Reggie Blogged

It's all the rage these days. I mean, everybody is doing it. Except for me. Because I'm not one of the cool kids. Yeah. Really, though this is something I've given serious thought to over the last few months. It looks and sounds like it would be a lot of fun and it would more than likely be quicker than a written blog. Of course since I don't have a camera yet, it isn't something I'd be able to do anytime soon. Plus, I think I have one of the most boring-sounding voices on the planet. I can already see the YouTube comments pointing out my awesome suckitude vocal cords. But I digresss. If I were to start video blogging, I probably wouldn't talk a lot about comics because I only read a handful of them now (my interest in them has waned considerably). Video games, on the other hand is something I'd love to talk about in videos and I've already got some ideas to keep it fresh and not seem like a lot of other video bloggers out there. There's other th...

I've known about this for some time but I've never posted about it on my blog. So guess what manga is finally being localized and brought to America? Come, guess! Thanks for the update, Proto Dude!

Years ago (1995, if I recall correctly), I saw a single episode of Sailor Moon. I normally have a pretty good memory, but even I can't remember much about the episode that I did see. I remember the main character Serena/Usagi and Luna, the talking cat. That's pretty much it. Although now that I think about it, I do remember how little sense it made. Now it could be argued that anime in general can be really screwed up, but this was also the time when anime hadn't really hit it big in America so dubbing companies took far more liberties with this and mucked things up more than usual. Flash forward to 2009. Anime is huge just about everywhere and numerous "Abridged" series are pretty much all over the internet. I thought I could get along just fine with Dragon Ball Z Abridged and Yu Yu Hakusho Abridged, but after watching the very first episode of Sailor Moon Abridged, I see that I've really been missing out. Like many other Abridged series, SMA is a gag dub, po...

For my money, the best version of Mighty Mouse was the 1980s Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures series. It lasted only two seasons, but it was a hoot, and one of the many reasons I got myself out of bed on Saturday mornings as a kid. The intro alone made the show worth watching and is easily one of my all-time favorite cartoon openings. On January 5, 2010, the complete series of Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures hits stores. This 3 disc set is remastered and even has some of the original theatrical Mighty Mouse shorts. Personally, I'm beyond stoked for this DVD release and just may pre-order my copy.

No this isn't an official DVD cover, but it looks good enough to be an official one, doesn't it? Since Funimation doesn't yet have the rights to Dragon Ball Kai, there's no word on when we'll see a DVD release outside of Japan, but I'm positive it will happen eventually, which is one of the reasons I'm passing on the Dragon Box releases. My biggest gripe about DB Kai is that it doesn't use the newer animation style. As much as I enjoy Akira Toriyama's earlier art style for Z, if they were going to redo the series, they should have redone the animation as well. Is it asking too much for all of Kai to look like the intro? I suppose we'll see the newer style when we head towards the Cell and Majin Buu arcs. Anyway, this particular customer cover was done by zhekalu over at VGBoxArt.com. You can view more of his work at the site and find more customer covers from other artists.

Last week I picked up volumes 1 and 2 of DragonBall Z VIZBIG Editions. If you didn't know, the VIZBIG versions are 3-in-1 graphic novels of already released manga. There are some differences, however. Not only are they printed on bigger, better paper, some chapters are actually colored! Alas, not each colored chapter is colored. I never really appreciated the value of these things until I actually bought them. These things looked nice enough when I looked through them in the store in the past, but actually having it makes a world of difference. I guess owning is believing, or something like that. This will probably be my definitive DBZ manga experience. $17.99 for 3 books ain't a bad deal. I actually paid $6.20 for volume 2 thanks to a coupon and my Borders bucks. (It pays to be a loyal customer.) I know I'm repeating some of what I said in a previous blog entry, but if you're springing for DB and DBZ manga, get the VIZBIG editions if you can. You'll save some shelf...

For the longest time, I've been out of it when it comes to anime. Maybe it was because I don't watch much TV or don't have cable anymore, but for me not to be watching one of my favorite genres of entertainment, well, it felt like a piece of my soul was missing. Well, the void has been filled thanks to a few animes I've been watching over the past few weeks. Since Dragon Ball Kai isn't available in the states just yet (who knows when it will be, but it WILL come to the USA, mark my words), I've been watching the fan subs. They weren't kidding when they said the pace of Kai was much quicker than that of the original anime series. The Saiyan Saga is wrapped up in the first 18 episodes. There are still some filler parts, but they are pretty short so I'd say we're looking at series that is less than 130 episodes easily. It looks nice too, but if they were going to redo the series, they should have just went with the newer art/animation style that we...