As a fan of the Japanese artist Masamune Shirow, I have been following his work for almost 12 years. When Seishinsha announced the release of a new artbook by Shirow, I was of course excited. I already knew that most of the art in the book contained re-prints of work, this didn’t bother me so much as I was glad to see something coming out of the Shirow arena, after almost 4 years of nothing. Around A5 in size, it comes as a hardcover with thick glossy pages amd a sturdy dust jacket; the start and end pages are a thick textured red card. 87 pages of art in total, some with full page spread, and...

What do the Death Note “Death Box” and the Ghost In The Shell Man-Machine Interface: Solid Box have in common? They’re both so frikkin HUGE and a bloody pain in the neck to store! *flails in frustration* I’ve been thinking about re-organising my anime & manga collection to allow more space for all my other books & comics, that have spent the last five years languishing away in storage boxes. I’ve sold off quite a bit of my anime & manga collection in the last two years… well, some… ^_^; It has proven to be quite difficult to part with a lot of this...

Some of you may remember my mentioning that I was taking part in the 2009 Rotation Stitchers board cross stitch Fantasy Exchange, where the idea was that we stitched a fantasy themed design, finished it up in some way, and sent it to our exchange, all of it a surprise. I received mine, and you won’t believe how happy I am about it! The lovely lovely Heather ended up with me as her exchange, and she stitched this gorgeous wee dragon, and did it up as a pin keep. The design is a freebie by Teresa Wentzler called ‘Tempest in a Teacup’ and is so appropriate for me as I love tea! From...

I’ve spent all day today trying to decide how best to describe my experience at Doujin Overload 2009, and I guess I should start out with what I enjoyed. Don’t let the above statement scare you. I enjoyed the event for the most part, and if not for these few issues I had, it could have been just as good as last year’s event. I digress… The day started out beautifully, but cold. Nothing at all like the atrocious stormy weather we had last year. Auckland City wasn’t terribly busy at 8.30AM on a Saturday morning, and after paying for parking I hiked up the hill to the Hyatt...

So I’ve been fairly silent on this blog for the last few weeks. There is a reason of course, and I shall try to explain… Since losing my job, I have been under quite a bit of stress, and lets not talk about the depression. My depression manifests itself physically by emotional eating, and I have been eating, some very very bad things. It amazes me that I haven’t gained weight, thank god for my daily power walks. On top of that I’ve had a sinus infection. All of this together meant that I’ve been having some very very bad migraines. So severe that I am still recovering from...