Anime Mine: Liz Thompson 2.

Japan is as schizo over censorship as America.

In this video you often here the narrator lament about how Nintendo censors video games coming over from Japan. What is never explained is why North America, more specifically the United States tends to be more conservative than the rest of the world (it seems.)

It goes back to who it was that settled America in the 15 and 1600's. Starting in the 1500's you had the Protestant Reformation. From what I understand is that an ever growing number of people grew tired of the excesses of the Catholic Church and wanted to go back to more simpler ways to worship. Like the Christians 1500 years earlier who were persecuted by the dominant Roman religion and state the newly formed Protestants were also persecuted. Groups of people had had enough of this and decided to make a go of it in the new world.

All these Protestants, Pilgrims, and Puritans came here to America to worship as they saw fit without being too interfered from the homeland. Now keep in mind these are people who were to uptight for even England. They wanted freedom of religion for themselves, not for anybody else that had some different ideas on how to pray to God. They were just as vicious as the Church and the states they fled from. (What was it that Jesus called people like that?)

(One, two, skip a few, 99, 100.)

Now back to the title of this post.

With two screen shots of a very popular anime (and one of my favorites,) Yuru Yuri I shall prove my point. (How popular is it? You can by the soundtracks on the American iTunes.)

Why tuck, fold, and constantly change the length of a skirt if she is wearing shorts underneath?  I do thank the animators of Yuru Yuri for NOT ever giving us a constant stream of panty shots of 13 year old girls.

In an aside, I do know that Yuru Yuri is a satire on the yuri genre, but was it ever really necessary to have a woman wear her sister's underwear on her head?

(One of my favorite voice actresses, too.)

Anime Mine: Kotone Noda 1.

Two Years Ago, or More Precisely...

In 2002 I was visiting one of my favorite stores the Anime Cafe to pick up some manga and ironically enough anime, when one of the clerks told me to look at this:

My introduction to sprite comics made from graphics ripped from games. I had never heard of this but I was immediately hooked. I had to know where these came from. Up to that point all I was doing was fanfiction in the hopes that one day I would get MiSTed. I had always wanted to do comics based on my favorite video games like Mega Man and Final Fantasy. Maybe even mix in my favorite anime like Tenchi Muyo and Sailor Moon.

Sprites opened up a whole new universe for me. I can now do the stories I always wanted to do but couldn't because of my total inability to draw. First I had to find where all these sprites came from. After many an MSN search. (Google wasn't much of a factor then.) Following links and suggestions on forums I found myself here:

Panelmonkey.org, The People's Sprites. I was in heaven. All those game rip and public domain sprites all for my use. They even had the legendary Dr. Wily sprite made by Deccus.

From 2002 to 2009 it was my number one place to go for sprites. 2009. We all know what happened. I don't need to get into it because I know about as much as you do.

I started making a daily pilgrimage to The People's Sprites that soon turned into every other day. Then once a week. Every other week. Once a month. Every other month. To about a couple times a year. Finally when ever I saw a link on someone's site I happen to come across.

In May of 2014 I was raiding the Internet Archive for sprites from dead sites to include in my sprite site, The Sprite Cemetery. I was on The People's Sprites trying to figure out how to mass download all the sprites when it occurred to me, I should check to see if panlemonkey.org is back. It wasn't, but this ad from GoDaddy was there:

(Oh how I despise GoDaddy. That's a story for another time.)

I couldn't resist so I looked into it. You can get a free account. That's a good selling point. It hooked me. To hire a negotiator was $70. There's a lot I could do with seventy dollars. That's a mighty fine couple or pizzas or five gallons of gas. I thought “What the hell, why not? The opportunity is too great to pass up. Think about all those sites still linked to panelmonkey.org. All that SEO could be mine. What's the worse that could happen? The owner says no and I'm out $70.”

After a week or so I get an email from GoDaddy saying there hasn't been a response and they are trying again. A few weeks later with no response I pretty much gave up.

Anime Mine: Liz Thompson 1.