ストロベリー パニツク アニメ

Another April anime, Strawberry Panic is a imouto-aneki ai anime in the tradition of Marie-sama ga Miteru. BOAS caught the first manga chapter of Strawberry Panic and it looks pretty good.

Official Site

ARIA the Natural

Yet more releases for the anime spring season, ARIA the Animation gets a second season with ARIA the Natural. BOAS is definately looking forward to that laid back and cute life on Aqua again.

Official Site

Revolution Rated

And found wanting, the Nintendo Revolution specs have been detailed in an article in IGN. While the Revolution is twice as powerful on paper as the original Gamecube, the Revolution compares just slightly above the first XBox.

Source: IGN

Honey & Clover ^o^

Shueisha has announced that the second season of Honey & Clover
ハチミツトクローバー is scheduled to run this summer in Japan! And furthermore, the live action movie for Hachimitsu to Clover is also in the works.

Source: ANN
Shueisha
Hachikuro

Kanon 2006

From the same company that brought you AIR comes a remake of the classic dating sim Kanon. The trailer is available at their website, with the anime scheduled for this spring season.

Official Site

Tokyo Anime Fair

So there've been some pics and scores released for the Tokyo Anime Fair and all too kindly BOAS shares them with you. First comes a MSN Nippon picture pool of 145 cosplaying, manga reading, anime watching, girlfriend wanting, otaku at the Tokyo Anime Fair here. Also, the official awards have been given with Full Metal Alchemist: The Conquerer of Shambala taking best Animation of the Year, Best Music, and Best Original Story.

Source: ANN

Mobile Manga

Add another thing you can do with your cell phone in Japan is reading mobile manga. Nothing like a little Nana to spice up the morning commute.

Source: BBC

Kyo no Go no Ni 今日の５の２

The first of the five part OAV series Kyo no Go no Ni (Today in Grade 5 class 2) has been released. Kind of like Fifth graders behaving badly or Azuamanga Daioh now with boys and girls, Kyo no Go no Ni is a great look back into the cuter memories of youth. Definately not like the photoreel of dispair that was your high school year book.

Official Site

Celestial Cosplay

BOAS came across a new album of cosplay over at Celestial Star, check it out!

Celestial Star Gallery

Tokimeki Memorial Series

A new Tokimeki Memorial
ときめき メモリアルanime is coming this spring season! Tokimeki Memorial has been one of Konami's more popular dating sim games and BOAS himself played Tokimeki 1 & 2 back in the day. Keep an eye out for this one!

Official Site

Peeping, Probing, and Porn

An exploration of Edo to modern sexuality in Japan: Peeping, Probing, and Porn is set to exhibit in New York City's Museum of sex.

Official Site

Region Free PS3

SCEII President Phil Harrison confirmed with IGN at GDC 2006 that all PS3 games will be region free! Finally, I can buy all those anime dating sims, wan wan!

Source: IGN

Firefox 2.0 Alpha 1

The Mozilla crew have released the first alpha developers release of Firefox 2.0! This should be used for testing purposes only.

Mozilla: Bon Echo

ああ 女神ーさま もう 一つ！

Another season of Aa My Goddess is set to be released in the upcoming spring season of anime. Talk about beating a dead horse not seen since the likes of Megaman.

Trailer @ Memento

If I Were the Minister of Education

For the one person who reads this blog you know where this is going... For the rest, here's the general disclaimer: The following does not necessarily reflect the opinions of La Flaga, BOAS, or any of our affiliates.

If I were the minister of education:
1. School uniform skirt length regulation will be regulated according to the three sizes!
2. All academic achievement will be measured from the standard curve set by homeless people taking the same exam.
3. All nurses offices will be equiped with curtained beds and showers.
4. There will be no english as a second language classes.

This is my platform; you can see I'm bored...

Fedora Core 5

Fedora Core 5 has been released for all you linux affiliates.

Fedora Project

Azureus 2.4.0.2

The latest release of Azureus Bittorent Client has been released which fixed some bugs and faster crash restore.

Aelitis @ Sourceforge

Ayakashi Tenshuu Monogatari

The next installment of Ayakashi ~ Classic Japanese Horror ~ is available. Tenshuu Monogatari is based on the original play of Tomi Hime written in 1917.

ANGELA PRHYTHM

So I got this release from ANGELA recently and finally listened to some of it and it's pretty good. I've always like ANGELA's voice and style of singing especially in the OP/ED themes for Soukyuu no Fafner. Kinda like Yuki Kajiura meets Megumi Hayashibara meets Ayumi Hamasaki, check out ANGELA.

Some Follow Ups

Here are the conclusion of some previous posts here on La Flaga
1. Bleach officially licensed by VIZ from TV Tokyo with no home DVD releases reported yet. Source ANN
2. narf2006 wins the 14K prize for the solution to boot Windows XP on an Intel Mac.
Source /.

春 の アニメ プレビウ

Memento has posted a preview of upcoming anime in the spring of 2006 which should arrive in 3-4 weeks. The titles include xxxHolic, Nana, .Hack//Roots, School Rumble S2, and many more! It looks like another good spring for anime! I'm looking forward to all these titles but particularly xxxHolic and Nana; BOAS has become too much of a Ai Yazawa fanboy...

Memento: Spring Anime 2006

PS3 Delayed

Sony officially conceded defeat and delays the PS3 until November blaming a copy-protection issue with Blu-ray technology. The question is will it be worth the wait? Personally, if the PS3 delivers anything like the previews of KillZone that we all saw, it won't matter.

Source: 1Up.com

Today in Tech

So a lot of good stuff happened in the Tech world today that BOAS thought it was worth mentioning:
1. XP on Mac! Maybe... Yeah, narf2006 on the Mac World Forums has claimed to boot Windows XP on a Mac; but the only proof currently are some flickr still pics.
2. Massage Milk Mischief: A Chinese blog called Massage Milk staged its' own shut down unto which western media immediately picked up on and attributed to Chinese government censorship. The blog own says that he did it to teach those westerners a lesson. HA... it's not that funny.
3. Arrrghh: The Pirate Bay based in Sweden has yet again mocked the American media industry by blatantly disregarding all their threats, yet still going strong!
4. Zoomr: Kristopher Tate (17 years old, I don't know why this shocks people) has developed what seems a better web picture hosting service than Flickr, all in the span of three months.

Dartmouth Kanji Practice

Need to brush up on your brush strokes? Head over to Dartmouth Kanji practice for a good'ole calligraphic time!

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~kanji/index.html

Nippon Flaga Google

So just for fun BOAS decided to search for "la flaga" on google.co.jp; but low and behold we're the fourth link! We're not quite lucky but pretty close, yay!

Manga Gives U Six Fingers

An interesting phenomenon pointed out on Manganews Forums is the six finger evolution of manga characters. Just one more reason manga sticks it to the man!

Manganews Forum

Fate/Stay Night Popularity Poll

Memento recently posted the popularity poll results in Japan for characters from Fate/Stay Night. They break down like:

1. Saber
2. Tohsaka Rin
3. Archer
4. Rider
5. Matou Sakura
6. Lancer
7. Karen Ortensia (of Hollow/Ataraxia)
8. Illyasviel von Einzbern
9. Bazette Fraga Makremitz

10. Caster                          Memento

Opera 9 Passes ACID2

Opera 9 is the second web browser to completely pass the ACID2 test, which only Safari previously passed. It's really interesting to see how Opera compares with IE6 and IE7 in the same tests.

Opera on ACID2
Opera
ACID2

Flagasphere Updates

Another small picture gallery application by yours truly has been added to
LaFlaga::[N e t S l u m]::Programming. The application piccheck.exe checks the integrity of a sequentially numbered picture files in a single directory and lists missing numbers from the directory list.
Ciel Tony gallery has been updated at
LaFlaga::[M a c A n u]::Gallery

Under the Rader: Stuff I Almost Forgot

I''s Pure, does anyone actually remember this series that first released a few months ago then stopped?! Well today episode 2 was released WTF.
Suicide Club, oh Rolly how absolutely ridiculous you were; but it seems grounded in the realm of reality none the lesss. BBC Article here on Japanese suicide clubs.Tsubasa Chronicle Movie: Yeah there's actually a movie! Now we're all waiting for season 2.

Bleach Almost Licensed?!

Rumours abound tell that Bleach is almost licensed by VIZ entertainment.

Source ANN

Naruto Movie 2

The second Naruto movie is scheduled to be released April 28th on DVD and UMD in Japan.

Source: NarutoFan

SEED Specifics

NewType magazine released some specific information pertaining to the 3 episode OVA Gundam Seed Destiny Special:

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED C.E.73 Stargazer will be a 3-episode OVA taking place immediately after the "Break the World" event (The event that led to the start of the war in Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny).

The three episodes will be 15 minutes each and will be released online and screened at Gundam related events in Japan. The first episode will premiere at the Shizuoka Hobby Show in May.

A domain for the future official website for C.E.73 Stargazer has been registered at seed-stargazer.net however the URL currently forwards to Sunrise's main website.

Source ANN

BOAS dos2linux Makeover

We all know that using MS DOS is annoying at best but there are ways to dull the sharp pain in your foot everytime you try and shoot yourself in the head by using DOS. BOAS' dos2linux guide will teach you how over at LaFlaga::[N e t S l u m]::Windows.

Google Lets Drop the GDrive Bomb

In a "mistakenly" released internet document, Google has apparently let slip of their plans for a total online storage solution in the Google GDrive. Rumours abound, this could be really good for all the crap you just don't want anymore but just can't part with...

BBC Article

Flagasphere Update

New additions to the AIR and Ciel Tony galleries @ LaFlaga::[M a c A n u]::Gallery have been updated!

Asian Website Piss Me Off

WTF is the deal with Asian websites nowadays. If it's not FLASH then it's Javascript! OMG, can't I visit one webpage from Japan or China without blinding colors that'll give me a stroke or the flashly cursor that follows you everywhere but does ABSOLTELY NOTHING. Yep, that's the thing with Asian websites, it's a lot of glamor and glitter with absolutely no content in between. Arghh, I'm switching to a text based web browser dammit.

Lynx: Text Based Web Browser

Single Releases

Two great singles have been released recently that are worthy of picking up. BOAS is referring to My Pace by SunSetSwish the latest ED theme for Bleach and Haru no Katami by Chitose Hajime, the ED them for Ayakashi ~ Classic Japanese Horror Yotsuba.

Shinigami no Ballad

Memento has a preview of Shinigami no Ballad しにがみ の ﾊﾞﾗｯﾄ which looks like it'll be good. The trailer is also available at animesuki.


Official Site
Memento

Mandriva One

Mandriva Linux has come out with a live distro CD called Mandriva One. As you know Mandriva is my flavor of choice in the linux world.

Get Mandriva One here

Everything Thus Far... The Grandeur of PS3

1up.com is running an expansive article on every bit of information known about Sony's Playstation 3 thus far. One of the things that caught my eye was a game entitled Akari Project with a picture from the anime series Lamune as it's capture (shown here). Hmmm....

Full 1Up.com article

Tactical Roar

Do you like ships and I mean ships filled with an all female crew? Do you like switching between a love drama anime to a war anime? Then Tactical Roar is for you. Check it out.

Flagasphere Update

New addition to Shuffle! gallery in
LaFlaga::[M a c A n u]::gallery. Also, this beautiful picture of Freya from Chobits!

ナンデ パンツ？

This is just so weird that I had to post it, from ANN:

Shiawase Pantsu Includes Children's Panties as Promo (2006-03-01 13:24:20)
The January volume of Shiawase Pantsu, an adult lolicon manga, included a pair of panties as a promotional extra. It is not uncommon for erotic manga to include article of women's clothing as extras, however publisher Akaneshinsha proudly boast that the panties included with Shiawase Pantsu are for a 130cm tall girl, a size typically worn by pre-schoolers.

ANN