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.

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!

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!

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!

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.

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.

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!

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

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!

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!