Christmas quickies

Missing Bamboo Blade? Me too. The folks at Anime News Network may have heard our lamentations, as they have posted episodes of the animated version online, free and legal to watch. As of this post, four episodes have been dubbed and posted, so go check them out. Or, if you prefer to read cartoons instead of watching them, you can check out the subtitled version. And yes, I did just go there.

If you’ve been a Yen Plus subscriber for a while, you know it’s tough to find kind words about whoever they have managing their subscriptions. I recently received a dire message in the mail that it was my “third notice” to resubscribe lest I miss an issue and so on and so forth. Where were the other two notices? I don’t know; I never received them. Any suspicions of shenanigans on the part of these dweebs are confirmed by the fact that I can find no less than three comments on Yen Press’s own site from other people who have received “third notices” - one, two, three. There seems to be no way to renew the subscription online, so I’ve gotta do it by mail. The notification said I could send them a check to pay for the renewal, but I don’t really have a checkbook (I use my debit card for everything), so I checked the “bill me later” check box in the hope that whatever bill they send me will give me the option to pay with plastic, then drove to the post office to purchase a single stamp so I could mail it. And when they send me the bill, I’ll drive to the post office again and purchase another single stamp. God, I hope Yen Press dumps these guys… in a river, if possible.

The Manga Critic (aka Katherine Dacey) named Pig Bride as one of her 2009 Manga Hall of Shame Inductees, citing contemptible female characters and awful art. It didn’t seem like a particularly special negative review to me, but it got Kurt Hassler fired up enough that he actually took the highly unusual step of posting a lengthly reply. Dialogue between Hassler and Dacey continues in the comment thread, though neither side yields much.

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