

I really like anime playing cards. I have them from Hikaru no Go and Gundam 00 and I'm always on the lookout for cards from my favorite series. I was in Anime Jungle and saw these KnB cards and had to get them.

While there, I also spotted this thermal drink tumbler from K. Merch from K is always high on my list. This tumbler shows the Blue King of Sceptre 4.

Yeah, that's a Bleach poster on the wall behind the tumbler. XD

I made two other purchases and one pre-purchase in December. The big purchase was a manga box set.

First, a bit of history. I loved Bakuman and watched the first season and part of the second season before I pledged to support the industry and not watch fansubs anymore. If you view my anime list at MyAnimeList you'll see that among my "Dropped" titles is Bakuman, which I rated a 10 out of 10.

Who drops a show they consider among the best? I didn't want to, but it was a fansub and I had to.

I bought the first DVD of Bakuman when it came out. The second DVD has been held up in the U.S. by licensing issues. And Viz, who owns the rights in North America, has never shown Bakuman on its streaming site. Thus, I left Bakuman's story at around the one-third mark and never returned to it.

Until now.

The box set lid has Mashiro and Takagi making goony faces, yelling "WHOA?! BOX SET!"

The cover art for volume 7 is one of my favorite illustrations ever. It shows the boys in the thick of the creative process, the detritus of a famiresu diner meal strewn across the table, in the grip of the story they're trying to write and draw.

Okay, here's a better picture of it.

I bought the Bakuman manga box set, all 20 volumes, the complete story. It's the biggest manga purchase I've ever made at one time. Though yes, I would've preferred to watch the rest of the anime, at least now I can read the manga and find out what happens with Mashiro and Takagi and their creative careers. I'm very happy to have made this purchase.

I also bought the complete DVD box set of Zettai Karen Children, or Psychic Squad as it's known in the U.S. I had assumed that it was out of print here, but I was basing that on going to Amazon and finding a hodgepodge of Psychic Squad DVDs, some of which looked decidedly gray market.

Then I went to Right Stuf and was surprised to find new licensed DVDs and at a very inexpensive price.

There are four DVDs. Yes, one is missing - Right Stuf was out of stock for volume 2, so I have to wait for it. :/

But actually, I can already watch those episodes again if I want to. I've mentioned before that I'm a paid subscriber to The Anime Network and that I subscribed some years ago solely to watch Zettai Karen Children. The fact that I will now own the series on DVD means I have no reason to keep paying for this subscription. I need to look at what other series The Anime Network offers that I can't watch legally anywhere else to see if subscribing still makes sense.

And finally - I pre-ordered the sequel to Zettai Karen Children. It's one of my favorite anime series in recent years.

It's a series that goes by different names: The Unlimited, Hyobu Kyosuke: The Unlimited and the longest title - Courtesy of Zettai Karen Children - Hyobu Kyosuke: The Unlimited. But since Zettai Karen Children is known here as Psychic Squad, unfortunately Sentai decided its North American name should be...

The series doesn't deserve this horrid clunky name, Unlimited Psychic Squad, but take my word for it - it's one of the best series I've seen in the past few years. It ships in April.

So I did quite a bit of supporting in December. XD

News Roundup - The Unlimited, Kuroko's Basketball and a Crunchyroll Controversy

It's nearly all great news right now for anime. The four-episode OVA series of Shungiku Nakamura's Hybrid Child continues to be released episode by episode, with the third episode set to be released on December 24.



The final episode is due for release on January 28, 2015.

And I just read some thrilling news today at ANN:

I never thought it would happen - since it's the sequel to Zettai Karen Children which has been out of print/production in the U.S. for years - but my favorite series from 2013, The Unlimited - Hyobu Kyosuke, is being released on DVD by Sentai Filmworks!

The Unlimited is the spinoff that took the villain Kyosuke Hyobu from Zettai Karen Children and continued the ZKC story past where the anime ended (though apparently skipping the manga chapters that should have made for ZKC's next anime season). Sentai has my money for this as soon as it's available for sale. Sometimes the series you don't think will ever be licensed in the U.S. - somehow do get licensed. =D

According to a Charapedia poll, Kuroko's Basketball's upcoming third season is the most anticipated anime of the 2015 winter season. I'm in full agreement with this, of course. XD The first two seasons are at Crunchyroll, so I'm assuming Crunchyroll will acquire the streaming rights to the third season too.

And speaking of Crunchyroll... Recently there was a controversy at the site. In the past few years, Crunchyroll ran what they called their "Black Friday" special on the day after Thanksgiving. You could get an All-Access Membership at Crunchyroll for one year at a discounted price (I think last year it was $69.95).

The All-Access Membership includes access to all simulcast episodes and old cataloged episodes of all the anime series at the site, as well as to the latest translated chapters of popular manga series like Attack on Titan and simulcasts of Japanese and Korean drama series. I purchased the Black Friday special last year and I think the year before that as well.

This year, Crunchyroll announced a day or two before Thanksgiving that the Black Friday special wouldn't be offered again. A huge howl of outrage that went on for pages and pages and pages erupted in the comments section for the announcement (the announcement and all the comments have since been taken down). Basically, fans were incensed that the special wasn't being offered again as they'd come to expect it, and many had their annual memberships due for renewal at that time since they'd always renewed by buying the special. In other words, they felt left high and dry with their memberships expiring and the All-Access Membership only being offered at the regular price of $99.95 instead of the lower price of $69.95 they were expecting.

A lot of anime fans, after all, are young people - teenagers and people in their 20s with not a lot of disposable income, and many had saved for the Black Friday special. At the very least, Crunchyroll failed in not letting people know sooner that the Black Friday special wouldn't be offered again this year. If they'd announced it in early November and given people time to get used to the idea, they wouldn't have gotten half the flak that they did.

My own All-Access subscription was set to expire in early December, so I was faced with the same issue as everyone else. I thought about how I'd barely read any of the manga and hardly watched any of the drama series, and decided just to renew the anime subscription. This subscription gives me access to all anime simulcasts (for example, the latest Naruto Shippuuden episodes one hour after they air in Japan), the entire anime catalog and limited access to certain manga and drama series on the site.

If you've been reading this blog, you know I'm a loyal supporter of Crunchyroll. Crunchyroll is the reason I can watch anime guilt-free, knowing I'm watching licensed anime and helping to support the creators in Japan. The site gets practically every anime series I want to watch each season. They've already announced that they acquired the rights to stream Durarara's second season starting in January. And I have no doubt they'll get Kuroko's Basketball's third season as well.

So yeah, Crunchyroll screwed up on the Black Friday thing. I'm sure they lost money from people getting disgusted and cancelling/not renewing their memberships. They lost $40 from me alone, since I chose not to renew at the full All-Access price ($99.95), opting instead to just renew the anime subscription ($59.95).

Hopefully they'll learn something from this. The fans have been loyal to Crunchyroll and were disappointed when they felt their loyalty wasn't reciprocated. Fans can put up with a lot, but they should never be taken for granted.

Supporting the Industry - What I Did in July 2014

July was a hodge podge of things for supporting the industry. I bought the above Zettai Karen Children art book at a local Japanese bookstore. Along with paying my usual $6.95 to the Zettai Karen Children Network, a.k.a. the Anime Network, of course. =D

I also attended Anime Expo and incurred the expenses associated with going to a convention. In addition, I bought a few items in the Exhibit Hall and Artist's Alley.

I found a dealer that sold some nice licensed Kuroko no Basuke merchandise, like the fan above, and clear files from Hozuki no Reitetsu and Bakuman.

In the Artist's Alley, I came across a young teenage artist who did chibis of Naruto characters. Her No. 1 fan, a.k.a. her dad, sat next to her in the booth and beamed at me as I spoke with his daughter.

I had to buy her Sasuke chibi. Later on, I saw another young girl in cosplay followed by her smiling dad, who carried all her packages for her like a royal retainer. XD It's great to see parents who support their kids in their interests.

In July, I also attended the theatrical premiere of K - Missing Kings.

And finally, one of my most anticipated anime DVD purchases arrived in the mail.

Yeah. Here's a better picture.

I've discussed Mononoke before, but sometimes pictures speak louder than words. The art in Mononoke is so amazing that it creates another universe for your mind. Here are some images.

I am thrilled to own Mononoke on DVD. I definitely feel a Mononoke marathon coming on in the very near future. =D