The Anime Blog – We Go Beyond Anime!

Just in time for holidays, we’ve got a sack full of links to anime contests and sales for December, 2008! You’ll find RightStuff Holiday Contests; an Emma Contest; RightStuf’s ‘Gobble Up Incredible Deals’ and ‘Bargain Bin Blowout’; AnimeNation’s Stocking Stuffer Sale and other great anime contests and sales!

The Anime Blog reader and contributor Liz Ohanesian has a great article in L.A. Weekly about Elfdoll, a series of customized, ball-jointed dolls made by hand from high-quality materials. Here’s an excerpt:

Elfdoll: Don’t Call It A Toy Company
“Other companies, when they market the dolls, they actually create characters for them,” says Chris Holz of Melbourne, [...]

For all readers who love cherry blossoms, dango, camaraderie, sake and hanami in general, please let everyone know if the sakura (cherry blossoms) are blooming in your neighborhood! Where you live doesn’t matter; Canada, Europe, South America, Hanami Central (Japan), wherever there’s sakura, post a comment below to update fellow hanami fans.
© The Anime Blog
Update [...]

Spring! It’s officially here, I can smell it. Winter knows its time has come, and even though freak snow storms batter our doors, they’re merely the death throes of a passing season. Soon, the ground will be covered in colorful drifts of crocuses, daffodils, and depending on the locale, cherry blossoms.
© The Anime Blog
For anyone [...]

It’s coming soon! White Day is this Friday! It’s our day ladies! Our day to rake in the goodies after we forked ‘em over on Valentine’s Day!

Valentine’s Day in Japan, to those who are unfamiliar, is a day when women give men chocolate (choco) and don’t get diddly in return. That’s right, nadda. Women even [...]

Last year, I posted a brief write-up of Valentine’s Day in Japan. To refresh our memories:

On Valentine’s Day in Japan, the women give all the men in their lives chocolate (choco- チョコ). If the recipient is a co-worker, or someone the woman sees casually, she gives him giri choco (obligation chocolate). [...]

Love it or hate it, one can’t help but be intrigued by modern Japanese fashion. With their loud colors, strange accessories, and daunting hairstyles, trendy fashions among Japanese young people seem almost alien in comparison to America’s goth, punk, and emo fashions.

It’s perplexing how some of the obnoxious, brash, and downright garish street fashions evolved [...]

Ninjutsu has captivated Americans since it first arrived in the US via movie and television screens in the nineteen eighties. Ever since the “ninja craze”, kids and adults alike have been fascinated by the notion of stealthy, secretive assassins lurking in the shadows, bringing silent death to any who see them.
But, how true is this [...]