evaunit:

this is literally my favorite thing on the fucking internet. i have never loved something more in my entire life. this video is my soul. 

rindolph the red nosed rindeer all of the other swimmers used to laugh and call him names they never let poor rin join in any swimming games

Wanted to translate the (kind of) entire thing… www

Shimazaki Nobunaga (Zakki) - Nanase Haruka Hosoya Yoshimasa (Hosoyan) - Yamazaki Sousuke

'We are profoundly disappointed that the killer of our child will not face the consequence of his actions. While we understand that many others share our pain, we ask that you channel your frustration in ways that will make a positive change. We need to work together to fix the system that allowed this to happen. Join with us in our campaign to ensure that every police officer working the streets in this country wears a body camera. We respectfully ask that you please keep your protests peaceful. Answering violence with violence is not the appropriate reaction. Let's not just make noise, let's make a difference'

- Family of Michael Brown

Malcolm X on "Progress"

Mamath’s BOXFOX GIVEAWAY

Just in time for the holiday season, here’s a Boxfox plush giveaway/promo! The giveaway period ends November 30th, midnight EST (New York time). You can refer to this countdown if you’re bad at time zones.

GRAND PRIZE: 6 BOXFOXES Enough Boxfoxes to build your own pyramid! Keep the whole pyramid to yourself or split it up between your friends! Friendship pyramid.

RUNNER UP PRIZE: 1 BOXFOX TWO (2) runner ups will receive one Boxfox each!

You do not have to be following me to participate. If this goes nuts I may add more prizes. If you don’t know what the heck a Boxfox is, refer to this post. If you want to BUY a Boxfox, go to my store here! Good luck!

Attention everyone who buys or sells with Storenvy

A few days ago, Storenvy implemented a new policy in which it will take 10% of the artist’s earnings from any sale made from the “marketplace”.  For most artists here on tumblr, Storenvy is a fantastic platform to make a few extra bucks. For some, the money they make by selling their art/creations on Storenvy really helps them (I know I am certainly one of those people).  In most cases, when paying for products to be professionally produced, or buying the things needed to produce it themselves, after each sale there isn’t as much profit as you would think. Taking that 10% away can be pretty harmful to artists.  What you can do to help: If you see something on the marketplace you like, you can easily go to their custom store and purchase it from there instead! Then the 10% isn’t taken from the artist’s earnings.  Here’s how you do it (I will be using my store for example) This is my marketplace store:

When you search for a series or product you might want, the product comes up on the “marketplace”. That means, unless you have the direct link to the artist’s store, most people are going to making their purchases from the marketplace (that’s how they get you!).  So, for example sake, let’s say you searched for something one of my pieces is tagged as and you see something you like. Don’t click it and buy it.  All you have to do is click this:

And then -  ta-da! You will end up at the artist’s custom made store:

When shopping from a custom store instead of the marketplace:

And with just taking the time to click that one extra button, you’re saving the artist money!! Please consider this and spread it around! I know a lot of artists could really use the money for the items they pay to produce entirely themselves (unlike society6).  Thank you so much!

And now for Fellow actors and Their Two Cents

Upon hearing all the drama bought up by Vic’s announcement, let’s just say fellow actor and director, Christopher Ayres, has put in his two cents about the whole thing.

I didn't have strong feelings one way or another before, but seeing this made me really angry.

This kind of thinking is DAMAGING. The opinions, personal beliefs, and actions outside of a person's work should absolutely have bearing on a person's work when those actions and beliefs hurt other people. It is weak to excuse someone's actions because they are an "artist" or engage in a "craft," as if that puts them on a higher plane of being.

Vic Mignogna's case makes for a terrible example for a number of reasons, and my issue is not with the specifics of what he has or hasn't done, but with the larger willingness to give him a pass without a real hard look into claims made against him. It's murky, I'm aware. I've tried looking myself. But it's a fact that reports of sexual harassment and assault are underreported in general. There is a culture of victim shaming and shushing. People are unwilling to come forward publicly exactly because of what's happening right now. The accused harasser is defended instead of investigated.

Largely the claims against Mignogna are of inappropriate touching (being "handsy") and flirting, which sound relatively harmless to a lot of people. But this kind of stuff escalates. Where can we draw a line? I think we should, as a culture, start with the smaller, more minor seeming instances of sexual harassment. Because for every Vic Mignogna, there is a Woody Allen, a Roman Polanski, a Jian Ghomeshi.

Who's Jian Ghomeshi? He was a former CBC radio show host of a popular public broadcasting show. He came off as intelligent, often interviewed celebrities or people well known in their own fields, he presented himself as a feminist. A few weeks ago, it came to light that he's been sexually assaulting women for the last 25+ years. And it's only when it was made very visibly public that he was fired from his job at the CBC. If you want further coverage and information, the Toronto Star is a good place to start. 

Ghomeshi is a niche celebrity with a fan following. If you read some of the accounts of Ghomeshi's victims, some of them were young women fans hoping to get close and make a connection with him and he was able to use that to his advantage. He tried to publicly defend himself against "rumors." He probably interacted with hundreds, thousands of people that would find him perfectly pleasant to be around and admired his work. People informally reported his behavior, but never took any official actions. Is this sounding familiar to you?

I'm not saying Vic Mignogna has caused the same amount of damage Jian Ghomeshi has. I'm just saying the narrative plays out in a similar way. When there have been several years worth of rumors that have never gone away, it's worth at least reconsidering what you believe about a person. It's worth taking a look.

So please. This is not about the quality of his voice acting. It's not even really about Vic Mignogna. It's about a much larger issue surrounding the treatment of women and girls. These men get publicly called out for all kinds of demeaning behavior and receive virtually no blowback. Think about how many men do this where spotlights will never reach.

I know it's probably impossible to investigate all allegations again Mignogna, and it'll probably never happen. I'm also a cynic, so I think it's highly unlikely Mignogna will ever experience professional setbacks from allegations. I'm writing all this because I believe there needs to be a drastic culture shift and the issues surrounding this case is a point of entry for a lot of young people to begin thinking about how they approach media.

Yowapeda Fans, please consider watching this short.

Please watch this anime short called Hill Climb Girl (there are English subtitles available).

But here’s another reason why you should watch it. Road Racing is a sport that is dominated by men. I so badly want this to become a real thing because it be such an amazing thing for a girl to fight her way in.

I even have this whole plot:

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Yes!!! Yes!!!!!!!!!!!

We’re not done yet! We have two more days of cast announcements—check back tomorrow and Sunday to see which actors play the other Samezuka swimmers, and other vital roles for the series! The announcements hit first on the Free! -Eternal Summer- Tumblr and Facebook page, so make sure you’re following them for the most up-to-date news! For more updates about Free! – Eternal Summer - be sure to also sign up for our newsletter here

Cast so far:

Rei Ryugazaki – J. Michael Tatum Nagisa Hazuki – Greg Ayres Makoto Tachibana – Johnny Yong Bosch Haruka Nanase – Todd Haberkorn Rin Matsuoka – Vic Mignogna

Check out the previous cast announcements by clicking this link.

(As a reminder, if you’re curious about the status of the Free! season 1 home video release and haven’t heard yet, be sure to check out this blog entry for the full explanation. We currently have no newer updates at this time.)

Funimation / @free2anime, these voices need to be heard: (img below)

So please listen. LOOK at your post’s tags, look at these responses. 

tagging funimation tumblr as well so maybe they’ll see it

funimation free2anime  Please look at this & signal boost, if you can add @mentions to this post for them to read, that’d be immensely helpful, thank you!

funimation free2anime

casting a guy noted for harassment and outright homophobia in a show heavy with homosexual undertones/a fanbase majorly comprised of young girls

no problem

(or: it’s a big ass problem and filtering fans’ commentary isn’t making us seem like an asshurt minority any more than shark mcshark was a good idea)

funimation free2anime You’ve had over 4,000 reblogs on this post so far, with a majority of rebloggers— your audience— saying an outright no to this casting decision. (And that’s not mentioning how you tried “dispelling” the leak with that Shark McShark announcement the other day, which was funny at first but in retrospect it was just really pointless and misleading.)

I did some really basic research, and I'm not saying that this is more than just circumstantial evidence but here goes.

The founder, president, and CEO of Funimation is Gen Fukunaga. If you take a look at his Wikipedia page, you'll see that:

If you paid attention to the run up to the 2012 U.S. presidential elections, the name Rick Santorum should ring a bell. He was a potential Republican nominee, until Mitt Romney was officially nominated. Santorum's homophobia is well documented. It even has it's very own Wikipedia page. (You might also be familiar with his name from Spreading Santorum.) It stands to reason that if Gen Fukunaga is willing to put his money and time into running a business affiliated with Rick Santorum, Fukunaga also probably shares these views, albeit less publicly than a person running for public office. (A little more information on EchoLight can be found in this Dallas News article.)

And suddenly, it makes a lot more sense why Vic Mignogna, known for his religious beliefs and homophobia, is still employed by Funimation. Like I said at the beginning, this is circumstantial evidence. Fukunaga has never made a public statement on homosexuality as far as I can find. I can't definitively say what he believes, but I can speculate.

Does that account for Vic Mignogna's history of sexual harrassment accusations? No. But unfortunately, it's unlikely that Funimation will take action or distance themselves from Mignogna unless official (legal) charges are brought against him. (If you're Canadian or just a fan of public radio, you might've heard about the CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi's firing recently after several women came forward about his acts of sexual assault and violence against them over the years. You can read more about it at the Toronto Star if you're interested. Here's a basic timeline from the Huffington Post. I bring it up because I believe it would take a public charge of a similar level to see Vic Mignogna ostracized from the voice acting/anime industry. However, I will say that the allegations against Ghomeshi are more severe than anything I've read about Mignogna doing. But correct me if I'm wrong.)

Alright, so what I'm ultimately leading to is this: if you are a fan of anime, and you want to see your wishes become reality, you need to be willing to back it up financially. I'm not blaming anime fans for Vic Mignogna's behavior, or putting the impetus on fans to get him ousted--you can absolutely blame the industry for turning a blind eye. BUT if projects Mignogna are involved in make less money than those he isn't a part of? That sends a signal to producers that they should drop him. 

Let's be real: none of you (us) were really ever going to spend money on the dub, were we? I highly doubt the vast majority of you spent money to watch the subs. So when there's "fanbase outrage," it's unlikely that Funimation (or any other company) will care unless it turns into "fanbase financial boycott." (And I mean when money that they used to get stops flowing in--not when there was no money spent in the first place.)

I understand that a lot of fans don't have a lot of money to spare. I understand that because of licensing and copyright issues, sometimes the only way to view is to pirate. I'm not writing this to accuse or lambast you. I'm just saying that we should all get comfortable with the idea of spending money on things we care about enough to get angry over when the people in power screw it up. Even if the only thing you can do is to watch the ad-supported version of an anime a week later on Crunchyroll, it still helps. Watching on services with legal licenses allows them to collect data they can send back to production companies. (And I'm sure Funimation is already not thrilled with me so: I definitely prefer Crunchyroll's paid streaming service. It's WAY easier to use and you can use it on a TON of devices. Currently, I have the app installed on: my phone, my brother's phone, my iPad, my brother's iPad, our PS3, and our Roku. And we use the website, of course.)

This is a 2006 article on Gen Fukunaga that quoted another publication as calling him "the most powerful man in North American anime," and said that "FUNimation Entertainment is the leading producer-marketer-distributor of Japanese animation in America" and made "$37.2 million in net sales for fiscal 2006." A lot has probably changed in eight years but I don't doubt that Funimation is still a major (the major) player in anime production and distribution outside of Japan. There is a lot of money flowing around the industry and the most direct way for you to have some say in what happens is to be part of controlling that flow.

So that's my two cents.

Cosplayer: Could you say your favorite line from the show?

(Voice of Satsuki Kiryuin) [Left] Ryoka Yuzuki: MATOI, RYUKO!

(Voice of Ryuko Matoi) [Right] Ami Koshimizu: KIRYUIN, SATSUKI!

"I'll coach you."

Imagine, if you will:

Sousuke growing weary of having to shave twice a day because his hair follicles are so powerful that even if he shaves in the morning by the time he gets back to his and Rin’s dorm of an evening he’s already sporting stubble.

So one day he decides ‘No. Fuck this. I’m taking the power back’ and just stops shaving his face. Throws his razor in the bin. Liberates himself. He turns up to practice and Nakagawa states, ‘Bro you look so good bro. So masculine. No homo tho.’

Sousuke merely responds with, ‘Thanks’. He doesn’t even care, he’s too busy luxuriating in the fact that he has an extra hour of free time a day because he no longer has to fell the impenetrable forest that is his hair follicles.

Heated discussion brews on the Samezuka Swim Club Facebook group concerning Yamazaki’s new look. Some call it ‘rugged’. Others suggest he looks ‘devastatingly fertile’. People cautiously wonder if they might be on the cusp of a bearded revolution. Everyone agrees that all of this is said in a manner that is firmly ‘no homo’.

Rin finds himself staring at Sousuke’s new facial hair with an overpowering urge to touch it. Run his fingers through it. He wonders if it is soft. If it is wiry.

'What's wrong, Rin?' asks Sousuke.

'Nothing bro you just look hot as fuck. No homo tho.'

Sousuke nods - he has come to expect this.

The following week dawns. Sousuke is now sporting a luscious, luxurious beard. He has never felt so free. He thinks he is beginning to understand what that sparkly-eyed probable stoner crackpot Nanase is always on about.

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The Sousuke and Rin MOOK came in today from KyoAni and…

…

(scans and photos by me, feel free to use!)