YATTERMAN hit the big screen tonight in New York City, and hundreds of fans waited hours in below freezing weather for a world premiere seat. Ningin ningens Hoc Poeng, Mia Lerda, Jessica Dawson, Lara Visconti, Eddie Lebron, Samuel Javier, Amy Chang and myself braved the cold to see director Takashi Miike (三池 崇史) and actor-singer Sakurai Sho (櫻井 翔) live and in person - certainly a rare event! (Wow, we had a full Ningin team there!) But the coolest part of the night was the chance to meet our YATTERMAN contest winners in person! More »

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Hope you guys have already made plans for V-day, because it’s just around the corner!

And after that comes March which meaning Apop overload! It seems that a handful of Apop artists are releasing their new albums in March (Utada, BoA, Epik High and Se7en). For whatever reason they may all be releasing their albums in the same month, I’m looking forward to each and every one of them!

As always, enjoi! More »

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Gotcha! Usher and Arashi are not actually working together at the moment; for now, any collaboration with an American artist is unknown.  See, fans in the U.S. know not to hold their breath in hopes that one day they will be blessed with a real live concert appearance from a Johnny’s & Associates boy band.  So, those of us non-Asia based fans take to the Internet in search of anything Arashi, News, Smap, or KatTun. I know I missed naming most of the bands, but with so many Johnny’s groups and duos, it is hard to list them all. While these cutie pie musical icons are loved from afar, some of the creative fans take time to make diverse fanart. Check out this Arashi animated gif. Isn’t it adorable? This is one of the many ways these dedicated devotees share their love, like making avatars, email signatures, and music videos. Fan videos are all over the net and ones like this feature a series of clips of the Japanese idols set to the song “Yeah” by Usher. More »

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Many of the new 2009 anime have started airing already, and while there are a few standouts, like the two mentioned in the previous post and the two in this post, the selection has been rather docile. Most notably is that the highlight series of this winter season seem to be carryovers from the previous season, with shows like CLANNAD After Story (no shortage of OMG! moments), Toradora!, Gundam 00 S2, and sequel seasons like Minami-ke Okaeri, Druaga The Sword of URUK, Hajime no Ippo (superb) and Maria-sama ga Miteru (<3). More »

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Along with five other films, Antique will be screened at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival. The film is based on a manga series, Antique Bakery by Yoshinaga Fumi. The story’s basic premise is about four men whose lives are all connected by this bakery. Apparently, there are some shounen-ai undertones in the original manga, and judging by the film’s trailer, it seems to have it, too. More »

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Six styling crews are raring to go in this 4th episode of Randy Jackson’s America’s Best Dance Crew. The movements needed for this week’s competition are based on what is called the Whack Track challenge. The teams will have to rock old school dance crazes in a modern way. Only four of the crews will be safe and move on to next weeks show. More »

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Well, well, well… we’ve already hit the midpoint of season 3 of ABDC. I can’t speak for all of you, but I sure can’t believe we’re nearing the end. While many crews are stepping it up in ways I wouldn’t have expected, I think it’s safe to say that pretty much everyone is predicting that Beat Freaks and Quest Crew will go head to head in the final battle. We pretty much know everyone can dance, but when it comes to the best of the best, we’re looking for entertainment value, creativity and stage presence, which is definitely what we saw tonight in the Whack Track Challenge. More »

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I am one of those travel whores who can’t sit still in one place for too long. So when I was in Malaysia celebrating Chinese New Year with my folks, I took the opportunity to visit my friend Emily in Bali for a few days. Emily was living in New York City until recently, when she decided to become a full-fledged surfer chick in Bali. More »

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I’ve always had fun drawing my own anime characters - problem is, I suck at drawing and as I’ve mentioned in previous Anime Moe Modes posts, there’s so much detail that goes into these characters that one misplaced line can throw off the whole image. Looks like the otaku gods have heard my plea - the “Anime Girls Generator” program isn’t the first of its kind, but it’s definitely the easiest to use and has a wide enough variety of eyes, faces, hair, clothes, and accessories to really make some unique characters. Hey, little boys are told not to play with Barbie dolls, so I’ll play dress-up my own special way. More »

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So you’ve probably heard by now. Utada sat down with Ningin ningens David, Hoc and Megu for a casual interview 27 floors up on the West side of Manhattan. Her upcoming English language album, This Is The One, is set for a March debut and will be released in America and Japan. The second of two parts, Utada talked about how she “ought to” plan a tour, video games, and being thankful for every moment. More »

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We had an incredible number of entries for the world premiere of YATTERMAN (ヤッターマン) with director Takashi Miike and actor and Arashi-singer Sho Sakurai! So what did we do about it? We got more tickets!

That’s right. Instead of five pairs of tickets, we’re giving out ten pairs of tickets. TEN. More »

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ESL doesn’t come easy to everyone, and those who are not very skilled in English are considered slow minded, for lack of a better term. Due to most native speakers having no experience with learning a new language, they see broken English as an unattractive quality. Misunderstanding this difficulty leaves some unappreciative to those who earnestly make attempts at a new dialect. Plus, it is not rare to see the accepted practice of comedians poking fun at others who have thick accents. Now not all humor is not mean-spirited. Take for example these YouTube videos of Aiba Masaki from the ultimate boy-band Arashi. His attempts at communicating in English are filmed for the world to witness. More »

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A preview track of BoA’s “I Did It For Love” leaked this week. It’s not bad at all. Not quite as catchy as “Eat You Up,” but not bad. Sources say it was produced by Sean Garrett, the man behind hits including Usher’s “Yeah” and Ciara’s “Goodies.” Whoever the producer may be, they used the almost ubiquitous auto-tune effect to erase any accent slip-ups. If T-Pain can do it, so can BoA. No word on the fate of this track, but it sounds worthy of being a single to me. Enjoy: More »

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Well, Andrew blogged about his experience with Asiana Airlines. Well, Air Transport World must have read his entry because they voted Asiana Airlines as 2008 Airline of the Year.

I’ve never flown with them, but if Andrew and ATW says it’s good, then I’ll take their words for it!

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Oh Miley, has not the almighty Mouse disciplined you enough for your half-naked Vanity Fair pictures? Have you learned nothing from the backlash received from last year’s quote unquote racy-for-a-16-year-old MySpace pictures? The third strike surfaced this week and features the widely adored and highly paid Disney actress/singer squinting her eyes with a group of friends mocking people of Asian descent. Also in the picture is a Cyrus friend who is of the naturally-not-squinting variety. More »

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Another Haruhi second season announcement? After the original series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya finished airing in July 2006, an announcement for the second season was made in Newtype Magazine’s August 2007 edition, and another set of images came from Newtype’s July 2008 edition. Will someone release the actual anime already?? More »

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While David was chatting away with Utada, I was sitting on the couch with Utada’s father and manager, Teruzane Utada. Oh man, is he a cool guy! It’s too bad I can’t share some of the stories he told me about Utada. Perhaps one day I can…

Thanks to Mr. Utada, we have the following autographed photo of Utada which we’ll be giving away to a lucky fan. All you have to do is send a private message to “utada_contest” with the message, “I Heart Utada” and that’s it! More »

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Utada was back in New York City this past week and somehow found the time to meet with Ningin ningens David, Hoc and Megu. No Ningin camera crew this time. Just a casual interview 27 floors up on the West side of Manhattan with Utada and her father. Utada was lounging out like it was a lazy Sunday with just a T-shirt, jeans and an ear flapped knit cap - except it was Monday. Her upcoming English language album, This Is The One, is set for a March debut and will be released in America and Japan. In this first of two parts, Utada talked about record label politics and writing her new album. More »

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Perhaps M. Night Shyamalan is listening to your cries for ethnic diversity in the Avatar: The Last Airbender cast. Variety and MTV.com are reporting that Dev Patel, 18 year old Slumdog Millionaire star, has been casted as Zuko. Allegedly, singer (and not-so-guilty-pleasure of mine) Jesse McCartney had to back out of the Zuko role due to tour scheduling conflicts. It’s a great casting move—Patel is in high demand due to the success of Slumdog Millionaire, and who knows, maybe his black belt skills will cut costs for Shyamlan’s mandatory martial arts bootcamp for the Avatar cast, but it won’t silence protesters pushing for ethnic diversity in the movie. Regardless, I’m behind Patel. He’s come quite a ways since his days as ‘All-I-Wanna-Do-Is-Get-Laid’ Anwar on the UK teen drama Skins: More »

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Yes, indeed, it was I who predicted the collapse of the American economy. Surely, no one else could have possibly posited that we were all headed down a shaky path, right? Experts, journalists, academics and other pundits—morons, essentially—have long since hypothesized that the U.S. economy had been dancing along the wrong trajectory, but they were only guessing, you see… More »

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