As Americans have Thanksgiving, Koreans have Chuseok. Every year on Chuseok, Korean families visit their hometowns and have a large feast with their families in this three-day holiday. But this year in NYC, we got our own experience of Chuseok although it wasn’t exactly traditional. This year at the Chuseok Festival in NYC, we got to see amazing performances from the talents from JYP Entertainment.

Upon arriving from the train station, we came across a park. We decided the logical thing was to follow the Koreans even though some of them didn’t know where they were going either. After walking for several minutes we decided that pathways were for squares and just walked on the grass. The whole time walking, we ranted and raved about the performance we were so excited to see. We found the festival in the up diagonal-ish direction in the park. After our experience with arrows, we decided that arrows are deceiving and evil.
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Tags: chuseok, david hou, fan girls, festival, flushing, gsoul, hoc poeng, interview, Jessica Dawson, jlim, jyp, korea, lan nguyen, Lara Visconti, mia lerda, min, new york, ningin, wondergirls

Which anime series would make the best MMO universe based on story, characters, and abilities?

Mia Lerda of Ningin.com

Okay the secret is out, Mia is not up to date on the latest MMO/RPG type games. Yet, like everyone else in the this loving world I too have dabbled in some RPG VG’s. Mostly my interest favors the genre of horror survival games. You know, games like Fatal Frame and Resident Evil. This pretty much tops of my limited VG knowledge because the truth is I really am a backseat player! No really I am… I rather watch or be the sideman to someones strategic moves. Oh I have had my share of live xbox adventures, which I will tell you about later on, but personally I rather just be in the audience.

So, when I was asked the question which Anime would make the best MMO I thought to myself, do I have enough knowledge about MMO? Surely… I watch enough Anime to know the ones I would want to be apart of, so there is where my decision would lay. So I thought…hmmmm Slayers Maybe? Macross? HackSign? Hellsing? Inuyasha? or Pokemon?
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Tags: abilites, anime, characters, discussion, games, kibouhou, lan nguyen, louis ponder, manga, mia lerda, mmo, ningin, otakuden, otakuinternational, owari, round table, simonmbc, story, universe, xorsyst

Which anime series would make the best MMO universe based on story, characters, and abilities?

Duke Hong (KibouHou) of Ningin.com

Which anime would make the best MMORPG? It’s a fun question. I would love to see my favorite animes made into MMOs, although some lack the potential (A “Lovely Complex” MMO would be a bit difficult to design). After giving it some thought, one anime seemed to have everything an MMO needs. Soul Eater was first aired in April, it’s a recent anime best known here as “that anime which T.M Revolution did the opening for”. The story revolves around Maka and Soul, both students at the “Shinigami Weapon Meister Vocational School (Shinigami Buki Shokunin Senmon Gakko) or better known as Shibusen. There are two types of students at these schools, meisters and weapons. Weapons are well…weapons. They are students that can transform into weapons (literally). Then there are meisters, students who wield weapons. The MMO could place a player in the shoes of either a weapon or meister. Between both weapon and meister, you would have tons of customization options. While playing the game, you would do what any ordinary Shibusen student would do: collect souls and hunt witches.
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Tags: abilites, anime, characters, discussion, games, kibouhou, lan nguyen, louis ponder, manga, mia lerda, mmo, ningin, otakuden, otakuinternational, owari, round table, simonmbc, story, universe, xorsyst

Which anime series would make the best MMO universe based on story, characters, and abilities?

Lan Nguyen of Ningin.com

It was really difficult just picking one anime as I’ve seen many and there are still a lot more that I haven’t. Most of the ones I have seen, I really enjoyed and felt as if I was picking which kid was my favorite so I decided to rely on my fan girl powers which worked out pretty well.

Fan girling it, I was trying to think which anime had the hottest guys in it. There’s just way too many to just pick one so why not combine them all into one MMO? It would be an epic version of Kingdom Hearts, Jump Super Stars and/or Super Smash Brothers. There’s a reason why those games are popular and it’s because you get to see all your favorite characters wail on each other not to mention they’re all bad ass.

The majority of my time would be spent man handling all the bishonens and bishojos but that’s beside the point. I would love to watch certain characters/groups battle each other like the Espada (Bleach) VS Akatsuki (Naruto) in addition to the characters people would come up with based on the different animes’ skill sets, fashion and culture. It would be a very complex game and it’s probably far from reality as of right now but I can’t help but to day dreaming of all the possibilities.

While the anime community is still small, this would an ideal way to promote anime in addition to introducing different characters/story lines/etc all at once. A lot to handle but if you’re willing to spend hours on end on a single game just grinding, why not spend it on something cooler?
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Tags: abilites, anime, characters, discussion, games, kibouhou, lan nguyen, louis ponder, manga, mia lerda, mmo, ningin, otakuden, otakuinternational, owari, round table, simonmbc, story, universe, xorsyst

For the first time ever on Ningin, we’re going to have a roundtable discussion – in a blog format. The one thing I really want to impress upon people is that Ningin is a community for people interested in all aspects of Asian media and that a community has many different parts. Today, this roundtable format will give a very clear example of how that community and all those different parts can come together in an open discussion. This roundtable post will be done in 4 parts spread throughout the day.

The people that making up this roundtable will be: Ningin bloggers, Lan and Mia; outside bloggers, Louis from Xorsyst.com, John from Otakuden.com, and BZou from Otakuinternational.com; and Ningin users, Owari, Kibouhou, and SimonMBC. They’re all going to give their opinions about the following topic:

Which anime series would make the best MMO universe based on story, characters, and abilities?
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Tags: abilites, anime, characters, discussion, games, kibouhou, lan nguyen, louis ponder, manga, mia lerda, mmo, ningin, otakuden, otakuinternational, owari, round table, simonmbc, story, universe, xorsyst

We’ve been quietly testing our newest community, GirlyBubble.com for about a week and we’re ready now to show the world! GirlyBubble is for young females with an appreciation of all things related to being a girl. GirlyBubble.com focuses on fashion, beauty, design, entertainment, food, culture, gadgets, gossip, and other girly curiosities.

Three bloggers form the core of GirlyBubble’s unique voice: Ming, Lan and Tiffany. Each brings her own interpretation of “girliness,” offering users a wide variety of subjects to read and discuss. Rather than catering to any unique point of interest such as fashion or celebrity gossip, GirlyBubble highlights “girliness” in its many forms and personal tastes to generate an open forum for the online female community. Participants can contribute their own discussions of what “girliness” means to them.

All sites within the Mixr Media network, such as Ningin and GirlyBubble, are tied together via a common login system which allows users to travel from one Mixr Media site to another and keep the same profiles, friends lists, and other personal information. Give GirlyBubble a look around, give us some feedback on it, and win a chance for a $100 gift certificate to buy anything on Amazon.com!

Tags: Beauty, Community, Culture, cute, Design, Entertainment, Fashion, fashion week, females, Food, gadgets, girlybubble, gossip, lan nguyen, ming min hui, mixr media, network, ningin, tiffany robinson

Lan and Alvin have already did a great job of talking about the acts and personal anecdotes for the Rebuilding the Bridge event last Saturday. I’ve been meaning to write my own summary for the past week, but I’ve had very little downtime. Plus, I’m thoroughly, every-inch-of-my-body exhausted. I don’t think I ever felt exhaustion before, but it really sucks. This isn’t a complaint, merely an explanation why I’m so slow to respond to emails, txt msgs, Facebook, and just about everything else right now. Everything was worth it and I’ll get to why after you watch this montage.

Rebuilding the Bridge was a huge success in so many ways. There were a lot of things to take away from that night. It was personally one of the best nights of my life in terms of the people I’ve met and the connections I’ve made. First, some perspective: the reception part of the event officially started at 7:30pm. People started coming in at 6:30pm. The house was full at 7pm. The line for the performance part was all the way to the end of the street about half a mile long by 7pm.

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Tags: alvin lin, andrew choi, beau sia, charity, j-lim, jabbawockeez, jyp, lan nguyen, nas, ningin, performances, rebuilding the bridge, ryan leslie, sichuan earthquake, victims