Sleep Is For the Weak

I liked Bad Jew’s last update. It was very…real. And by “real” I mean it existed, which was exciting for this place and its awful, awful updating schedule of once every when-we-get-off-our-asses (aka four months).

But you’ll like this update better, because it has STUFF. A mini review of Kami no Shizuku by Bad Jew and a mini review of Mad Love Chase by me. Also, guess what? Starry Sky is going to be an anime soon. Like, whoa. I call Cancer. He makes his girlfriend cookies, and according to the franchise, THAT GIRLFRIEND IS ME.

My friends, my friends. We continue to be aware of the site. More than aware; in fact, it fills us with guilt each and every day we don’t update.

But, in our defense, we’ve been quite busy. Lianne had started a new job where she performs SCIENCE!, Not Hayama got a promotion and is now literally in charge of defending the entire planet from asteroids, and I finished my PhD Comprehensive exams and now am an official PhD Candidate.

We have things in store you for you, the reader. But you will read them when you are (slightly) older.

I decided to try and explain/review Starry Sky. It’s really girly. Like, seriously. Most people probably couldn’t care less about it. It also took me months of research to untangle it, considering my Japanese is pretty crappy. More months wasted! That should be the official motto of our website.

Sleep is for the Weak: Proof of Wasted Life.

Amethist, can we get that made into our new logo?

In honor of the release of a big ol’ Nana anime boxset in the West, we updated our Nana not-that-Mini Review, since NotHayama left it somewhat open-ended last time and our contributor Orange Skirt wanted to add her opinion (and cover the non-manga versions of the franchise). The review is now significantly more robust, although not much more flattering. To even that out, I updated the Togainu no Chi Mini Review and was sure to be extra flattering. What can I say? A manga that started out weak got super good super fast and nowIwantthenextvolumeOMGargh.

In other news, I’m mourning Tokyopop’s loss of the Rave Master license, since I’ve been working on that series for them for years and I had to stop one volume short of the ending (at Volume 35). If some other company gets to release the last few volumes, it’s sad that the English adaptation will have to be LESS AMAZING. *nudge nudge*

Or not so silently, in this case, since Bad Jew and I got back to our non-Canadian roots and wrote two mini reviews that basically accuse every person of being an idiot or a sexist asshole if s/he’s not on board. Yes, this is how we return from a many-week hiatus. Sleep is for the Weak clearly cares for and respects our repeat readers.

In better (?) news, we got some shit sorted and now we’re back. Updates will start landing every week or two. We spent a LOT of our time off catching up on reading/watching new stuff so we can actually reviews things now. Imagine that (gasp)!

The FUNimation release of Romeo x Juliet finally hit Western shores, like, this week, and guess what we have for it? A full review of the series by Orange Skirt. That’s right - an actual review that actually matches an actual release. Note that it took a recurring contributor sending me that review a month ago for this to have happened. No staff keeping up with the times, no sirree.

I wrote a mini review of Romeo x Juliet ages ago, but this one is much better, and actually covers the entire series. I will add that I got the FUNimation box set a few weeks early because I pre-ordered it, and the dub is…not so good. Weak script and acting that probably could’ve been better had there been a better script and voice director. Dammit, FUNimation…you raised all of our standards since the Ouran dub. Seriously.

Today we have something a little different on Sleep is for the Weak…something thoughtful, something almost academic. Bad Jew wrote an article on comics from North Korea. I was thinking of maybe just posting a review of some terrible yaoi or even just a picture of stick figures making obscene gestures at each other, but this is probably a better idea.

First, on the update front: I posted a Mini Review of Kuroshitsuji/The Black Butler anime, since I watched pretty much the entire series on Saturday during my exhaustion-spurred protest against Getting Off the Couch. I also updated the Reviews and Mini Reviews archives because that was super overdue.

Second, come to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival next weekend, Yoshihiro Tatsumi and Bryan Lee O’Malley are going to be there as well as about a billion other people who are cooler than both you and me, Toronto is nice this time of year and it welcomes you, etc. The staff of this site (sans Amethist) will be working the festival, since anyone who works in the comics industry and lives in Toronto has to officially sign the accomplice registry of The Beguiling, which happens to run TCAF, and which calls out all the troops when it’s time to run an international event. (On that note, we’ll also be representing at Anime North in a few weeks.)

It is TIME for COMICS.

What’s this? Did I spend weeks writing a full review of a series nobody will probably ever read? Why, yes! Yes, I did!

And I have two things I’d like to comment on:

1.) OMG

and

2.) WTF

The Internet and I…well, I figured I should tell you all that we broke up for a while. Some hurtful things were said on both sides, but we talked it over and decided that we had too long of a history to let a few bad weeks end things once and for all. We’re back together now and I’m hopeful that a bright future awaits us.

If he would only do the dishes once in a blue f*cking moon. Yes, I know you heard me!

Here are Mini Reviews for Oishinbo and Antique Bakery. Now I’m going to Mother’s because at least there the words “I love you” can be spoken without it being some giant f*cking issue. Yes, I know you heard me!