Although I love anime, I naturally have a few pet peeves about it, too. Like when I get emotionally invested in a show only to learn that it “resets” after every story arc, like A Certain Magical Index. Or when it takes a half-dozen episodes to resolve a battle that could have been finished in two. Or when the manga or light novels are still ongoing, and you just know the anime will have a generic non-ending. Companies trying to push the envelope of animation (which is good in theory), but doing it with that “cel-look CG animation” system that looks so unnatural. I also hate it when they have Japanese voice actors with no English ability whatsoever perform grating katakana-English dialogue, as seen in Evangelion 2.22 and Kin’iro Mosaic. I sometimes wish my daughter would go into the seiyu world, since she’d be excellent at both natural Japanese and English, and could fill many interesting roles. She won’t do it, however, because she knows of the incredible amount of energy and luck it takes to make it in that competitive industry. If you’re curious about Japan’s seiyu world, shows like Shirobako or Sore ga Seiyu! can give you some good insight.
Since J-List has been around so long — founded 20 years ago this October, I’m amazed to say — the history of our company has marched in tandem with the history of the Internet, and with all the handy gadgets we use to get stuff done these days. When we started technology was very different: huge beige boxes connecting to the Internet through dialup or expensive leased lines, and early web browsers that crashed constantly. Now things are much better, a fact I was reminded of while standing on a mountain above Shirakawa-go trying to work my camera to get a decent photo. I needed to look up some of the camera settings, and happily remembered I carry PDFs of my camera manual in my phone and iPad. Another fun area of technology unique to Japan are the “washlets,” those high-tech toilets that wash your butt, which we have in our house. The other day the electric breaker went out, and after I flipped it back up I needed to use the toilet. To my surprise, the control panel failed to respond for twenty seconds or so, and I realized my toilet was “rebooting” after the power outage. Which makes me wonder just what OS my toilet is running?
(Speaking of improved technology, J-List has completed a big update to our backend database server, making the site much faster and more robust. Hope you visit often!)
Great news for Sailor Moon fans: we got in a huge update of popular items for you, including new products we’re posting to the page for the first time today, as well those awesome Sailor Moon pens, scissors, zipper pouches and other fun items. Browse them all now!
