Storytime: Nosebleeds and Me

Once upon a time, there lived a boy called Peter. Peter loved watching anime and reading manga. In fact, he would often visit his local entertainment stores every Saturday and buy all he could.

Peter lived in the town of Crewe. Peter liked it in Crewe because the Virgin Megastores had an "anime" section, and the Ottakar's book store had a "manga" section. Peter enjoyed visiting these sections, that he may visit them two or three times a day! Peter didn't have much of a social life.

One day, Peter met a friend in town. It was Conor, a friend from school.

"Hello Conor" said Peter. "Hello Peter" said Conor.

What fun!

Conor has liked anime and manga for much longer than Peter. Conor watched "Outlaw Star" and "Tenchi Muyo" on the Toonami TV channel. See the Sky bill.

Conor and Peter started visiting the shops together. First, they went to Virgin Megastores. They went to the anime section immediately to look at the DVDs. Cromartie High School, Akira, Love Hina, they were all there. There was even a boxset of Azumanga Daioh. Peter likes Azumanga Daioh. See the AMVs.

When they were done, they went to Ottakar's to look at the manga. Peter has been buying a lot of manga recently, so he was hoping there were some new releases. Low and behold, there were! However, this is where the story takes a turn for the worse.

While Peter was looking through the manga, Conor had picked up a volume of "Battle Vixens". Conor showed the cover to Peter. This was Peter's first exposure to abnormally large breasts. If Peter's life was an anime or manga, he could possibly experience a bleeding nose or "nosebleed".

He did. See the tissues.

Peter had a large nosebleed in the middle of the Ottakar's store after looking at a volume of "Battle Vixens".

The moral of the story is, when reading "Battle Vixens", always keep tissues handy. Also, when you read it, think of Peter and his nosebleed in the middle of the book store, and his fear of ever reading Battle Vixens ever again.

Poor Peter.

COMPEMETITION! Anime DVDs up for grabs

I'm feeling generous, so I've got some DVDs to give away which were sent to me by MVM Films a little while back for competition purposes.

Click here for a picture (I'm not lying)

I'm giving you the option to choose which of these you want. How do you win? Well...

Go to www.thisisthecat.com and listen again to my anime music radio show "Neko Desu" which is on Saturdays at 10pm. The new Listen Again player uses Microsoft Silverlight so that it's compatible with both Macs and PCs now.

Listen to the show and keep an ear out for when I make a mess of the title and artist for one of the songs. If you listened live, you might remember it.

Once you know what it is, send me a message on Twitter to @TheShillito with the title and artist for the song, as well as which DVD you want. Please choose one to make my life easier. (you can use TwitLonger or similar if you can't fit it into a single tweet).

To make it fair for those who listened live and those who are gonna listen again, I'll pick the winner at random from the correct entries (I'll assign a number to each entry and use the random.org generator to pick impartially). I'll split entries up into the separate DVDs. The winners I will announce on my Twitter. You can then DM/E-mail your address and I'll send the DVDs off to you.

DEADLINE: ummmm.... Wednesday 4th May? That should be enough time I reckon. I can then do the draws after college that day!

Finally, I will ship internationally, but I'm not rich so it'll probably take a little while to arrive depending on how far from the UK you are. As for customs, it'll be marked as a gift (because it is) so you shouldn't be charged any customs charges. If you are charged, I apologise in advance.

(I think that's everything.....)

Ah! If you like my show, it's on every Saturday at 10pm (UK time) on www.thisisthecat.com. Please tune in ^_^

Good luck!
Peter "The" Shillito

Anime I want licensed in the UK - Doing a Konata

I must admit, I'm not exactly rich. However, there are occasions where you want to do something completely unreasonable and spend more money than you really should. For me, there are two occasions this happens:

1) Food. I often spend more than I really need to when it comes to food. Usually because I see an offer, but sometimes I just think "I want food, buy lots".

2) Anime and manga. This is the actual point of this blog post. There are many anime I would love to own on DVD/blu-ray and many manga series I want to own as well. In fact, I've recently started buying more things than I have time to watch/read, meaning they're sitting on my shelf not doing much. This is a bad thing. I've started buying things simply for the sake of owning them. However, things may get much worse.

The anime "Lucky Star" features a character called "Konata" who likes anime/manga/games/etc. One bit that's quoted by people a lot (or it's used a lot when parodying otaku in general) is that she buys three copies of something. One for general use, one for lending purposes and one for collective purposes (i.e. keep locked away for the future). Some might say this is a waste of money, but to others it makes perfect sense. There are some titles that I would be willing to do this for.

The rest of this post will be a continuously updating list of anime I want to own, with a rating out of 5 for how much I want to own it. However, if the rating is 5K, I would be sorely tempted to do a Konata and buy three copies. Also note that this for UK releases.

Angel Beats! - 5K
Bokurano - 3
Chu-Bra - 5K (seriously)
Dennou Coil - 5
Fractale - 4
Hidamari Sketch - 5K (all 3 seasons. I already own the Region 1 releases of series 1 and 2)
Kanamemo - 4
Kannagi - 2
KissxSis - 5K (simply because I know it won't happen)
Kobato. - 4
Kore wa Zombie Desuka? - 5K (favourite show of that season)
Kūchū Buranko (Trapeze) - 4
Kuragehime - 3
Magical Pokaan - 4
MM! - 5
Nyan Koi! - 5
Oniichan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne - 3
Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakama-tachi - 2
Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt - 4
Rio ~ Rainbow Gate ~ - 4 (for comedy purposes)
Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei - 5K (please)
Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin - 3
Seitokai no Ichizon - 5
Seitokai Yakuindomo - 5K (because it will never happen)
SHUFFLE! - 5 (no K because I already own the region 1 DVD)
Sora no Otoshimono - 4
Shukufuku no Campanella - 5
Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru - 3
The World God Only Knows - 5K (one of my favourite series ever)
Toradora! - 2

I'll keep this updated when I remember about it. There's another blog post due soon...

EMERGENCY MOE SCALE (patent pending) UPDATE (Fractale spoilers)

In my previous blog post, I put the following measurement:

Nessa (Fractale) - 8.832sth

MASSIVE FRACTALE ENDING SPOILERS

At the end of the final episode of Fractale, Nessa and Phyrne kinda merge to become the same person. What is shown in the last few minutes is that the body of Phyrne has the mindset and mannerisms of Nessa.

THE MOE-SCALE IS OFF THE CHARTS! It seems to be impossible to measure the Moe-Scale for this character as there seems to be no delay between the character talking, and wanting to give her a hug.

This means my research into the perfect measurement for calculating how moe a character is requires more work. I shall continue my research.

Have a nice day,

Dr. Peter Shillito PHD

DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor, I do not have a PHD and this article has no real scientific merit. I also do not have a patent pending on the idea as it wasn't my idea in the first place and I don't think I could patent it anyway. I do think it's an interesting idea with potential though. Let me know what you think!

Peter's Moe Scale (Patent Pending) - Follow up: Winter 2010/11 #science

So as a follow up to my post on a way to determine how "moe" an anime character is, I thought I'd give the run down on how I'm viewing this season's anime now that it's almost over.

Remember, I shall be using the unit of measure "seconds 'till hugs" or sth for short. Please see the article for a better explanation. Of course, I will only be using characters from shows I've watched. So don't be offended if your favourite character isn't on here, it just means the show didn't interest me.

Listed as: Character (show) - measurement

Nessa (Fractale) - 8.832sth

Haruna (Korezom) - 11.532sth

Yuu (Korezom) - <approx need more accurate recording equipment for milliseconds>

Charlotte in girl mode (Infinite Stratos) - 7.647sth

Madoka characters - This is difficult since the characters are rarely in an environment suitable for testing. However, when original Homura (with glasses) is introduced, a similar anomaly to that of Yuu from Korezom occurs where the sth is milliseconds at most.

Please note, these results are inconclusive for the characters as a whole since they only rely on a single measurement. However, they give a reasonable overview of my feelings for the characters of this season. Further research shall be made.

Have a nice day,

Dr. Peter Shillito PHD

DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor, I do not have a PHD and this article has no real scientific merit. I also do not have a patent pending on the idea as it wasn't my idea in the first place and I don't think I could patent it anyway. I do think it's an interesting idea with potential though. Let me know what you think!

How I started #NekoDesu at The Cat

From time to time, people ask me how I got started at The Cat radio with my anime music show. It's a slightly interesting story (not very interesting, so I won't blame you if you get bored).

In Crewe (where I live) there's a local anime club called the AMGSC (Anime, Manga and Gaming in South Cheshire). I can't remember if the head of the club asked or got invited, but another member and I went to the Cat's studio to plug the club's existence and to get members. This was before the studio was moved to Nantwich, so this studio was the one upstairs in the M Club. It was Sunday the...something^th of May in 2009. We were guests on Paul and Angie's "Off The Wall" show. The radio was on FM at that time so that was pretty cool.

So we talked about the club for a bit and I asked if I could play an anime song (I brought a few with me). I ended up playing Bouken Deshou Deshou by Hirano Aya (the opening theme to The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi). Once the show was over, I asked if they were looking for any presenters (out of curiosity more than anything) and I was given an e-mail address for the chairman.

After a few e-mails back and to, I was called in to talk and put forward my idea for the show. I was given some training and I got a time slot for my first internet show: every Thursday at 9pm until 10pm. A few weeks later, we had to move the M Club studio almost a week before the next FM broadcast (November/December 2009). Eventually, I went on FM at the new studio in Nantwich (scary!).

Due to OFCOM regulations, FM broadcasts for new stations only last for 28 days at a time, and you can only do them twice a year. Kinda crap, but that's OFCOM for you. Either way, FM broadcasts are awesome, as well as being a bit scary.

So, after this, I decided to put the show on hiatus for a few months. Why? Because I used up most of my anime music in those 4 weeks. So, I went on a mission to get more anime music for when I returned to the station. This is where it gets a bit fuzzy. I don't remember off the top of my head when I re-started doing my show. However, according to when I created the playlists on my computer, it would be around March time.

So, let's assume I started again in March (which sounds about right). The slot I had previously on a Thursday was taken by someone else. However, a slot opened up on Friday for a show 9pm to 10pm. I took that and called my show "Series two" on the programme guide.

Eventually, it was time for another FM broadcast. This time it was July 2010. I can't remember whether it was changed beforehand, or for the FM broadcast, but my show changed to the current Saturday 10pm to 11pm. Since the time changed, I called this Series 3. It's been series 3 for quite a while now (almost a year in fact).

Not long before that FM broadcast, I started putting my anime music into the Cat's music database. Until then, I had burnt the show's music onto 2 CD-RWs each week and then went between the two of them. This meant having to take requests before the show, and then put them in a playlist to burn before the show. I'd also have to print off the playlist with copyright details and put them in a file at the studio so that we pay the right money to PRS/PPL.

Now, all the music is in the database and simply requires dragging it into the timeline for the show. This means I can also take live requests for songs too as I just do a search, and then drag it in.

Currently, there's approximately 400 anime songs in the database. I'm averaging 12/13 songs each show depending on how many adverts there are, or how long Community Action is. Oh and how long I talk for of course, and that's something interesting.

On the Internet, there are whole radio stations dedicated to anime music. There's quite a few actually. However, some of these probably don't pay licensing fees like we do, and I have yet to find one with an actual presenter like me. Those are two big reasons to listen to my show. We pay money to PRS/PPL depending on how many listeners we get and how many songs I play. I think it's something like:

( (money) x (length of song played) ) x (number of listeners) = money that goes to labels

There may be other factors, but that's how I thought it works.

As for the other point, I think having a presenter hosting a radio show is important. It makes it much more personal since you can feed back to listeners, especially when it comes to requests. I can read out listener e-mails, Twitter post, and even have phone-ins.

One last thing, according to my research, Neko Desu is the only anime music radio show to receive FM broadcasts in the UK. I have not found any other station doing anything similar to me that broadcasts on FM. Perhaps one day in the future, I could get a show on a national station and broadcast to millions of people. That's a dream for the future.

brb writing to the BBC Asian Network......

Pledge Drive - you pay, I pay from #nekodesu

I have a weekly radio show on www.thisisthecat.com called "Neko Desu" where I play Japanese anime music. It's on every Saturday at 10pm including tonight. Tonight, in fact, I am covering the show before mine from 8pm to 10pm called "Caturday Night Live" which plays pop, indie, rock, metal, dubstep, you name it. Since I'm there, I'll be dropping in the odd anime song too.

However, as you will probably know, there has been a huge disaster in Japan with earthquakes and tsunamis devastating areas. I've seen stuff on TV and online. It's horrific.

So I decided to donate some money. However, I want to encourage people to donate too, which is where you come in. From 8pm tonight, I shall be on www.thisisthecat.com taking requests. However, for each request, I want you to pledge some money that you have or will donate. For each request I play, I will announce your name and pledge on air, thank you and I will also donate £1 for each request I play.

I have chosen the British Red Cross to donate my portion of the money to, but you can choose who you'd like so I'd like you to tell me who you've donated to as well. The British Red Cross are actually forwarding donations to the Japanese Red Cross if you go through that page so you know your money will be used there.

If you want to request a song, visit the website on www.thisisthecat.com and use any of the methods on there. I want your name (or pseudonym if you wish), how much you have/will donate, which organisation you are donating to, and of course the song you want.

I hope you tune in, and even if you don't I hope you donate what you can.

Thanks

Peter "The" Shillito

Science presents: Peter's Moe Scale (patent pending)

I've mentioned it a couple of times on Twitter, but maybe I need to go into more detail about it. "It" being my* "Moe Scale".

*Please note that I actually heard this from someone else, but I don't remember who.

So the "Moe Scale" has only been attempted a few times. However, on both major occurrences I am aware of, they are very limited in scope. Sometimes, it can be quite difficult to place a character.

For example, take Japanator's moe scale:


This is far too generalized. Some characters can fit between two categories. In fact, using "moe moe kyun" in the title of this scale is ironic since Mio is frequently regarded as the most moe character of K-ON, yet has breasts that go boin. Additionally, some regard tsudere as the most moe characteristic a character can have! Also, real-life (3D) people can be moe too.




This second one I found on the Crunchyroll forums and I think is getting close to a usable scale. This scale includes "GAR", the opposite of moe, to give comparisons to. However, it's actually more vague than the Japanator scale in that there's no real indication of how to give characters the right level on the scale. It's mostly guesstimating, which isn't very helpful as you'll be arguing with yourself about putting characters between other characters.

This is where my moe scale comes in. It takes an actual quantifiable unit of measure, and applies it to moe. Incidentally, this led to creating my own unit of measure. More on that later.

But first, how do we measure with this scale. First, take a standard anime episode featuring the character due to be measured. This works best if the character is on screen for extended periods of time. You will struggle with minor characters, but if they talk for a while, this could also work.

Watch the episode up to when the chosen character is due to appear. Start a stopwatch at the moment the character appears for his/her/its extended appearance.

Now, this is crucial. Stop the stopwatch the moment you feel the urge to either hug the character or go "dawwwwww"(+/- any amount of "w"s). Round the number of seconds to the nearest second. You will now have the level of moe for this character.

In order to store and share this data, it is recommended to use the unit of measure "seconds 'till hugs" or sth for short. So, for a period of 10 seconds until the urge to hug arises, this would be displayed as "10sth". Note that I am using "hugs" rather than "dawww". This is because "second 'till dawww" would be abbreviated to "std" which could be interpreted as something different.

You may be thinking that this would only be valid for that one scene. You would indeed be right, however it does give a fair indication of the moe level of the character. For enhanced accuracy, it is recommended to apply this method to several scenes over various episodes, then take the average seconds 'till hugs.

I believe this method of measuring characters' moe level is more accurate and more fair than other ways. This way, you cannot argue with yourself regarding the placement of characters, and allows for a much larger range of characters, and can also be applied to real-life 3D people too with some slight modifications.

I hope that one day, my moe scale will become the standard in moe measuring across the world. In fact, one day, there could be a global database of people's moe scale measurements for characters which get averaged and we officially find the world's most moe character/person.

Coming soon: a blog post featuring my own moe scale'd characters...

Have a nice day,

Dr. Peter Shillito PHD

DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor, I do not have a PHD and this article has no real scientific merit. I also do not have a patent pending on the idea as it wasn't my idea in the first place and I don't think I could patent it anyway. I do think it's an interesting idea with potential though. Let me know what you think!

Musings about TV channels

Oh hey! It's blog time! (not that there is a scheduled time for blogging since I rarely have more than 140 characters to say).

A long time ago, in a room where I'm sitting now, I had Freeview for watching TV. I still do, but I don't use it much. I heard about this amazing new service called "Top Up TV". You bought a viewing card for your Freeview box with a slot, and then paid £8 a month and got access to about 10 channels like UKTV Gold, E4 (before it became free) and a few others. I thought this was awesome, especially since you got access to Cartoon Network, Boomerang and Toonami (before it closed down). This was great because my parents refused to get Sky because it was so expensive (and still is) and the only other times I could watch these channels was at my grandparents' house (who had Telewest cable) or at a friend's house who had Sky. So I got my parents to reduce my pocket money and get me that instead.

It was awesome for a while. Since the channels were timeshared, sometimes at rubbish hours, I would record the programming on some channels either overnight or while I was at school onto a VHS on longplay mode (around six to eight hours) then watch it when I wake up/get back home. It was awesome....until it started going wrong.

First it was E4. E4 became free on Freeview. I wasn't too fussed at the time since I was too young to like any of the stuff on there. Then, some channels got less hours. In the end, even Top Up TV themselves realized that it would be pointless to continue. They're now doing some crazy on demand thing that would be cool if the programming was better.

That's not the point of this blog post. I'm missing watching Cartoon Network, Boomerang and UKTV Gold, among others. So I started thinking, could I justify buying a subscription to Sky? I have a satellite already installed into my room for Freesat, but what about other channels?

Well, Sky sell their packages with "packs" of channels: Variety pack, Children's Pack, Knowledge Pack, Style and Culture Pack, Music Pack and News & Events Pack. They also have their premium Movies Packs, as well some Sports channels. They don't have a world cinema movie channel, and sports are a waste of time and money, so I'll ignore them.

Currently, Sky are charging £19.50 for one normal pack, then £1 per pack after that. So minimum a month is £19.50. But what's actually in these packs? Sky only has "X Pack includes..." then lists some channels. "Includes" says to me, that's not all of them. So I went to ask Uncle Jimmy over at Wikipedia. There's a LOT of channels. So I'm gonna list ones that are not free that I would watch on a regular basis, along with which pack they are in:

Kerrang! - Music Pack (they used to be good but some say they're rubbish now)
Cartoon Network - Children's Pack
Boomerang - Children's Pack
Sky1 - Variety Pack
Sky2 - Variety Pack
G.O.L.D. - Variety Pack
Comedy Central - Variety Pack
FX - Variety Pack (they are now home to Adult Swim)

I'd like to say Nickelodeon too, but the only thing I'd watch on there is Fairly Odd Parents.

So that's 8 channels which are NOT free-to-air/view and which aren't available for free through Freeview.

In order to get all those channels, I would need the Music Pack, the Children's Pack and the Variety Pack. That's £21.50 a month. For 8 channels, that's roughly £2.69 a month per channel. If I include Nick, a few +1 channels and Comedy Central Extra, that works out at £1.43 a month per channel. HOWEVER, Sky don't offer the non-plus box any more. So you HAVE to get the Sky+ box. That generally makes the +1 channels obsolete.

To make things worse, you then have to pay £49 for the Sky+ box (unless you sign up for Sky Broadband and Phone, which I know is bloody awful) and a £30 set-up. So that's £79 one-off cost as well.

So, taking into account that £79 one-off fee, that's £337 for a year. Or the equivalent of £28 a month. For 8 channels, that's £3.50 per month per channel.

I don't think so Sky.

Oh hey! I didn't see you there! - Hanafuda Cards

So it's been well over a year since I last posted on this blog type thing. I've generally moved over to Twitter, but I thought I might blog about things every now and again in case 140 characters don't cut it.

Lets start with the Hanafuda Cards I got about half an hour ago through the post.

Nintendo have this "Stars Catalogue" thing where you can register a code from each new Nintendo game or console you buy, and you get "Stars". You can trade these stars for things on the catalogue. Some things are cheap, like wallpapers, screensavers or ringtones. However, the expensive ones are proper things from games to gold plated Mario Kart wheels. Some things you can't buy in shops. I was lucky enough to buy myself some limited edition Hanafuda Cards.

If you don't know what Hanafuda Cards are, I don't blame you. They're traditional Japanese playing cards from a long time ago. This is how Nintendo first started back in the 1800's. They've changed a bit since then, but they still make Hanafuda cards today. In the film "Summer Wars", Hanafuda Cards are a main part of the story (and probably what made me order them).

After I ordered them, I half expected a small cardboard box to arrive with some flimsy cards in. I was very wrong.

So this is the box it came in. Plastic, with a nice picture of Mario, and buttons to flip open the top and bottom.

Instructions on the right (that was nice of them) and a fold open bit of fuzzy stuff (dunno what it's called) to pull out the actual box of cards.

So here's the actual card box (box in a box). Each side shows the new redesigned cards featuring Nintendo characters compared to the traditional animal cards. I guess this specific set of cards isn't quite as traditional as I thought.

Here's the cards inside the cardboard box. They're surprisingly thick actually. Not bendy in the slightest!

So here's all the cards spread out to show all four cards in each month (Hanafuda deck is 4 cards per month, so 4 x 12). Note the Nintendo game characters instead of the traditional animals.

This is me trying to show how thick they are. Kinda cool, but difficult to show in a picture...

Now, some have described the games you play with Hanafuda cards as bloody difficult. The classic game you play is "Koi-Koi" where you have to make matches of different types of card. It's pretty confusing, but fun once you work it out. Fortunately, Nintendo included some rules:


And lots of them.... It also looks like this specific set of Hanafuda cards is intended for European audiences specifically, as it has instructions for various European languages, and not Japanese.

Well, I'll start re-enacting bits from Summer Wars now, albeit without the threat of computer viruses or (spoilerspoilerspoiler).

Summer Wars is due out on DVD and blu-ray in March in the UK by Manga Entertainment. I saw it in the cinema at Scotland Loves Animation, and I can't wait for it to come out. If you get the chance, WATCH IT WATCH IT WATCH IT!

Peter "The" Shillito