Displaying items by tag: featured

ShindoL has just been officially announced for an appearance at Anime Expo 2022.  Love him or hate him, he is a quality artist. His stories might be a little out there (to put things lightly), but damn, the man can draw. And, if you don't know him at all, that's probably for the better.  You should probably keep it that way.

This year is the 25th Anniversary of Atlus' Persona franchise. Like a lot of people, I really got into Persona with Persona 3. And, like a lot of people, I then fell down the Shin Megami Tensei hole. Devil Survivor, Devil Summoner, SMT Nocturne, you name it, I played it. Didn't finish all of them, but it was a fun ride. A lot of people only know Persona 3, 4, and 5, but that's entirely okay. There's enough to go around for everyone.

Atlus has a lot of things planned for the 25th Anniversary in both America and Japan. Naturally, they are bringing out some goodies for the biggest anime convention in North America, Anime Expo.

DEMONDICE.  TeddyLoid. ACME.  You've probably heard of them before.  They're going to be in Los Angeles coming up really soon.  

Earlier today, it was announced that the Obey Me! Boys would be attending Anime Expo 2022. Obey Me!, shorthand for Obey Me! – One Master to Rule Them All, is a dating/romance RPG game.

On the music front, Anime Expo announced the appearance of the group Travis Japan for Anime Expo 2022. Travis Japan is part of the wide-ranging Johnny and Associates organization. First founded in 1962 under Johnny Kitagawa, Johnny and Associates (or Johnny's for short), has pioneered the evolution of male singing and dancing groups in Japan. Some of Johnny's (and Japan's) most famous groups include Arashi, KinKi Kids, SMAP, KAT-TUN, and many others. It's safe to say they know what they're doing when it comes to male groups.

We got the opportunity to review Ryoma! The Prince of Tennis - Decide movie from 2022. The movie is a continuation of the series Prince of Tennis which includes a manga series, anime series, and several anime movies. The story of the series follows tennis prodigy Ryoma who is the son of a famous retired professional tennis player that is a legend.

During Labor Day weekend, I had the pleasure of attending PAX West in person since it had been shut down in 2020 due to the ongoing spread of Covid-19. Obviously, the one main concern with returning to a convention in 2021, was safety, and with the Delta variant in full swing and me and my colleague were a bit hesitant to attend.

Fanime is coming up next weekend. This is the long-awaited return of one of California's mainstay conventions. It's been a long three years since the last one (having been on hiatus since 2019) and we're finally back in the city of San Jose, CA.  We at The-O Network have been attending Fanime for upwards of 10 years so this is one of our most loved conventions, and given its proximity to many of the staff here, is best considered our home convention.

Nightwish.  Yeah, that's definitely not a Japanese band.  Finnish, actually.

And I can sense the head editor staring at me right now wondering why this post is here.  It's anime-related, I swear.  I'll get to it.

Like many things in life, the first impression of a convention is important.  A convention's first-year oftentimes determines its ultimate fate.  The inaugural OffKai Expo took place between April 29 and May 1 of this year at the DoubleTree Hotel right next to San Jose's Mineta International Airport. As mentioned previously, "OffKai" translates to "offline meetup," and usually in the context of people who have met online through video games, chat rooms, or otherwise, and are now meeting for the first time in person.  That's exactly the name of the game here, and the focus is on Virtual YouTubers.