One shots are short stories, usually around 30 to 50 pages long. Many series usually begin as a one shot but they’re meant to tell an entire story within a single chapter. These are some one shots worth reading. More »

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To prevent me from getting too jealous of Hoc getting to interview and see Boom Boom Satellites (BBS) live, kind reader May Young, has submitted live BBS performance videos from last week’s show at the Santos Party House. The quality of the videos is great, perfect for an instant rock party in your room. More »

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From Girlybubble: I knew nothing good would’ve ever come out of a Paris Hilton endorsement of Hello Kitty. To me it was trouble from the beginning. Now that Hello Kitty’s recently turned 35, I feel as if she’s quickly approaching some sort of almost-mid-life crisis. For starters, she was recently snapped up by papz with an exposed heart-shaped nipple. Let’s not even start with the Hello Kitty nipple tassles. What’s next Hello Kitty, rehab? A sex tape? More »

The Tuesday night before Thanksgiving I attended a Boom Boom Satellites (BBS) concert in New York City. I had no idea who they were before the concert but quickly grew in love with their music. 12 hours later, they were in the Ningin office lounge hanging out with the Ningin NYC staff. It was kind of surreal because it’s not every day we have rock stars just kickin’ it in our office and at the time I’ve yet to fully recover from the wild night of partying. It was a great experience and I was able to learn a lot about them through a somewhat informal interview. Again BBS is a two-person band, Michiyuki (right) is the vocalist and guitarist and Masayuki (left) is on bass. Mimi, their manager helped answer a few questions as well. Enjoy! More »

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Let me start with a funny story. I spent my Thanksgiving watching Ninja Assassin with my Korean cousins. We went in, and the theater was filled with Asians, mostly Koreans. My cousin, trying to be funny, yelled out,”Raise your hand if you are Korean.” Many of them should have raised their hand, but they didn’t. More »

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The 1998 animated feature of Mulan from Disney displayed the cheerful and witty side of the female heroine. However there is more depth to the character than what is shown through this animation. Director Jingle Ma wants to explore the human nature of Mulan in his new film and focus on her vulnerabilities and relationships. More »

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From Rekuru:

When it comes down to it, a title can make or break an anime. You may not think so at first but when trying to find a new anime to watch amidst a sea of titles, an interesting sounding title can be more than enough reason to check it out. Of course, a bad title can do quite the opposite. Imagine how well recieved Cowboy Bebop would have been had it been called Super Happy Bounty Hunter Time! So with that in mind, I present five anime who’s titles can only be described as ill-conceived. More »

What a week here on Ningin! It started with the Ninja Thanksgiving Special that we did with those ninja-holics on Wirebot and Rekuru. I had no idea we were gonna crank out so many ninja related posts — it was ninja-epic. Make sure to check all of it out if you haven’t! On Tuesday, I got to see Boom Boom Satellites in concert and it was awesome to say the least! On Wednesday, Ninja Assassin came out in theaters and Boom Boom Satellites came down to the Ningin office to hang out with us. It’s not everyday we have rock stars in our office, but it does seem to be more common now. The interview with BBS is schedule for tomorrow so be sure to check that out. We also got a few autographed stuff from them, so look out for that too. Then of course you have the Thanksgiving weekend where I ate till I passed out and had lots of catch-up sleep. What did you guys do for the holiday weekend? More »

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From Rekuru:

A theme I’m irresistibly drawn to is the contrast between the tedium of everyday life and the richness of the imagination. The Japanese term for “everday life” is nichijou, and it crops up fairly often in anime and manga taking place in the limitless suburbs surrounding big cities like Tokyo. A perfect vehicle of this theme is Studio Ghibli’s Mimi wo Sumaseba (lit. “If You Listen Closely”), and of their films it is, in spite of the greatness of Totoro, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, my favorite. More »

It’s nice to see Sunrise working on turning a Gundam novel into anime. Their more recent series (Gundam 00, Seed, Destiny) just didn’t feel right to me. Hopefully this encourages more Universal Century stuff (the original gundam timeline) to get animated. It feels bad missing out on a huge chunk of the story just because I can’t read the novels/manga like Crossbone Gundam and Hathaway’s Flash. More »

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Gackt has been busy contemplating what to do for his fans and for Christmas. How will he solve this problem? By spending time with his fans on Christmas, of course! More »

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From Rekuru:

One thing that can be said about the pillows is, they take themselves seriously. Avoiding two genres into which Japanese music often breaks down–bubblegum power-pop on the one hand, hyper-macho posturing on the other–the pillows have been crafting quality rock records since 1991. Which is not to say they don’t have a sense of humor, but no one could dismiss them as a novelty act; they remind me of one of my favorite Western bands, Oasis, and indeed, I always think the bridge of One Life is about to break into Don’t Look Back in Anger. More »

I came upon some videos of some random Cpop (Chinese pop) artists dancing to Kpop songs. No offense to Cpop fans, but I never knew that there was Chinese pop. I always made fun of my friend who teases that I listen to a lot of Korean music, that China doesn’t even have their own Cpop like Kpop. I guess I can’t use that excuse anymore. More »

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Policemen in Nagoya, Japan have found a way to catch purse snatchers without involving innocent bystanders: by cross dressing as women. More »

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From Rekuru:

This isn’t the place to discuss being a foreigner in Japan: a quick search will turn up a million blogs (possibly even my own) started up by foreign exchange students, drifters and playboys who discovered to their amazement that (gasp!) the experience is pretty strange. I’m more interested in how Japanese view foreigners, and–supporting my thesis that it is a great way to learn about Japan–anime provides some striking examples. More »

Well my fellow Ninginites, I hope everyone had a great Ninja Thanksgiving. It seems like a handful of us had even more reason to be ninja-thankful this week with the results of the Ninja Assassin pin game. In true ninja-fashion, it was another movie that stealthily surprised us with its Rottentomatoes score. More »

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I was able to watch an episode of the Halo animation. I don’t have an Xbox but someone on Youtube uploaded the episode “The Babysitter” done by Studio 4C. More »

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From Rekuru:

Disclaimer: I had hoped to do a write-up for this restaurant but due to time (and especially budgetary constraints) that was not to be. Despite that, I’ve decided to go ahead with the article to give everyone a head’s up on an interesting restaurant to check out if you’re ever in the NYC area. More »

From Girlybubble: A recent trip to Youtube suggests that someone has actually taken what I try to explain often here, and turned it into a Youtube tutorial, called How To Be Kawaii. If you’ve just caught on, “kawaii” (ka-why-ee) is basically the Japanese word for cute. My first reaction in watching this is, can you really teach a person how to be cute? More »

The Korean media just won’t stop. Leave poor Jaebum alone! After another invasion from the Korean media, tvN went over to Seattle hoping to look for Jaebum and find out about his condition. From the videos, they show and mention something like,” He was one of the most popular Korean stars, and now he is fixing tires.” This change is so emotional. One day you are star in your country, and then the next day, you are fixing tires. I wouldn’t blame Jaebum for being so emotional. More »

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