BlitzTheComicGuy

10 Songs I Wish Were Anime Themes - part 2

As I said before, this series of blogs contains songs I think would make for good Opening Themes AND Ending Themes. Last time we had an obvious candidate for an OP, and with “IF” we have my first offering for an ED. We also have a song here that I have a LOT for personal nostalgia for. Back when The Internet was still young and YouTube was only just starting out, streaming 240p fan recordings of music videos was about the only way I ever found out about Japanese bands. “IF” by Tricera...

Weekly Anime Comics: Card Captor Sakura - page 4

...I suppose I could have said it made the show more "grounded," but then one of the very first things Sakura learns to do is fly.  Oh, and before some smartaleck brings it up I KNOW THEY'RE NOT ACTUALLY TAROT CARDS.

Jenna & the Fanclub from Planet Heart Throb - page 45

I wonder that about a LOT of the entertainment industry, honestly.

...but not the cartooning industry.  It makes all the sense in the world that WE'D rather deal with drawing of people instead of the real thing.

Weekly Anime Comics: Card Captor Sakura - page 3

...and this is just the tip of the iceberg.  Look, I love CCS, but we gotta acknowledge that the ladies at CLAMP had some veeeeeeeeery misguided notions about what constitutes a healthy, non-toxic relationship.  Just wait 'til we get to any of THOSE episodes...

Far Out There Character Soundtrack: Blip

Oh… Oh dear… I do believe this may be the worst thing I’ve ever done as a human being. It randomly came up in conversation recently that Blip didn’t have a character soundtrack, and you know how my brain works. If you hit me with an observation like that, I’m gonna take it as a challenge. And oh my, did I ever rise to meet that challenge. There’s a reason this soundtrack is going out on April Fools Day, it’s not so much a musical statement as it is an endurance test. I already d...

Weekly Anime Comics: Card Captor Sakura - page 2

Well,  that's ONE "weekly anime comic" to actually come out a week after the previous one!  Let's see if I can keep this up!

Also, just for the record, I'm actually PERFECTLY aware that Card Captor Sakura is full of eyebrow-raising moments that a lot of people try not to talk about anymore.  Trust me, we'll get to that.  I just wasn't expecting to have this kind of joke dropped on me so freakin' early.  I didn't think we'd be seeing the likes of Grumbles until.....

Far Out There: Madlibs 4 - page 1

See?  SEE?  I TOLD you I was finally going to start posting the comics from the next MadLibs that went out to the $5+ patrons!   And now we're finally getting doing it! ...gradually.

In case you missed all my explanations over the previous months, I'd set up some limitations on myself to make sure THIS Madlib didn't become drastically too long like the last one did... and then this one went and become drastically too long anyway.  Thus, instead of posting them a...

10 Songs I Wish Were Anime Themes - part 1

.aaaaand right off the bat I’ve made things challenging for myself here. Obviously, the whole concept of these blogs hinges on the songs they’re about being playable with a single click, and at one point, “Pinch” by The Oranges totally was. The band’s official YouTube channel had a post of the full studio recording and everything, that’s how I discovered “Pinch” in the first place. But at some point, the big bad record label apparently stepped in and removed that video (or at ...

Weekly Anime Comics: Card Captor Sakura - page 1

AAAAAAAND WE'RE OFF!  Let's see how long I can keep the actually "weekly" this time around!  Cross your fingers, folks!

...but seriously, "Catch You Catch Me" by Megumi Hinata is pure happiness distilled into soundwaves.  Every time I heard this thing, I get a pure rush of good vibes that normally only comes from the deepest, most primordial depths of my nostalgia... and I did NOT watch Ca...

Jenna & the Fanclub from Planet Heart Throb- page 44

YAY!  We're back!  Sorry again for the delay, folks!  If you missed the other bits of news, I really needed to focus entirely on website stuff for a bit, and am only just now at the point where I can start balancing things out to a regular workflow again.  On that note, Far Out There comics are going to be on a kind of weird schedule for a while.  I'd HOPED to get the Jenna stuff up to a convenient cliffhanger moment, then put it on a less abrupt break while I put out...

Conventional Wisdom: "10 Songs I Wish Were Anime Themes" INTRO

See? Didn’t I tell you there was more of me blabbing on about music in your future? There is no escape from my fantasies of being a music journalist! Don’t worry, I’m still finding ways to tie these flights of fancy into Conventional Wisdom’s general “anime & stuff” theme, even if I’ll ALSO be somewhat indulging my obsession with playlists and organizing songs to fit a certain theme.

Have you ever listened to a song and thought “Man, how was this song never the theme...

Conventional Wisdom: My First Japanese CDs - "Happee Mania" - Peelander-Z

And with this, we reach the end! The last installment in this blog series! This is far from the last Japanese album I’ve added to my collection, even if we are limiting the discussion exclusively to physical purchases (which admittedly have gotten much rarer over the years). We are, however, reaching the point where I’m struggling to come up with more unique things to say about the rest of the albums I own. I’ve already said my piece about the pillows twice by now, so it’s a bit hard ...

Far Out There: So, wait, WHAT'S going on?

Okay, I think I’ve fallen into another one of those slumps where I’m even worse at communication than usual, so let’s have one big blast of info to try and keep everyone up to date. Earlier this month, I finally finished re-posting all of Far Out There’s old comics, and I’d HOPED to be able to dive straight into resuming some kind of regular schedule for new comics right after the comic’s 13th Birthday. Alas, that hasn’t happened, and I want to lay out all the reasons why. There...

Conventional Wisdom: Weekly Anime Comic WINNER! Card Captor Sakura!

AAAAAAAND THAT'S IT!  I'm calling it!  We have a winner!  ...and we also have a lesson for the future: next time we hold a vote, I need to remember to give an official cut-off date right away.  I wound up having to wing it this time, but I think at this point anybody who was actually going to bother voting has had more than enough chances to do so.

And yes!  Card Captor Sakura is the winner!  The race was pretty much exclusively between CCS and Slayers, so ...

Conventional Wisdom: Hey, remember The Sci-Fi Channel?

I was trying to come up with some new blog ideas that WEREN’T music related, and hit upon a totally unique and original topic that’s entirely fresh and hasn’t in any way been beaten to death on The Internet already: Didn’t The Sci-Fi Channel used to be great?

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna go on a rant about what a disgrace the “Syfy” rebranding was and how they never should have canceled that one show and blah blah blah wrestling and whatever. The more time passes, the more...

So, I re-read all of Far Out There…

If you’re following me close enough to actually pay money on Patreon and read this, you already know what’s been up with my comics over the past year plus. My old host SmackJeeves drastically changed format at the end of 2019, prompting me to finally get my own hosting and begin the arduous process of re-posting around twelve years of content. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as I’d been horrifically burned out for SEVERAL years by that point and needed the break, not to me...

Conventional Wisdom: Weekly Anime Comics VOTING

That's right!  It's finally time!  After all that teasing and promising, I'm FINALLY bringing back Weekly Anime Comic, now with a HEAPING HELPING OF DEMOCRACY!  Vote for which show you'd most like to see me draw silly cartoons about, and we'll see how long it takes me to fall off the "weekly" part of that title.  And yes, while the "official" tiers list says that the polls are for...

Conventional Wisdom: My First Japanese CDs - "Penalty Life" - the pillows

On several occasions so far, I’ve alluded to a certain milestone I was waiting to reach: the first Japanese CD I bought without any connection to an anime. I’ve disqualified several albums that really SHOULD have earned that title on the grounds of some loose anime connection, at least with my intentions. I bought that L’Arc-en-Ciel compilation because I thought it would have the Fullmetal Alchemist theme on it. I bought Yuki Kajiura’s Fiction because I thought it’...

Jenna & the Fanclub from Planet Heart Throb- page 43

You can't blame any of these characters for not recognizing Jenna right away.  That did happen a soul-crushing five years ago.  Good thing there's a handy index for all the old pages!

SmackJeeves and Other Rambling...

Okay, so I was caught COMPLETELY off guard by this (so off guard that it’s really screwed with my comic re-posting process) but SmackJeeves, my old hosting site for around a decade, finally shut down on January 1st. While I’m sure it’s mostly MY fault that I didn’t hear about this before it happened, that really is par for the course with how SmackJeeves had been run over the final few years. There IS a reason I’ve spent the past year porting all my stuff over to that fancy new webs...

Conventional Wisdom: Weekly Anime Comics UPDATE!

See? SEE? I TOLD you the Weekly Anime Comics were coming back! And they are! …eventually. In, like a month or so. I really need to focus on finishing the new website stuff over the course of this month, not to mention finally getting some of those Far Out There MadLib comics posted, or working out the finer details of just what the new Patreon tiers will actually look like. Oh? What’s that? Well, let’s talk:

First off, Far Out There’s reward tiers aren’t going to change, so do...

My 20 Most-Played Christmas Songs, according to iTunes (2020 edition)

See? I TOLD you I was gonna do this again! If you missed the previous “Most Played” installment… that’s totally understandable, because I crapped out a TON of Christmas blogs this year. Heck, that first one went out when it wasn’t even December yet, who has time to remember THAT far back?. For those who didn’t see (and are too busy to go read the whole thing) a quick recap: when I switc...

The Christmas Tape

It’s no secret that I love me some nostalgic introspection. The only thing better than reminiscing over The Way Things Used To Be™ is to accompany it with a sigh of lament over how Kids These Days will never understand what it was like back in OUR day. And that goes TRIPLE for a topic as nostalgia-fueled and memory laden as Christmas. We’re up to our novelty-sweater-clad NECKS in holiday traditions and recollections of yesterday this time of year. Is there any better setting for ascribi...

Jenna & the Fanclub from Planet Heart Throb- page 42

Holy CRAP it's been a long time since we saw any of these people, isn't it?  You just might want to peruse the backlog of old comics to refresh your memory on who any of these faces are.  Awful hand that THAT'S a thing now, isn't it?

(Also, DANG IT, I should have made a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference on this page!)

My Favorite Christmas Presents

Okay, let’s take a break from all the lengthy lists of Christmas songs and focus on the true reason for the season, the heart and soul of the holidays: THE ACQUISITION OF MATERIAL POSSESSIONS! WOOHOOO!!! But seriously, we were all selfish little brats as kids, and deep down we sort of still are. Ravenously shredding your way through paper armor to get at the succulent innards, getting that one precious toy you wanted or being blindsided by something you didn’t KNOW you wanted, that experi...

Jenna & the Fanclub from Planet Heart Throb- page 41

"I suddenly feels so... easy to animate!"

Yeah, that's right, an opportunity to make a Die Hard reference just landed right in my lap, and I made a conscious decision to go with a Strong Bad quote instead!  That's just how I roll!

10 MORE "Obscure" Christmas Songs I Wish Were More Popular

Yes, I’m doing this AGAIN. As I’ve said several times over the years, I may be an unrepentant Christmas junkie, but I CAN somewhat sympathize with people who just get sick of the whole thing. In particular, I really feel for people who hate on Christmas music specifically for how repetitive it is, because that drives me up the wall too. Not because I agree, but because I know it SHOULDN’T be the case. There is a massive galaxy of holiday music out there, and more keeps getting released ...

My 20 Most-Played Christmas Songs, according to iTunes (2019 edition)

When I tried to come up with a set of new blogs to try and attract some different eyes over the holidays, the most obvious idea was “My Top 10 Favorite Christmas (whatever)”. Of course, I automatically don’t like doing the obvious thing. But what's more, any time I have to rank anything I wind up thinking waaaaay too hard about it. I never really have one “most favorite” anything, and all my opinions end up being weighed down by disclaimers and shaped by my mood at the moment. Oh, i...

Jenna & the Fanclub from Planet Heart Throb- page 40

I'm pretty sure I've already make this joke, but this is still how I feel most times I look out the window.

So, on both the blogs I just posted, I added a note at the bottom that regular stuff was going to be on hold while I cranked out MANY MANY Christmas things during December.  However, Jenna & the Fanclub from Planet Heart Throb is NOT joining them.  Yep, you'll still get your regularly schedule comics, no matter HOW many indulgent Christmas things I'm busy posting ove...

Conventional Wisdom: My First Japanese CDs - "Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi"

Okay, several blogs back, I joked about remembering The Goode Olde Days when L’arc-en-Ciel were the biggest thing ever, but that is NOTHING compared to the excitement of when Puffy was gonna take over the world. The level of mainstream, normal people recognition that Ami Onuki and Yumi Yoshimura attained in the mid-00s was absolutely unheard of for a Japanese act. They did the super memorable theme to Teen Titans, they got their OWN show on Cartoon Network, they were appearing on late night...