davemerrill

With the help of a scholarly paper and the assistance of Wednesday over in Vermont, I finished the new Let's Anime column, the last of the year, all about the Christian anime series Superbook and Flying House! It's an amazing journey with a bunch of kids, some robots, a flying house, Pat Robertson, Tatsunoko Animation Company, and the ad agencies that brought them all together.

I wrote a big article on E.E. "Doc" Smith and the Lensman saga and the anime film based loosely on his "Galactic Patrol" and the subsequent TV series and toys and games and the two different manga series and the American comics and oh, lots of stuff. Check it out at Let's Anime!

Had to buckle down and get this one finished before the end of the month. I'm trying to get at least one Let's Anime every month. Maybe two if I'm lucky. Combine that with our trip to Anime Boston - which went great, by the way, thanks for asking - and getting Stupid Comics this week done and work being busy and oh, everything, and it's been a super busy past week or so. Nothing scheduled this weekend so it's going to be playing with the new computer stuff I got from Neil and watching some TV and doing a little house cleaning and just taking it easier than I have been for the past week.

so a while back I got this email from somebody.

I'm an anime fan as well and I found your blog while looking for infos about anime studios.
I envy you so much for visiting Toei! Thanks for sharing the pictures!

Also, I happen to be assigned to a business project involving writing about
entertainment. I noticed that you haven't posted in a while, but if you're
still planning to post more, I'd like to ask you to team up with me on this
project. Let me know if we could discuss this further.

So it's an email about a "business project" involving Let's Anime. I get a lot of those and delete them all. Unlike the others, however, this one is from somebody who actually read my blog, so that's a good sign. I figured "why not" and replied positively. Here's what I got next:

Thanks for getting back to me.

Regarding the project, I'm currently involved in a site that publishes
entertainment news and online gambling guides. I'd like to ask you to write
another post in your blog. It could be anything about anime from 1960s to
1990. I've been hearing quite good reviews about Hokuto no Ken so I'd like
to suggest writing about that, though I haven't seen it myself. The said
post shall include a link pointing to a related article of my client's
site. As compensation, I can send you $70 once the post is up.

May I know if you're open to such project?

So, uh, what? I write a blog post, and somewhere in it I include a link to an article on their client's site, and I get $70? Okay, fine, that's $70 for basically nothing. I put lots of links in my Let's Anime columns. I replied thusly:

Well, it would depend on the subject of the link to your client's website, I would think. Certainly it would have to have some sort of relevance to my blog post.

I mean, if I'm writing about cheese and the National Cheese Council wants to pay me $70 to link to the Cheese News Monthly website, that's relevant, right? Right? So the reply I got was this, just before Xmas:

Hello,

The site is CasinoTop10.net, and the article that you'll be linking to
will also depend on the topic of the post. It doesn't have to be about the
content of our article. We could just mention a sentence or two relating to
it. Also, I realized Hokuto no Ken has too many episodes and will take too
much of your time, so let me know if you're open to writing about other
shorter titles. If for some reason you won't be able to write the post, I
can prepare it for you and you can just put it up in your blog.

We've actually done a similar setup with other anime bloggers before. An
example would be this article:
http://shinigamilist.com/2012/09/19/perfect-blue-anime-review-want-to-become-a-different-character-beware-of-overdoing-it/

Also, if we could post this before the 31st, I could increase the payment
to $80. (My budget changes every month so I usually increase during the
last week)

May I know if we could proceed?

So if I'm reading this right, the plan would be for me to drop what I'm doing while I'm on Christmas vacation, write a blog post about Fist Of The North Star (which is way, way down on my list of things to write about at Let's Anime), and somewhere in that post insert a link to some kind of casino entertainment news site, which is not at all relevant to Fist Of The North Star or Japanese cartoons whatsoever. And I get paid $80! Such a deal.

I realize fully that I'm a small time, fairly insignificant blogger. But I do have my pride and some kind of journalistic responsibility to my readers to not dump incoherent links on them. And if I DID decide to sell out, it would be for more than $80, I can assure you. So I just put this on hold and went on about my business. Around about Jan. 20 I got another email.

Hello Dave,

Haven't heard from you in a while. I hope you're doing fine.

I'm not sure if you received my previous email but I'm attaching it here
just in case. May I know if you're still interested in doing this project?

And to that I replied:

Well, I don't think so. I've been trying to figure out a way that this isn't deceptive and unfair to my readers, and I'm not coming up with anything. If I ever do write a blog post that has anything to do with online gambling, I will certainly let you know.

And so far I haven't heard anything back, so I guess I'm crossed off the list of potential link-sellers. But now I'm intrigued and a little disturbed. Is this typical practice among bloggers, selling body-copy links to advertisers? I mean, I have Google sidebar ads, but those are clearly ads, they aren't inserted INSIDE the text of whatever I write as if it had some sort of relevance to the reader (and if you're running any kind of ad-blocking software you won't see them at all). There's a line that's being crossed here. I don't wanna say I'm some kind of saint, but you are going to have to tack a few more zeros onto that number before I start being deliberately deceptive to my readers. Also, payment in advance.

LET'S ANIME. Eschewing deceptive and unethical blogging practices since 2007!

Everybody has troubles, and Dr. Hell is here to solve your personal problems with his unique insight into human behavior.

Click on his sweaty, hairy, purple face to begin your journey of self-awareness and personal growth!

New Let's Anime up today, part of my in-depth report on the studio Kokusai Eiga-Sha aka Movie International Corporation! If you watched HONEY HONEY on CBN or enjoyed the recent fansubs of BRYGER then you must not miss this edition of Let's Anime!

Get on your motorcycle, spike up that hair, grab a Heineken, and blast your way to the ultimate truth behind your very existence!! It's all happening in the MEGAZONE 23 PART 2!!

The next 8 pages of your exciting Usei Shonen Papii story are now up at Let's Anime. And that will be all for Prince Planet manga, until somebody wants to send me more weeklies from 1965. Come on, you know you want to.

go there now and enjoy!

It's back to the never ending treadmill of CONTENT PROVIDING for the masses as 2012 gets well and truly under way! Both Zero Fighter and Element Of Surprise return to regular updates at Mister Kitty, and over at Let's Anime I'm running the first 8 pages of a Prince Planet manga from 1965 translated by Rick Zerrano. Later this week we'll see the return of FOUND SOUND and STUPID COMICS! Wheeee! Brought to you by GLICO.

Glico, for all your Prince Planet chewing gum needs.

I have been working on this Cyborg 009 article for Let's Anime for a while... thought I could just throw in my old Anime Jump article but what I wound up doing is combining bits and pieces of that one with the one I did for the print Let's Anime and lots of new information into a wholly new piece that will amaze as it astounds. Learn about the cyborgs here including the James Dean connection, the part where Ishinomori rips off EC comics who was swiping from Ray Bradbury, and the true story behind the origins of the word "cyborg".

Glad this one's over with! Now I don't have to write about Cyborg 009 again for another five or six years.

Back in '05 I wrote an article for Anime Jump all about Knack Animation Studio, the people who made "Ninja the Wonder Boy" and "Groizer X" and "Astrogangar". Since then their show "Charge Man Ken" has become an internet meme and "the Little Prince" is on DVD and there's been an amazing resurgence of interest in this studio. Well, okay, there's been an internet meme, and that's about it Anyway, I took that article and rejiggered it considerably and here it is again for everybody to enjoy.

http://letsanime.blogspot.com/2011/10/get-knack.html

Amazing how one studio can be responsible for so much mid-range and sub-par anime...

New LET'S ANIME all about the panel I did at AWA all about the spooky 60s and 70s anime. There are a couple of surprising live-action adaptations in there I was previously unaware of...

http://letsanime.blogspot.com/2011/10/spooky-classic-anime.html

Yesterday I worked on this column, and then we went out and had poutine with Dylan, who's moving way up north there, and then Donald and David came over and we watched "The People Versus George Lucas", which is a fine documentary about the nerd rage engendered by Lucas' tinkering, and then I had to haul out the VHS and we watched the Corn Pone Flicks version of Empire Strikes Back, filmed with action figures. It's amazing to think that we are much further away from the shooting of the CPF film now than we were in 1989 from the release of Empire Strikes Back, when it seemed like a time when we watched Star Wars movies in theaters was incredibly distant. What's six years? I can do six years standing on my head these days. Blink of an eye.

Afterwards I finished this week's Zero Fighter strip which, as I finish it, starts to remind me of a page I did not too long ago. I guess I'm repeating myself. I'll fix it next week though. The link is to the Mr Kitty blog which has links to both the ZF update and the update for ELEMENT OF SURPRISE. If you don't have the Mister Kitty blog RSS'd or bookmarked or tattooed on your forearms yet, you should: it won't get hacked by Russian spies the way LJ gets sometimes. We still post in the Mister Kitty LJ but after the last few service interruptions we decided to make a Mr Kitty Blogspot blog to list news and updates- that way we can throw some Google ads on there, make some $$$, and not have to worry if LJ will still be around or if LJ is throwing viruses at people.

Today, doctor's appointment. Tomorrow; another appointment. Wednesday my schedule is free and Thursday it's back to work for three twelve hour days. No more Trash Palace Friday nights for me for a while.

My folks came up for a visit over the weekend; we met them in Niagara Falls, went over to Niagara By The Lake, did some sightseeing and shopping around Toronto, and they left Monday early. Got to see lots of family photos, have some nice dinners, do a bit of antiquing, and we avoided most of the typical touristy stuff (if not the traffic). Always great to see the parents and I miss them when they're gone. Though the cat did not, she hid, as she always does when company comes over. Because our guests are all hollering axe murderers, right?

So after they left we were catching up with our online comics at the Mister Kitty site and I got to thinking about the next Let's Anime column I should do, and that got me to thinking about the King Kong animated series from the 60s. And THAT got me thinking about the Milton Bradley board game based on the King Kong animated series from the 60s. Namely, where the hell is it? I looked in closets, I looked in boxes, I looked in shelves and behind shelves and under shelves. Finally found it inside the flat file along with a scary clown puzzle and artwork, and spent today scanning images of it in along with screencaps from the TV show.

So if you are curious about the King Kong game you can read the Let's Anime column here that I wrote back in '07. And if you want to read about the King Kong TV series you can read about it here in a piece I originally wrote for Anime Jump.

I had been THINKING about running a column I wrote in 1999, a kindly little missive entitled 'Cosplay Must Be Destroyed' that I cranked out after a particularly horrific AWA costume contest. But the thing served its purpose, it vented some steam from my brain and got me a reputation as a hate-filled ranter who lives only to smash and destroy, and the email responses were quaint, to say the least. Digging all that back up and presenting it to the world twelve years later would serve no good purpose; I learned my lesson, which was to stay away from costume contests. And also, that I like that King Kong cartoon.

New LET'S ANIME all about how astronauts go to the bathroom in educational manga form!

So if you aren't squeamish about manga characters explaining how we take care of bodily functions in low-gravity environments, Let's Anime is NUMBER ONE!

When I first wrote this column back in 2004 I only had a vague notion of who Kazuo Umezu was. Now I know better and have adjusted things accordingly in this new well, kinda new Let's Anime piece all about the Ultraman and the Umezu and how they met.

SPOOOOKY!

Amazing research uncovers bitchin' zine from 1984 filled with clip art, badly toned photos, punk rock record label ads, and Japanese cartoons!

I miss zines like this.

http://letsanime.blogspot.com/2011/05/real-fun.html

ALSO: more crazy old comic book ads starring atom bubbles, Bit-O-Honey, R.C. Cola, and God! It's all happening at Stupid Comics!

In other news, it's drizzly outside, I will be going into work later tonight, and tomorrow is both TCAF and a rummage sale at the Japan Canada Cultural Centre, and I'll be hittin' both of those bad boys. LOOK OUT

Translation of a Honey Honey children's book is now up at Let's Anime! This is the first post in a while; I had Rick Zerrano's translations (thank you Rick) for a while, but it took some Photoshop work to get everything scanned and composited together. But now it's up and everybody can look at it. There is also another Zero Fighter page up. I guess I should have put up two pages since I skipped last week, but hey. It's been kinda busy. Did some family stuff Saturday, yesterday ran some errands and got some stuff finished, today is more family stuff, tomorrow it's back to work.

Saturday was an engagement party at a hotel downtown, so I hauled out the suit and we got all slicked up. The suit -bought for my sister's wedding 8 years ago- still fits, and looks pretty good considering its hang time. Moths got ahold of my other suit, the green one I got for Grant's wedding. Grr. Well, it was baggy anyways.

Today's LET'S ANIME takes a look at manga from 1955 that makes other manga from 1955 look like manga from 1965 or even 1970.

Escape the Martian robots at Let's Anime!

You'd be fools to not take advantage of these amazing bargains! FOOLS! What? Oh yeah. This is a new Let's Anime column that is basically photos of cool Tezuka themed merchandise that I dug out of the vault.

Yes, this light still works! My brother bought me this light. Did YOUR brother ever buy YOU a Leo Light? I didn't think so. See it in action at LET'S ANIME!

Also candy.

I saw the links to the Dr. Who nesting dolls and in a fit of 'me too' decided I'd share pix of the Tezuka nesting dolls that

hooverdam made for me a few years back. They're kinda neat. Only at your very own Let's Anime!

new Let's Anime column about CHORIKI ROBO GALATT,
or "Galatt The Great", a largely forgotten comedy science fiction anime series about cutesy helpful robots that transform into larger, more destructive robots through the scientific wizardry of a professor who has a deeply disturbing interest in underage girls. COMEDY GOLD!!