7/3/10
RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME NEWS: Nozomi Entertainment, known for their sparkly awesome releases of fan-favored anime have picked up the REMASTERS of SKU! That's right, we folks have coming our way real, shiny, remastered releases of the story we all know and love. I've been very jaded about state-side releases of SKU in the past, I had the crappy VHS releases of ONLY ONE ARC and the subsequent horrible transfers to DVD, I have bought the rest of the series on DVD only to have the company go belly up. Now I'm looking forward to our little show finally getting the release it deserves in the US. Does this rev me up for a site update? I think so, my poopykins. :) In the meantime,
here's the information we on the forums gathered about the import--something to whet your appetites!
03/14/10
I still hate children. (Pediatric nursing definitely not for me.) I do, however, love my humble little website! I know, embarrassingly miniature update, but see how much you get done when you're writing a care plan that's 81 pages long. And not finished. Not kidding. Not double spaced. KILL ME NOW.
So what'd I do? I cleaned up and added to the gallery the last three remaster DVD album covers. These are all my favorite characters, which naturally means the artist utterly lost any capacity whatsoever to draw the characters in proportion. That or it turns out Akio was a Chinese woman back when footbinding was 'in'. But they're new art, they're huge, and they're here!
• Cleaned and uploaded three new high resolution DVD cover images to the gallery:
Nanami & Her Henchmen
Touga, Saionji, and the Car
Akio, Anthy, and Utena
02/16/10
Happy birthday and Happy Valentine's Day to me! And you all! Ohtori.nu's moved to a new server host because I tired of downtime, and these days, one can get a lot more space for the money! Expect some perks coming up, like the SKU video game available for download! In the meantime, excuse a couple kinks as I work out the server move, though it was far and away the easiest I've ever done thanks to my awesome hostfolks.
1/11/10
It's a new year, and Giovanna's absolutely swamped with Obstetrics and Pediatrics. (PS. She hates kids.) The site? Definitely not forgotten--I've got something special lined up that will be getting a huge boost by the upcoming summer off. In the meantime, this is a super-mini update and a brief moment of silence.
I went though the links in the site info section, and I'm sad to say I thinned it out rather a lot. Several sites that were big cheese long before my humble little offering are gone now: utena.net and Tsuwabuki's Opera Glass in particular. I also removed a few young upstarts that were given up on, and several shrines I'd absolutely adored, including the reason I've never built a Saionji one myself.
It's the nature of the beast when you're dealing with a fandom that's old enough to bear children, but I can't help also notice that people just don't build their own fansites as much anymore. With so many other means of worship on the net, site building seems to be reserved for the upper crust of fan-fanatics.
But I can still mourn the passing of an age, and of a string of websites that sculpted and contributed to the fandom surrounding the story I love. I can also say that barring the death of the internet, this one will never come down. It may someday become permanently static, but it will always be here. I hope it provides some inspiration also for those that do still want to build fansites of their own, and for the love of God I encourage you to do so if you ever had the inclination at all.
It's like what I keep hearing about childbearing. It's hard, it's frustrating, and it's absolutely rewarding.
• One fanart added to fandom. Go Tamago!
• Links for No Angel Came and Empty Cage updated
• Several links removed from link list in site info
10/14/09
Just in time for In the Rose Garden's third birthday! The forum thrives, because it's full of awesome people. LOVE LOVE. <3
In the meantime, Ikuhara and I had the same thought when it came to celebrating Utena’s 10th anniversary! While I was fixing the awful image quality of the DVD screencaps…Ikuhara was fixing the awful image quality of the series. Sadistic.
Still Ikuhara, we love you! Though a US release of these gorgeous box sets, three in all (one for the soundtracks, two for the series/movie/musical), seems unlikely, thanks to Geneon, SKU's US distributor being out of business, they are available through the import lines if you have insane amounts of money to spend. I’ve compiled information on the releases, what’s in them (including extras!), and a couple suggestions as to where to obtain them. This information is compiled from a thread on In the Rose Garden, and a special shout-out goes out to Almaser, Mylene, IceQueenChigusa, and Copyman for being particularly helpful on getting translations and images.
Wanna know more about the Brand Spankin’ New Utena DVD and CD remaster releases? Click here!
Of course, I haven’t been sitting on my ass doing absolutely nothing with this site. Though my available time may have dwindled to nearly nothing, SKU is still near and dear to my heart, and Empty Movement, always on my mind. There was a time when an update of this magnitude was a monthly occurrence, but there was also a time when I had entire weekends (and work shifts, heh) to put into them. These days the updates are going to come a little slower, but I promise, there will always be one coming. Nursing school may be the means to the end, employment in a thriving career and all that jazz, but Empty Movement? My baby. Yasha's too- she's currently on hiatus, but sends her love and wants to hump Touga's leg as usual. Oh and if you couldn't tell--the blog is more or less dead. That's not us falling off the face of the earth--that's the world changing! It's all Facebook these days. I kinda feel like a tool though. =/
Enough with the apologies though! We want goodies, don’t we? Yes we do. The bigger part of this update is an overhaul of the multimedia section. This experimental effort uses blogging software (Wordpress), to allow me to categorize the entries, so instead of sorting through a hundred wallpapers chronologically, you can now search by character! (I figured this was how most people chose their wallpapers.) The swirlies in the layout? Courtesy of boredom in my Pharm class last year.
In addition to this overhaul, several new items in the gallery have been added, new artwork and background designs provided by Mylene, Copyman, and dundundun of the forums and cleaned up by yours truly. Direct links provided in the breakdown. Also, some new analysis by me—or really, it’s old analysis, an essay on Saionji’s body language in the Black Rose Arc that I’ve been working on for the better part of two years, little by little. Like body language? Enjoy! I also cleaned up the Akio shrine's image section, which has been broken for ages. And of course, there's some sweet donation stuff, as always, including, thanks to Almaser, the new remaster CD's extra bonus UTENA IN THE CLUB. Hop over to Audiology!
• New in the gallery!
Three high-res artwork images from the remastered DVD covers!
Color background caps fresh from the remasters! Over 300 to oogle! :)
• Brand new Multimedia section, with navigation by character thanks to Wordpress!
• Addition of a release information page on the new remasters from Japan
• 1 analysis essay written by me (gogo Saionji!)
• 1 submitted essay in analysis
• Redid the Photography section of the Akio shrine to cross link it to the gallery
• 5 donated fanfics, including a couple long ones!
• 1 donated fanart
• 1 donated fan dream
• The bonus Utena in the Club CD available for download in Audiology
• Added a bit of information to the CDs about US releases, although they're mostly gone now due to Geneon's bankruptcy.
