I read an article today about how tsundere — a combative personality that shows occasional flashes of kindness, as exemplified by Haruhi Suzumiya — is a bunch of old crap. In its place is deretsun, essentially the opposite personality — seemingly nice and modest, but later cold and criticizing.

Of course, I read about this in a Japanese women’s fashion magazine, so there may not be a preponderance of scientific evidence to back this statement up. Here’s what the May ‘08 issue of with had to say on the subject:

“The exact opposite of the ‘tsundere’ that’s been so popular the past few years, this new ‘gap character’ is rapidly rising in popularity. The secret to the buzz: the exasperated lecturing behind the soothing exterior, a sharp combination that’s rare to see nowadays.”

One weblog commenting on this brings up Maison Ikkoku’s Kyoko Otonashi as an example of a deretsun kind of personality — extremely nice, often to a fault, but someone who snaps and lets Godai have it whenever he screws up yet another date or whatever.

This strikes me as the sort of personality that people would find attractive only in the world of anime, but…

Anyone following the whole HD format war mess knows that Universal was the one holdout that stood by HD DVD through thick and thin. As the one HD DVD supporter on staff, I figured that it’d be a cold day in Hell when we’d see Universal announcing upcoming titles for the Blu-ray format. Yet, here we are and today Universal did just that.

(more…)

Right about now, subscribers should be receiving their copies of PiQ, Issue 2 and for those of you just discovering PiQ, you should be seeing copies popping up in stores across the country.

This month, our cover story is all about Sam & Max and the history of the franchise, from the games to the comics to the TV series. We also had the opportunity to chat with series creator Steve Purcell and even worked with Telltale games to create an exclusive cover you won’t find anywhere else. For anyone who’s been following the franchise all these years, you won’t want to miss this issue, and even if you’ve never of Sam & Max, you’d be remiss to not check it out.

(more…)

People talk about anime piracy a lot these days, but do you see anyone doing anything about it? Of course not. That’s why you’ve got pirates like these operating with utter impunity all across Japanese territory.

If you’re wondering where Crunchyroll’s investment is going, now you know!*

* not really

Virgin Comics announced today that a new animated trailer for Guy Ritchie’s Gamekeeper, the first in a series of new promotional videos for the Directors’ Cut line of books (including Ed Burns’ Dock Walloper and Jonathan Mostow’s The Megas.), is now being featured on MySpace.

If you’re a fan of the action-packed murderation that Ritchie packs into his films, do yourself a favor and catch up with the second series out now. With its distinct cinematic style, it’s no wonder that Gamekeeper is also currently in development as a feature film at Warner Bros.. I think we’ve all been waiting for Guy Ritchie’s film career to get a proper kick in the pants, so this is certainly one to keep an eye on.

Guy Ritchie’s Gamekeeper — Virgin Comics