Episode 12, Page #1 - "End of the Semester"
Aoi Notes: 12/29/2006
You know, those Burger King Dance Dance Revolution kid's meal toys are lame. I mean, reeeally lame. Out of the eight toys, only two of them are mildly worth getting: the dancer toy of Afro and that music CD. And even that CD has me scratching my head wondering if it's actually any good. Maybe I'm just mad that I ended up with that water bottle that couldn't even quench the thirst of one of those poor kids in Africa...but I digress. I'm all for DDR's popularity, but I think someone thought a tad too far outside the box on this one. Sad thing is...I'll probably be on ebay trying to get the whole set... @_@
In Aoi House news, you probably noticed that we're now into Episode 12, which is a chapter I call "The Nightmare Before Christmas." Yes, Christmas was, uh, earlier this week, so I hope you don't mind seeing some good old fashioned Christmas fun stretching on through mid-March as we finish up Volume 2's chapters in preparation for The Great Con Caper to kick off. Obviously, Episode 12 and 13 are really important to the narrative of the story, so it's hard to skip them and just start running new content. (Plus, it's really hard to run new content when you're still trying to write the third book!) And even if you've already purchased you nice shinny copy of Aoi House Vol. 2 (and we hope you will if you haven't!), I'd like to think you'll stop by every Monday, Wednesday and Friday just to see what kind of stuff I write about in Aoi Notes. And if you have any questions about anything, then feel free to drop by the Q&A Thread and ask away. ^_^
BTW, if you're on myspace and want to toss me into your friends list, then you can find me here: http://www.myspace.com/aoihouse
One question I got asked today is one I get asked every so often and it's always fun to answer...
Noleetida: "So how did u become a manga writer? Like what did u have to do as in learn and study?"
I'd like to think luck had a lot to do with it, because it wasn't really something I was expecting to get the opportunity to ever do. I went to college and got my Associates Degree in Business Administration of all things because I just didn't know what I wanted to do. Hate to say it, but I'm self-taught. I started working on Animefringe during college as both a writer and webmaster and met a few people in the industry and that's what lead me to doing manga rewrites (a.k.a. English Adaptation), which is taking the translated Japanese script and making it read correctly in English and fit the balloons and such. I also started writing for a few magazines. It was my web design work that lead me to Seven Seas, though. They needed a website and I knew someone that could design it and I could keep it updated. That's what got me into the door and allowed me to pitch what would eventually become Aoi House. So, luck had a lot to do with the manga writer part, but if you want to be a journalist of writer involved in anime/manga in general...all you really need to do is hone your writing skills and build a portfolio that's good in enough to impress an editor enough to let you freelance for them. It's definitely not something you can just do overnight, though. It takes a bit of work.
Anyway, that's it for today (and 2006), so see you back here on Monday as we kick off a new year of craziness!
-Adam Arnold
