Joey's Anime Arena - Kinless.com

April 1, 2006:

Yes, rub your eyes a few times if you want. You're not seeing things. After 3 years and 2 months I have updated the Anime Arena and all its subpages. I kept telling you all I would eventually get around to updating the neglected areas of my site, so here I am.

Now don't get all excited yet. All I'm doing for this month is patching up the plethora of broken links that were left unattended for way too long. I have renovated the main areas of my site leaving everything here in the Arena a mess. This update should fix all that.

My first order is to make this page look better, because it's so 3 years ago. All my Anime pages will be going through a renovation, and I'll be adding those other 2 pages that I've wanted to do for almost 10 years. After it's all done I will leave them once again, but this time as a decent-looking shrine that the Anime fans can enjoy for years to come. My stats show that most people come to the Anime Arena (and its subpages) first when they visit Kinless.com. I guess there's still a lot of people that type in 'Sailor Moon' for their Anime searches. I don't know where you guys come from.

Anyway, be on the lookout for more updates this year. Most likely this main page will be the first to get changed, followed by the Andrew Shrine and the Rainbow Crystal Summary.

A NOTE TO THE LEECHERS:
OK, so I was truly getting fed up with people linking to my graphics. I can tell that most everyone who ignored my "NO LEECHING" warning doesn't even understand English, because a lot of international websites (in different languages) were still linking to my graphics. Since it jacked up my stats (and my bandwidth) I decided to put an anti-leech blocker on my site. If you try to link to my graphics directly, you'll be greeted with a big fat red X. Good riddance to that.

The Sailor Moon Andrew Shrine - I noticed there aren't too many pages exclusively on the minor characters of the Sailor Moon series, so I came up with the first initial Andrew page. As far as I know, this is still the only page exclusive to our loyal arcade attendant. As I renovate this page, I will be adding extra tidbits, including the newer American episodes he has shown up in. (That would require me watching all my old VHS tapes again, so bare with me.)

The Rainbow Crystal Summary Page - Several years ago, I was also the first to come up with a complete synopsis on the Rainbow Crystal Carriers and their respective monster forms. This page is as about as complete as it can get, so I will just be concentrating on getting a nice renovation to speed. If you've seen other pages similar (or perhaps even identical) to mine, they are rip-offs. You will be looking at the original page.

Dragon Ball Collectibles (Not Up Yet) - This will be a short page of all the original Dragon Ball characters that came out back in 1995. I will also sport the covers of the Americanized Dragon Ball comics from DarkHorse/Viz. They're all part of the original series, not the Dragon Ball Z or GT series. I like DB better than DBZ anyway. Call it the humorous aspect.

Top 5 Anime Hotties (Not up yet) - This will sport my favorite characters from my favorite series. The best of the best, I'd say. When finished, this page will have have similarities to my Dream Team page. This will take me a while as well. I've already got my candidates picked. It's just a matter of making the page for them. I'll get to it.

So now I've been exposed to quite a wide variety of Anime styles. I've been able to watch many series. I know the Anime purists will hate me, but I watched the "dubbed" version whenever possible. I know some of the voice actors were horrible, but to me it was better than constantly reading the subtitles and trying to capture all the visual details that were going on at the same time.

Enough digression. Here are my top 10 series picks. If you have a favorite series but can't believe that I haven't listed it here, odds are that I haven't watched it. I've maybe seen about 20-25 series total, so I'm basing these only on what I've experienced for myself. My favorite style is Fantasy Shojo Manga, commonly shown in the Sailor Moon Anime, and Saber Marionette J as well. Second favorite style is the more comical Humorous Manga, best-illustrated in the original Dragon Ball series.

01. Saber Marionette J
02. Sailor Moon
03. Dragon Ball
04. Dirty Pair
05. Dragon Ball Z

06. Jubei-chan: Ninja Girl
07. Video Girl AI
08. Visions of Escaflowne
09. Dragon Half
10. Those Who Hunt Elves

Late in the year 2000, I stumbled upon this book at a Virgin Records store. It was a very detailed guide on how to draw female manga characters! I'd been looking for something like this for years! So of course I immediately bought it and started teaching myself according to the book. I was always drawing manga chicks beforehand, but they always came out unproportional and... well... just plain crappy. But all I needed was patience and a little bit more "sketching". With that, I came up with my own character, Katherine Sketch.

She is my first official drawing. Of course, I have much room to improve. I put her toes on the wrong end, and her hands are all deformed. (Always having a problem with the hands and feet. Darnit!) But she looked good enough, so good that I was afraid I'd screw it up if I added some realistic shading, so I left it as is. As I get some extra spare time, I will try making more sketches of her. NO this is not my dream girlfriend I wish I had. I'm not THAT pathetic. (I'm only as pathetic as creating the Anime Hottie page.)

Anyway, there she is. Maybe it will inspire someone else out there to go get the book and start drawing on their own as well. The book was $20, but well worth it. Have fun.