hikari e!

jdrouin10 updated his photobucket album, and added more pictures of the going meri, this time in the evening. by the way, jdrouin10 is the guy i got the early GM pictures from.



the sail at night. they even have the spotlight shining on the orange trees from nami's village. and isn't japan's night sky AWESOME?






more pictures of the ship, and the cool night sky. aimee and i used to call such lovely sky "GOD." we'll be saying: "woo. look, that's god right there."



CHOPPER SNOWGLOBE! i want one too.



specs of the meri in odaiba. how fast is 5.3 knots?



props to japanese people. they even got the details. broken guardrails and holes that usopp has been patching all this time. it will be sad seeing the meri leaving. oh, and if anyone has a person-size poster of nico robin, i DO accept gifts. =)

sign, my friend

hana made an online petition protesting the cuts and edits 4kids is doing to one piece. this might be another fruitless effort, but at least we've tried. sorry oda-sama, but when you loyal fans saw a freakin lollipop in sanji's mouth, we KNEW something is going to be hella wrong.

looking on the brighter side, next year we might see bandai's one piece toys all over the stores in malls. it's about time we stood up to those damn pokemon. gah.

speaking of standing up, i give my salute to kristin who stood up to a neighbor's dog. give props, people; how many times have the neighbor's dog start barking when you're asleep in the middle of the night and the only thing restraining you from getting your shotgun and blow the shit out of the animal is your moral sense and your tendency to keep a good relationship with the neighbor? it's about time that we stop those stupid canines from taking over the world like what the females and mosquitos are doing.

sleepless night at whiskey peak

finally got the finals and the research paper done. all done and turned in; now all i've got to do is sit on my lazy ass and hope for passing grades.

it's six something AM right now and i really don't feel like sleeping. finished all my work around 4ish and have since then been mingling with one piece manga.

null's scanlation quality is degrading. when i applied for an editor position this one asshole (i forgot the name, but it's not kal~) said i sucked because i had no idea how to do a correct typesetting method. apparently, when you edit the script into the scans, you cannot randomly picked a fontsize that fills up the whole bubble. you have to leave a little padding from the outline of the bubble to the text. then you also have to know when to use boldface, when to italicize, and how to adjust the fontsize according the tone of conversation. wow, sounds professional. after i got harshly rejected i said to myself, okay, i'm not good enough to be a null staff, so screw it. i've got better things to do than editing scanlations.

about a week or two after i got rejected, null starts scanlating one piece again (they were on break before). so i downloaded the latest chapter that they scanlated. the founder of null, kal~ said that they've just got a new editor. wow, must be a hell of a professional. i downloaded about 4mb worth of zip file, and much to my surprise, the editing quality CRAPS. worse than mine. whoever the hell the new editor was, basically did not follow the guideline that asshole used to completely diss my work. fonts are too big, hella grammatical errors (mine didn't have any), choice of words that makes no sense, no padding between the outline of the bubble and the text, boldface and italics out of nowhere. basically a complete crap. and i got dissed for something that maybe wasn't perfect but at least better? i still remember the words that asshole said to me: "we at null release only the HIGHEST quality scanlation. unless you learn how to typeset correctly, you'll only bring down null's reputation." wow. so now it must be either that asshole got fired, or he abruptly changed his mind, because their scanlations do not follow the guideline i was given.

null isn't the only one scanlating one piece now. kidavi's running riot does it too, and i've got to admit, despite rare minor typo, running riot is doing a much much better job than null. but lately running riot has not been scanlating either. probably kidavi and adam are on break?

the most dependable and consistent source is definitely arlongpark, who routinely supplies the raw every friday morning and stephen, who generously translates the raws into scripts. not exactly scanlation, but at least i know what's going on. how i wished inane takes one piece into their project. i have to give props to inane. they're fast, reliable, and consistent.

now that my summer school is done, i think i'll be editing MY OWN scanlations. null's typesetting is really getting on my nerves so i'll just erase all the words and put in my own. should be much better. but i'm not gonna share it; it will be for personal use only since i don't have my own translator and i can get into lots of trouble with other scanlators like running riot, yanime, null, and stephen himself.

swoooosh.

331 --- script

stephen's server is back up. the script for 331 brought tears to my eyes. poor usopp, we all understand how you feel.

going meri in odaiba

i browsed through K-F forum and found a generous guy who shared the pictures he took during the event in odaiba, japan, where they have a full-size going meri. oh how i would give up anything to be there and step my foot on that lovely ship.

mad propz to japanese people.


the going meri from the front, and a shot of the headpiece. check it out, they even install the cannon in the front.



sideview of the going meri. i say the ship is bigger than the actual size being used by luffy, but if you're building something for public attraction, you can't build a caravel that can only house 7 people. the ship itself could have been shorter in the length but higher. but regardless, the details are crazy.


the back of the ship and the helm inside the control room.


the kitchen where sanji cooks his meals and the control room. notice they even got sanji's favorite frying pan up on the wall on the right.


the restaurant in odaiba i guess. they put up a menu from baratie and even baratie's pirate flag. genius.


full size luffy and nami. nami looks kinda fat. don't tell her that, otherwise i'd get smacked. speaking of details, they didn't even miss on the patches on the mast that was installed by the mysterious shipwright who fixed the going meri during skypiea adventure.


full size usopp


full size sanji


full size zoro and chopper. something's not right with zoro's earrings. they're supposed to be long ones, not circle ones.


the highlight of the day: full size nico robin. oh she is so hot. if i ever get an access to the ship i'll steal her and put her in my room. oh robin. *drools*


lastly but not least, a float of mohmoo. ha ha ha. quick but impressive appearance. go mohmoo.