Going Gaga over Boku no Hero Academia

Izuku Midoriya was just a regular middle school student in a world where people with superpowers known as "Quirks" are the norm. However, he dreams of one day becoming a Hero, despite being bullied by his classmates for not having a Quirk. After being the only one to try and save his childhood friend, Katsuki, from a Villain , All Might, the world's greatest Hero, bestows upon him his own quirk, "One For All". The story follows Izuku's entrance into Yūei High School, a school that cultivates the next generation of Heroes [1]

This manga is so good. So. Damn. Good. Never expected to like this so much. It's everytime Midoriya achieves something, you just want to clap for him and give a standing ovation. Thus I was so happy to see it becoming popular and the sales are all-time high.

Kōhei Horikoshi's art is quite impressive too. In Boku no Hero, he was able to mix both Japanese and Western artstyles effectively. However it should be noted that the guy's past works didn't achieve huge commercial success like what Boku no Hero is currently enjoying (Ōmagadoki Zoo only had 5 volumes and Sensei no Bulge only got 2) and his mangas were consistently beautiful in terms of visuals. I guess that since Horikoshi has no problems in the art department, his main focus now  is for him to keep up Midoriya's adventures interesting enough to last a longer time than expected.

BLOG REPOST- A Documentation of Johnny Kitagawa's Alleged Past

I realized that there are a lot of blogs that were deleted or have became defunct in the past few years. The horrible thing is when these blogs are actually made of quality posts and juicy discussions that can no longer be read because the awesome page transformed into the dreaded 404.

One of those blogs is uso-ippai of tumblr who had been translating Japanese entertainment industry gossips for the sake of the English-speaking online audience. It only lasted for months though and the tumblr blog is now abandoned. Hell even Majide had stopped updating huhubells. Good thing we still have Minus Kakugo and the other blogs...

So now I'll just share to you a blogpost by uso-ippai (that was originally split into two parts) that looks back on Johnny Kitagawa's past scandals, just for discussion/knowledge purposes, especially for those who doesn't have tumblrs.

Text Translation Original Sources: Part 1 and Part 2, I also added some photos for reference

Arashi5x15 + Rare Photos

Here's the thing, I've been an Arashi fan since 2006 due to Jun Matsumoto's Gokusen, I was soon-to-be a high school freshman then and Jun Matsumoto was my boyfriend. Now it's 2014, Arashi is already in their 30's and I've graduated from the university. Seeing all the updates on their Blast in Hawaii concert, this sums up what I feel:

HAHAHA! Seriously, I'm so jelly right now, but I'm so fucking happy for the boys that any negative emotions is washed away by the great love and support from all Arashi fans worldwide. Now as a celebration for Arashi's 15th anniversary in the enetertainment industry, I'll be sharing some of their rare photos!

Garage Sale at Japan National Olympic Stadium

As it is known, Tokyo Japan will be hosting the 2020 Olympics. This means that they will be using the National Olympic Stadium for the opening and closing ceremonies as well. Not surprising a large budget of $1 billion is created for the sole purpose of upgrading it alone. The Olympic Stadium a.k.a. Kokuritsu Kyogijo, will be demolished by 2015 and is set to for a five-year renovation period. To herald the stadium's impending haitus an official ‘Sayonara Kokuritsu’ campaign had been made that both reminisce the historical events that took place in Kokuritsu but to also promote Japanese culture to the rest of the world.

There's some recent news however. Apparently, before demolishing the entire stadium, it has to be dismantled first and guess what, they're for sale!

The lawn, the VIP seats. the reporter's seats and even 20 pieces of fucking manholes. This sounds really hilarious at first, but to fair, Kokuritsu had its share of memorable events. I'd like a seat too since I've never been to an Arashi concert before (haha joke!) Manholes are just weird though. I wonder who would ever buy those. Well, if you have any plans, go find them here

BREAKING NEWS: AKB48 Members Injured at a Fan Event

Kawaei Rina(19), Iriyama Anna (18) and a male staff member were attacked today by a 24-year-old man carrying a hand saw. He managed to get inside inside the AKB48 handshake event around 5pm at Takizawa, Iwate Prefecture today. The event was cancelled immediately and police was called to the scene. The suspect was arrested on the spot for attempted murder.

Kawaei Rina was said to be bleeding from the head while Iriyama Anna and the staff member had arm injuries The extent of the injuries were forutnately non life threatening.

The famous idol group AKB48 is known for their handshake events where fans could have the change to interact with their favorite idol. Due to the popularity of these events, inspections of baggage is almost always overlooked, thus it isn't thoroughly impossible that a man could smuggle a dangerous weapon inside the venue.

SOURCE

Fan-Made Akira Live Action Trailer is Superb!

Requests for live version of the 1988 anime cult classic Akira had been heard for many years already. There had been talks of creating such film in Holywood but even the current plans is yet to see the light of day. However in 2012, fans created the Akira Project via an IndieGoGo campaign, a global crowdfunding site. The main goal was to create a 5-minute live acton trailer that would also "stick as close to the source material as possible. A chance to do Akira Justice."

After a year and a half of waiting, Akira Project is finally done with their own fan-made live action Akira trailer. It is awesomesauce:

Lead by director/producer Nguyen-Anh Nguyen and CineGround Media, the team is composed of 100 people from 12 countries. They had Xavier Yuvens as Tetsuo and Osric Chau (a.k.a. Kevin the prophet) as Kaneda. The product is a tasteful, impressive fan trailer that could put Hollywood to shame.

Well I might be exaggerating, but don't forget that this is an unofficial project by devoted fans. Any attempt by Hollywood studios in the future better make sure that they'll follow this group's vision in recreating anime classics into live action films. Nothing's as worse as seeng a Japanese character being played by a Caucasian (remember that Zac Efron as Kaneda rumor? cringe)

Congratulations to all the team members, the actors who gave their tim and to everyone's creativity and efforts. Job well done!

Romantic Escapades of Yamashita Tomohisa

So after a few readers' requests, I decided to include Yamapi in my Romantic Escapades series. I actually have no idea where to start with this guy. Despite falling in love with him in Buzzer Beat, I have not truly delved into his celebrity life, I'm not a huge fan. But much to my surprise, his love stories are easy to find. I got to finish this one in a week and here it is!
Have fun reading!

SMAP vs Arashi?

Japanese idols are often depicted as lucky individuals who have made it big, they represent the public and has a close relationship with their audiences. In order to do so, they are not supposed to be seen as intimidating. What's the golden formula then? They must be good, but they must not be perfect. Nowadays, there are two big names in Johnny's, namely SMAP and Arashi. Despite having sempai/kohai relationship, people just love to compare one against the other.

Music of the Day: Wanna Be With You by Lead

What To Wear for the Lower Half

The following scans from a Japanese magazine. But since I have no idea where these exactly came from (I mean just look at all those magazines, it's impossible to search through them all), I decided to save the scans and share them here. First things first, each row shows different types of legs, and the columns signify the shoes, skirts, leggings and jeans used by the models. With the chart you could identify which combinations look good on certain types of legs. From what I could decipher:

✕ Bad        △ OK        ◯ Good

Please be reminded too that the magazine's fashion sense does not necessarily mean it would be the same for others. So just chill away and be calm if you happen to disagree with one of the combinations below.

Shoes + Shorts / Skirts

Tights + Skirts

Skirts

Pants

Quite comprehensive, I hope I'll be able to unearth an upper body version soon.

People Bowing to Arashi...WUT?

This week, photos of supposedly Arashi fans bowing to the posters of the boys are circulating around the Japanese social media. It is quite weird and very alarming. Here is Kotaku's aritcle about the situation:

Have you ever heard of Arashi? It's a Japanese boy band that's so popular, that a poster of the group is drawing crowds, cameras, and grovelling. You might not know Arashi, but perhaps you've seen Letters from Iwo Jima? One of the stars, Kazunari Ninomiya, is a member of Arashi. The group has also appeared in Nintendo commercials, most notably for the 3DS launch, so there's that

What I Just Learned #2

 I'm quite grateful that I've stumbled upon this blog:

I'm feel so stupid not finding this earlier. It's a treasure of amazing posts. Feel free to visit and follow it here, though the last update was last year, who knows the blogger might come back any day.
Here are just a few I truly enjoyed:

626 Anon [sage] 2011/06/17(?) 02:00:33.82 ID:ecHbTYhN
Lately I reckon that those popular chicks should be grateful of me for being unpopular.
I am the one who supports the population of good-looking chicks in the world by being ugly.
What if I turn to be hot?
The balance of the popular/unpopular collapses.
Being ugly is my duty.
This is for the world peace.

54 Anon:2011/06/02(?) 17:39:50.78 ID:7ZvFDqHp
I also have got a similar experience.
One evening, coming back from work, there was a frog in front of my house.
I was amazed cos there is no field around my house and it’s in the middle of the city here.
So I brought a piece of bread for the frog from my house but it didn’t make a move at all.
I thought frogs may be predatory so I brought a sausage but it didn’t move at all as well.
I was bored so I went back home.
In the next morning, my wife was furious because of the following reason.
“There is a big crap with a piece of bread and a sausage. Someone might be making fun of us but I don’t quite understand it!”
Of course I haven’t told her the truth.
I’m planning to keep this secret till I pass away.

711 Anon:2006/03/09(?) 13:43:35 ID:pNYPZdN6
While I was watching porn, mum came into my room.
I got panicked and said
“What are they making!? A child!! Correct!!” in a joking way to cover up.
Then she said to me
“Sorry for making a child like you”

The Romantic Escapades of Ohno Satoshi

Ohno Satoshi, the fisherman, artist and everything else. Over the years, I've personally observed the increasing number of Ohno fans among Arashi stalkers. Which is kind of cool since he's also my favorite. But together with his ever changing hairstyle, Ohno also had his own number of girls as the years went by, some with fellow entertainers, others are girls we, as fans, would never get to know about. But of course we all know Ohno only shares his soul with Kazunari Nino, but I guess we still need to know who these girls were.

Let us see how Ohno tackled them~

I'm BACK!!

I have been quite busy for a while (School, papers, folding papers, unicorns etc)~ So as a form of apology for my long absence, here's a cool video for you all:

The Romantic Escapades of Aiba Masaki

Aiba Masaki. This. Guy. Is. Sunshine incarnate. I only have two girls for Aiba though, so this only means that our Smiling dude has the fewest girlfriends? Don't know, but we may as well see who made it into his heart.

The Romantic Escapades of Sho Sakurai

As of this moment, Sakurai Sho is famous due to various elements. Sexy body, sexy raps, sexy news casting and  the capability to create amazing art pieces. His reputation when it comes to girls isn't as noisy as Jun's or Ohno's, nor as often, and instead had his share of tabloids through him being a chain smoker and allegedly bitchy attitude to fans (the events of which are all the fangirls' fault ).

But naturally he still had a few female issues in the past. Just a handful, but in a Japanese media's point of view when an idol dates a girl, we call it full blown scandals. 
Oh yeah, let us see some lucky faces

The Romantic Escapades of Ninomiya Kazunari

Ah the Forever Seventeen-year-old. Everyone's captivated by the epicness of Nino's immortal face. An Heir, Singer, Actor, Gamer, Host, Magician, Nino is also one of the JE idols whom the agency seemed to be lenient with. Throughout his career the guy was linked to a few girls but the seriousness of those relationships sounds real instead of just being a bunch of stories to spice up publicity.

Any fangirl would fall for that one

Guy-dates-girl is a normal type of gossip, but guy-dates-girl-and-is-serious-and-gives-gifts rumors are just too specific. Yet JE seems ok with it, as long as it's Nino? 
Maybe his cuteness could melt any of his seniors' hearts or maybe he is a truly obedient talent and understands the rules. If all else fails, plain favoritism. If I were to have a brother like him, I would be bias too anyway.

Nino's quite famous during his junior days, his bratty ways matured but remained playful and noisy. A number of girls were lucky enough to be able to know who he really is behind the camera.
So now let us look at the faces that had been placed beside Nino's in tabloids throughout the years.

The Trivial Matters Gets the Ratings

The months of April and May have been quite controversial for two Korean artists
Though Japan and Korea are related historically and culturally, the anti-Hallyu protests doesn't seem to stop, and instead, the Japanese media whose coverage can be overwhelming, focused itself, more than necessary, on the Korean stars.

Just last month the Japanese cyberworld is putting up a tantrum over Korean idol, Park Ji-yeon's "rude" and “barbaric”table manners that was shown in one of Shin Ramyun's CMs. Apparently self-righteous Japan cannot and would not tolerate a Korean eating from a pot being shown on TV.

"... the video pans to Ji-yeon sitting down to eat her finished meal when suddenly, for reasons unexplained, she removes the lid of the pot with one hand, plunges her chopsticks directly into the pot with the other, lifts up a mass of noodles and plops them down on the overturned lid as if it were a plate before transferring them into her cute little mouth...

Meet the Family

JE boys are notorious for having mysterious lives outside the entertainment industry. Mainly due to the agency's strict rules and regulations. Secrecy covers the family members. If I were an idol of course, I will not want to have my own loved ones stalked by fangirls.

But anyway, since we are normal fans,
I guess its alright to get to know them a little bit.

The Romantic Escapades of Matsumoto Jun

First let us read the following blind item urageinou2 wrote: "National idol group member M-J of A, is finally exposing his being a gay. This rumor has been circulated among the media lately."

Oh perfect, another gay rumor to add to the list. So far nothing has been revealed so Matsumoto is still and will always be officially a Male Man. Being one though needs the company of women, and Jun has been linked to a few gorgeous personalities through the years. So let us go down the memory lane and meet the females.