One Piece More: The End of Summer

Summer is coming to a close. It’s time to put away those beach towels and take out the books. That is if you go to school. School is very important. You learn very valuable things and not all of it comes from textbooks. School is a life experience that is important to the development of the mind. It is a time where you can experiment and afford to make mistakes. The idea of school helps provide structure to one's life: School and Summer Vacation. Pretty great set up. It helps dictate your life and helps improves it.

Because once school is gone.....You enter a new world.

-Mikey

New One Piece Opening

The big One Piece news of the week seems to be the announcement of a new One Piece opening for the anime that is set to premiere on October 2nd. The new opening is rumored to kick start the new story arc of One Piece. (SPOILERS) The new story arc and opening will lead into the story of the crew’s reunion after the time skip with the character's new appearances and powers. (SPOILERS)

No official word has been said concerning a possible change of the anime title similar to what happened to Dragonball Z and other series. Personally I hope that the title stays the same since I like the simplicity of 'One Piece' as a title. It is simple and unique. Also, as mentioned on Twitter, "One Piece: New World at a Time" doesn't have the same ring to it as "One Piece at a Time".

No artist has been named as the performer behind the new opening song but, surely that will come in time.

So enjoy Opening 14 as much as you can right now. It is currently one of my favorite openings and I will miss it.

What Mikey Been Watching
You know....I had several plans/ideas for this summer’s redesign. I was going to create a banner to give the blog a more 'summer' like feel. Redesign the mini-banners that you see under the 'Blog Roll' section. Even release an interview that I been holding on to since March. Well it is now mid August and as you can see I have not done any of those things. Instead I have been watching some anime to help kill time. Thought I share some of my viewings with you guys.

Sket Dance
This is a show that I love right now. I had planned to watch this when it came out last Spring but due to school I just never got around to watching it. The show is so funny to watch but it is surprisingly emotional and deep. Bossun, Himeko, and Switch (The main cast) are all surprisingly deep characters that are much more then what meets the eye.

I walked into Sket Dance thinking it was going to be a comedy gag series where the main characters do odd jobs episode after episode. Then I began to see that we were getting more reoccurring characters and depth to some of the side characters. Then we were getting story arcs that were not only well done but were full of emotion. It has been about twenty-one episodes and we still don't know the back stories of the three protagonists and how they even came together to form the Sket Dance. It does not help that some of the story arcs make me wonder what the story is behind the character Bossun.

Gosick
Sherlock Holmes meets the Gothic Lolita style. This is the worst way to describe the show but do not let my inability to deliver positive descriptions fool you. The show has been a joy to watch. I decided to watch this one because it was recently picked up by Bandai and my buddies at the Reverse Thieves keep on ranting and raving about how great it is. haha

I have not been drawn too deeply into Gosick, because at the time of this writing I have not watched episode 9 but the show has been wonderful beyond my expectations. This was another show that I expected to follow a 'mystery of the week' format. Instead in episode one, we were thrown into a story arc that was enjoyable to watch.

The chemistry between Kujo and Victorique is rich. You have Victorique who tries to look like a serious character but deep down the little girl is a goofball. I love that every time she pulls out her pipe and just cannot help but to wish that bubbles would be blow out of it as soon as she sticks it in her mouth. Kujo plays the typical straight man of this series. Still he is an important character, as he is the Watson to Victorique's Sherlock.

JManga

 

This past Wednesday marked the grand opening of JManga.com. This is a website where you can legally read manga. It is the brainchild of a coalition of Japanese manga publishers developed to prevent piracy.

Personally I have not had the chance to get into JManga and play around with all that it has to offer. All I know about the website is that there is a point system in place, you can pay money for subscriptions (similar to Crunchyroll), One Piece can be found there, does not work too well on FireFox, and that it is  supposed to offer exclusive content from the mangakas. Not sure how the exclusive content part is supposed to work since, from what I understand, mangakas are very busy people who don't have much time outside of family and work. Supposedly, eventually they will do weekly simultaneous chapter releases of manga from Japan but currently you can find a lot of manga that has been published in the United States, which includes One Piece.

I really do want JManga to work and be successful. It is too soon to tell if things will work out for JManga but they will need to work really hard if they want to put a dent in the market for fan-made scanlations. The weekly One Piece scanlations are early illegal leaks, because Weekly Jump is released on Sundays (not Wednesdays). Now think about that to get a good idea of what JManga has to go up against.

Only time can tell what JManga will become. I suggest that everybody in the US (since it is being released in the US first) go out and give it a try. Eventually JManga will roll out all the cool toys and manga that hasn't been published in the US. If anything at least read One Piece.

I suggest that you head over to read Daniella's post at All About Manga to get a better idea about JManga.  
Blog Updates

First, off I would like to welcome Dsaftler to the crew. He will be our Navigator and will help lead the blog to well written posts. He is an accomplished editor and has already started pounding out the grammar mistakes in this blog. He will be working a lot behind the scenes but maybe you will see him write something.

Second, the blog's second year anniversary is coming up. Hard to believe that the blog has been running for two years and surely we have grown a lot. I have nothing up my sleeve currently but I do hope to have the interview with Luci Christian and Mike McFarland up by the end of the month. Also, due to popular demand the pictures from A-Kon will be posted on the blog and will receive some sort of write up. It is late but people want them so I will post them

Third, OniCon is around the corner. It is going down in Galveston, Texas during the last weekend of October. The plan is to attend now since it seems like I have the funds. I may try to get a panel set up for the convention since I have a few things to give away. I will keep you posted as we enter September.

Things surely are changing. School will start soon but for the first time in eighteen years I will not be taking part in this yearly ritual. It is going to be a bit surreal to see people go to school while I will not be a part of it. Still things are going well since I have obtained a new job to keep me busy and funded. Not sure how this will affect the blog but we’ll see. Maybe I can finally afford to save up to attend cons outside of Texas! (Let’s not get our hopes up.)

Either way, things surely are going to get interesting this fall.

Written by: Mikey
Edited by: Dsaftler