Your favorite friends-turned-lovers podcasting duo makes their triumphant return with episode 109 of Pixel x Pixel! For the first time in her adult life, Anne is in the US for the summer convention and concert season, so she and Marcus regale their many event adventures from the past couple of months, including Cat Con, Midsummer Scream, a Jeff Goldblum concert, a Danny Elfman concert, Disney Pride Nite, and more! Plus, Marcus picked up the Asus ROG Ally and has all his hot takes on the best new PC gaming handheld. And don’t forget, Anne’s latest game localization credit, Norn9: Last Era, comes out at the end of August!
43:00 – Media Minutes: Vampire Survivors co-op, Super Mario RPG, Hypnospace Outlaw, Gex, Beacon Pines, Return of the Obra Dinn, The Excavation of Hobbs Barrow, Barbie, Thank God It’s Friday 1:05:00 – Media Minutes: JAST Blue localizing two PIL/SLASH BL games, Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon localization announced, Clock Tower remaster, Ratatan Kickstarter, Disney ending physical releases in AU and NZ, Fashion Dreamer and Virche Evermore: Error Salvation release dates
♫ “Willie Lomans,” “5 minutes pleasure,” and “6 pence and moon” from Alphabet Planet by Hiroki Kikuta
The Takarazuka Revue, Japan’s all-female theater troupe, has been historically difficult to access for foreigners. While they have performed around the world since the troupe’s first performance in 1914, the most recent US performance was in 1992 according to the Takarazuka Wiki. Tickets are available to purchase online for their in-person performances in Japan, but there’s nothing like the fancy subtitle glasses some shows use if you don’t know Japanese.
That’s why the livestream announcement for Cosmos Troupe’s Casino Royale -My Name’s Bond- was met with such excitement, as it marked the first time a full Takarazuka Revue performance would be streamed for an international audience. And with English, Korean, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Indonesian, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Thai subtitles, at that!
Never fear, episode 108 of Pixel x Pixel is here! Your intrepid cohosts Marcus and Anne have been too busy going out and having fun to record lately, but that means they have lots of extra fun things to discuss on this latest episode! First, Marcus is back with a new and improved Collector’s Cabinet article on GrimGrimoire Once More featuring photos by Anne, and he’s gone and preordered yet another handheld PC device. Meanwhile, Anne has been hard at work launching their new joint Instagram account and picking up a snazzy new job! Don’t forget to stay tuned for Media Minutes where they really lose it over the Project Q announcement.
35:00 – Media Minutes: Emulation, Neighbor, Lighthouse, Tbe Super Mario Bros. Movie JP version, Spirited Away stage play, Takarazuka Revue Casino Royale 1:00:00 – Media Minutes: PlayStation showcase, Marvelous game showcase, Norn9 Last Era preorders/release date change, OPPAI Ero App Academy Bigger, Better, Electric Boobaloo, Ooku: The Inner Chambers anime
♫ “Willie Lomans,” “5 minutes pleasure,” and “6 pence and moon” from Alphabet Planet by Hiroki Kikuta
Naoshi, the sand artist I recently met at Takumi Alley, has just launched a Kickstarter campaign for a picture book called Tako Knows! Follow the short but endearing life of Tako, a tako (the Japanese word for “octopus”), through 88 pages of colorful illustrations designed to bring joy and humor to readers of all ages.
Naoshi writes that after learning that some species of octopi’s lives can be as short as two years, she was “struck by their strength to live out their lives in earnest” and thus was inspired to write a picture book about a tako living its life to the fullest. I love the vibrant colors and whimsical themes in Naoshi’s art, and Tako Knows definitely excemplifies that. Plus, it’s all the more amazing when you realize all of the art is created from colored sand!
Look closely at the images and you can see the texture of the sand used to create them!
While the Kickstarter was already fully funded within a four hours of launching, there is still plenty of incentive to back, including a stretch goal where all backers will receive two postcards with their other rewards!
The picture book itself is $20, but there are a plethora of add-ons to choose from, including an art print of “The Great Tako Wave” inspired by “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa,” a sticker sheet, washi tape, and even a sand art DIY kit.
To learn more about the various tiers available to backers, check out the official Kickstarter page. The campaign runs through June 14, so hopefully we will see even more exciting stretch goals in the future!
Welcome back to yet another episode of Pixel x Pixel, where co-hosts Marcus and Anne see all the hot new movies and play all the hottest video game releases! Well, that’s what it feels like this time anyway, with Marcus and Anne dipping their toes into the Resident Evil 4 remake and watching the Mario movie on opening night. But it’s not all shiny and new media, as the pair stay true to their roots by also watching and playing some extremely random things… Plus, Anne covers a Japanese stationery event and does some promotion to celebrate the release of Norn9: Var Commons!
13:20 – Media Minutes: Resident Evil 4 remake, Suzuki Bakuhatsu, Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Demon Seed, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Super Mario 64, Mario Bros. movie 44:26 – Notable News: E3 2023 cancelled, Lkyt and Sorcerer’s Choice: Angel or Demon? BL game releases, Hana Awase: New Moon announced with English text included
♫ “Willie Lomans,” “5 minutes pleasure,” and “6 pence and moon” from Alphabet Planet by Hiroki Kikuta
When you’re a butch lesbian that’s attracted to other butch lesbians, it can be hard enough to find a girlfriend, but for Meiri Hiranishi, an awkward otaku college student with no dating experience, things seem near impossible!
Meiri Hiranishi’s debut manga, The Girl That Can’t Get a Girlfriend, is an autobiographical story based on comics she posted over the years to her Twitter, Webtoon, and Tapas. Meiri is a Japanese woman living in the US who longs to find a hot, short-haired girlfriend à la shojo anime heroines such as Sailor Uranus, but her awkward attempts at finding love all end in failure. That is, until she travels to Japan for the summer and meets Ash, an American teaching English in Japan.
The pair share a whirlwind month-long romance until Meiri has to return to the US to finish college, but their long distance relationship ends abruptly when Ash breaks things off. Unable to move on, Meiri struggles to try to win Ash back and find happiness for four long years.
Perhaps a more appropriate title for this manga would be “The Girl That Can’t Keep a Girlfriend,” since the majority of the story focuses on Meiri’s relationship with Ash from their initial meeting, tentative flirting, and declarations of love over the span of one month to their breakup and Meiri’s broken heart.
The initial couple of chapters focus on introducing Meiri and her tastes in women, establishing herself as a shy, insecure otaku, which fit with her depiction as a round, goofy caricature (whereas all of her love interests look straight out of shojo manga). Her embarrassing attempts to get a girlfriend, such as when she tries to go femme in order to win a butch woman over, make it clear that she grapples with her own self-worth and feels the need to change herself to appeal to others.
While there’s a lot of sweetness and fun interactions throughout the story, particularly when Meiri meets and starts dating Ash, the core issues she deals with as a lesbian woman struggling to find love and self-worth will tug at your heartstrings, whether you can directly relate to her problems or not.
Still, it’s all dealt with a witty sense of humor and self-awareness that keeps things from feeling too heavy. It’s also worth noting that Meiri wrote the entire English script herself, and her language feels right at home to someone active on the internet in 2023.
The Girl That Can’t Get a Girlfriendis a look at the life and relationships of a single woman, and the stakes may feel comparatively low to some, but in a world where we need more of all kinds of queer stories, from the happy to the sad, extraordinary to mundane, it is well worth the read. I particularly appreciated the evolution of Meiri’s perception of herself over the course of the manga and seeing her finally get to the light at the end of the tunnel. I look forward to reading more of Meiri Hiranishi’s work in the future!
If you have an interest in Japanese stationery, you’ve likely heard of Midori, a paper products company founded in 1950. They produce everything from stickers to letter sets, and are well known for their MD Paper line of notebooks, which are celebrating their 15th anniversary this year.
As part of the anniversary, Midori has released an updated line of MD notebooks, a series of 15 special notebooks with covers drawn by different artists, and is running pop-up events around the world! I was thrilled to find out that a store close to me, M.Lovewell, would be hosting the pop-up event from March 25 to April 8. Of course, I had to stop by the store and pick up some goodies!
