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Topics - PyronIkari

#1
Big Event Showcase / Fanimaid 2012~
December 08, 2011, 10:29:19 PM
Hi guys,

So we're back again this year. Information can be found on the Fanime website

http://www.fanime.com

http://www.fanime.com/exhibits/fanimaid-cafe/tryout-information/

More information coming soon~

LAZY MIKEY SAYS COPYPA IS EASY MODE!

Feel free to leave any questions/comments/suggestions here. Please be mindful if you do though. Things like "You should have a butler cafe" and the such have been asked millions of times already. You can go through previous maid cafe threads to look.

So the 2nd (and last tryout unless something miraculous happens) are
going to be Saturday March 10th at the San Jose Convention at 10am. If
you don't know where this is, you better find out fast, because this
is where FanimeCon is being held. But just in case...

150 West San Carlos Street  San Jose, CA 95110

Specifically the meeting will be in the Hilton 2nd floor lobby.
There's a sitting area right up the stairs, turn right, and it'll be
on your left side.

The first tryouts were awesome and incredibly successful. Had
approximately 30 girls show up. I hope that twice as many girls show
up for the second tryouts!

To copy and paste from last try-outs
What to expect:
The try-outs are roughly like a short course on what a maid cafe is,
what we do at Fanimaid Cafe, and basic training on tasks we expect our
maids to be able to fulfill. Please dress to impress to show off your
personal style, and as it will be at AOD, we are okay with you being
in cosplay during the try-outs if you don't want to change your
clothing. Prepare a pen and a notebook in case you would like to take
notes and answers to any questions you may have.

Please hold any questions regarding hours, uniforms, and what have you
for the try-out, as we usually go over everything you need to know.

Other things to keep in mind.
Please be prompt. This is incredibly super amazingly important.

The meeting/tryouts may last anywhere as long as 4 hours, maybe longer
according to how many girls show up. So once again, please be prompt
and hopefully manage so you'll be able to be there the entire time.

If you attended the first meeting, please do not attend the 2nd
tryout. This confuses me. When I try to organize you, and you apply
twice, I get confused and spend too much time trying to decide if
you're the same girl, or two girls with the same name that look
incredibly similar. I don't like this... I really don't like this. So
I usually stop doing work at that point for a while.

Hope the lot of you show up. This year is going to be an amazing year.
The returning maids are incredibly hype. Staff has been working hard
to get everything ready with lots of new ideas. And a big lot of
awesome girls trying out. This group and a lot of these girls have
become some of the most important people to me. And each year it grows
and only becomes more important. Have fun at the meeting and good
luck.

Sincerely,
Mikey Pham FanimaidCafe Co-Head
#2
Hi hi, I'd like to hear feedback good and bad(mostly bad so I can improve for next year). Tell us opinions on the live, the cafe, the girls, the staff, etc. Tell me what I can do better, and what you want me to keep.

Please keep in mind, I only have power over the cafe itself, not the venue, the catering, etc. So please try to keep it on topic, but if you want to rant, about that stuff, I guess you can, just know I can't change it.
#3
http://www.yukiedong.com/prayforjapan.html

Yukie along with Yoko and Jun are throwing a charity Maid Event in Sunnyvale for Japanese relief. 5$ donation gives you a ticket, food/drinks seperate but it will be a 4 hour event with maids, performances, games etc. Please donate and attend. More details at the site.
#4
Things in the Universe / 8.9 Earthquake in Japan.
March 10, 2011, 10:57:35 PM
I hope everyone is safe. I've gotten a hold of almost everyone I know, thankfully it was kind of far from Tokyo. Cities are on fire, land slides killed hundreds, billions in damage. And they're on tsunami warning now.

Still trying to get a hold of people to make sure they're safe.
\
Just got upgraded to 8.9

http://wwitv.com/tv_channels/6810.htm

For good live coverage in English.
#5
Big Event Showcase / Official 2011 Fanimaid Cafe thread
December 22, 2010, 09:48:32 PM
Hi kids, this is Mikey, co-head of this years Fanimaid Cafe.

Tryouts for this years cafe will take place roughly in February leaving 3 months or so before con for you to purchase your maid uniform (please do not do so until AFTER you've been accepted and AFTER the maid uniform is okay'd by staff). Any questions or inqueries can be made here.

Ideas and suggestions although are appreciated but please put consideration into anything you suggest. We've heard "WE WANT A BUTLER CAFE" 30924028402935 million times.

General rules for cafe applicants.

Some basic requirements are:
1) Must be Female (No exceptions!)
2) Must be 16 or older by the event
3) Must be able to supply your own uniform
4) Must be able to attend to at least 2 meetings (with your own means of transportation)

Meetings will be either in San Jose or the San Francisco area, these have yet to be determined. That's all I can think of right now.
#6
Hey guys, the con is over and I'm exhausted. The cafe had a lot of ups and downs but I'm extremely happy with the turn out even if everything didn't go perfect.

First I'd like to apologize for 2 of the bumps. First the one about maids not being able to handle food on Sunday. I'm sorry for this, but I will not discuss this nor why it happened. Please don't inquire about this.

The second was about wait times and some people being "ignored". I'm incredibly sorry. I don't blame my maids at all, as it's hard for them to manage all of this. We tried our best, and with all the things that was going on, I hope you can understand. I don't think anyone was ignored, as I didn't hear anyone complain about it, but there was one instance, and this is completely my fault. There was an emergency and one of the maids had to leave, and I forgot to get someone to take over for her group. If you were this group, I am especially sorry for it.

But I would love to hear your experiences, comments, both good and bad.
#7
You know this subject comes up a lot, and I thought about it and figured I'd write something to dispel a lot of assumptions about these things. We'll start with the one most people sorta have a pretty decent grasp on.

Maid cafes. There's literally hundreds of different kinds of maid but for the most part, I break them down into two categories. You have your commercial maid cafe, like @home, and the majority of the cafes like this that boomed when it was no longer *completely* loserish to be an akiba-kei... and your original style maid cafes from akiba.

Well first let's get into why commercial cafes began. Sadly, Densha Otoko changed Japan in a lot of ways, and many of them bad. When Densha Otoko/Train Man aired on TV, otaku culture became rather main stream. People that wouldn't be caught dead in Akiba started going there just to see different sites that were on the show. People tried to get into the culture, but not actually get into it, just enough to say "See I'm trendy" and the likes. After Densha Otoko was @Deep, which didn't do nearly as well, but also pushed the culture even more. But it was around this time that maid cafes started sprouting out all over Japan even in Shinjuku and Shibuya which were teen and trendy central had maid cafes now.

Your commercial cafe was pretty much what was depicted in these shows. Over priced meals, served by maids who acted overly cute, charged you to do everything, and at most said 3 lines to you unless you paid for her to stay there and play a game for you for 5 minutes. (The going rate is 500yen to play a game for 5 minutes with a maid). There's nothing wrong with these, but they honestly feel fake. They feel so commercialized that the maids over play their part, and are actresses playing the "OMG SUPER MOE I HAVE TO ACT MOE MODE!" part and just mimicing what an anime character would act like in such a setting. These cafes are more for novelty, and many older akiba-kei refuse to go to these unless it's for a special event because it feels like a moe cabaret club(get into this later) more than a maid cafe. Basically, it's more about moe service than actual maid service... I've never liked commercial cafes for the same reason.

Traditional cafes are much more slow paced and intimate. It's not a girl acting and pretending to be an anime character, but treating you like a master as a maid. These cafes are generally much smaller, and there's a bigger feeling of intimacy between the maids and the patrons. There's a wider variety in these kinds of cafes from renaissance themed, to today, those that specialize in music that will actually play violins and cellos for you, to just simple chamber maid style.

I'm honestly not saying one is better than the other, but these are the base two. Within these two styles, it branches off insanely to tsundere cafes, to loli and so on. (Just as a reference, the fanimaid cafe is much closer to the traditional style, and while they do act moe moe it's not overkill. Our girls are much more down to earth and can carry conversations instead of just putting on a show for you to watch them act cute).

Butler cafes themselves are quite rare There's a handful in Ikebukuro but outside there, it's actually very uncommon to see them. I wish I had my log of my friends visit when he went with his wife(who frequents them). He's been twice once to a male one, and once to one where all the butlers were female. He found them eerie because the butlers would just softly smile and not say a word just elegantly walk around all proud. My response to that was "Like a really good professional waiter?" and his reply was "Yes only it was like he was trying to seduce my wife without actually saying anything to her". Unlike maid cafes, butler cafes are very sexual. Almost every girl I know that goes to them semi-regularly has admitted this. It's incredibly sexual since the surrounding idea is that women want to turn and be taken advantage of by an incredibly proper and elegant male like a butler. The butlers don't actual make any advances, they don't flirt, they just act proper, and it's on the patron to fantasize with his or her own imagination.

Host clubs and cabaret clubs... are really amazing. You can think of these as escort services, without the sex, and about 10x more expensive. You pay for someone to flirt with you, and act like they're interested in you, so you can buy them drinks and food and spend hundreds to thousands of dollars in a single night to be toyed with. Yes, you're literally paying to be toy'ed with.

Let me play this one out for you. Some require a cover charge, but you go in, and you choose a host (or hostess or let them pick one for you) and you sit at a table. The host sorta comes and you order drinks for him and yourself. He compliments you, and he tells you something really positive. He then urges you to finish your drink and says it's easier to be more comfortable with each other after you've all had a little to drink. You order another drink, as if you don't you'll be asked to leave soon after. He talks to you, and asks you about yourself. He tells you how he thinks that's wonderful that you do something, and that you should be more comfortable with who you are. He compliments something about you again, but then acts a little shy this time. He finishes his drink, and says he's starting to feel a little warm, he places his hand on yours, and says something along the lines about how he's really comfortable talking to you, and would like to know more. He asks for another drink and you order him one, and he smiles and says you should have some more too.

By this time you've ordered about 6 drinks, and have spent about 150$ in drinks alone and it's only been about 20 minutes. Better hosts will get you to buy more expensive champagnes and wines, some of which are upwards to 2000$ a bottle. And chances are there's other patrons at the table with you who are all getting the same act.

Cabaret clubs are much the same, only they're more about partying and having fun than fake intimate romances. Think of it like... going to a strip club only the girls don't get naked, and they drink your booze but party it up with you.

These clubs are incredibly common, and for the life of me I don't understand them. You get no pay off. You literally get your heart played with and leave with nothing more but "I like you, but I think we should get to know each other more." So you want to come back to him in hopes that it will lead to more.

No I don't know why I wrote this or why I'm posting it, just felt like doing so. So there you go, aspects about three parts of Japanese culture, that people like to think they know about.
#8
Not that I don't think crepes are a good idea...

but... what are Japanese style crepes?

Crepes are crepes. There's really know such thing as "JP style crepes".
#9
Or is it?

I actually had 3 different people from press talk to me about this as it was brought up at my panel (by a guy I couldn't understand).

The major question was "how do you feel about glomp me signs and the such being banned? Do you think cons are trying to kill fun for its attendees"?

A lot of people the past year have been complaining that conventions are trying to ruin the fun of the attendees by being stricter on its rules. To be honest, Fanime is one of the more lax'ed con when you compare with other cons banning signs completely, not allowing any kind of weapon or anything that remotely can be considered a weapon on the con floor.

Now the basis of this is that, attendees feel that their freedoms are being taken away to enjoy themselves, but what they don't realize(or attempt to even think about) is why conventions have had to put up rules and be more strict in enforcing them... Don't quote me on any of this as I may be slightly off(but I have a pretty basic grasp).

Convention centers are being harsher on the cons that are taking place there. Things like underaged drinking, sexual harassment, even sexual abuse/molestation cases have been springing up at conventions. There was an incident at fanime last year involving sexual harassment(and more) that was kept pretty under wraps. Numerous cases of attendees puking and passing out on convention floors from alcohol/drugs and the such, many of them underaged. Numerous cases of people passing out due to exhaustion, lack of food, and many other things.

People running away from home to attend conventions across country, with little to no money, no hotel room, and no way home.

Malicious attacks on conventions by attendees(HI ACEN!). Attendees harassing other attendees to extreme levels(blocking off entrances, taking up elevators and not leaving them, barging into hotel rooms).

Many of these seem like extreme cases, but they are a lot more common place than most think. I advocately faught to get "glomp me" signs banned, and my reasoning was that I've been harassed many times by people with these signs, and I've seen people disgusted, and even worse, hurt by people. Holding a sign is not an excuse to glomp someone else walking by.

Cons are cracking down harder, and it isn't to ruin fun. Fanime especially doesn't want to limit or restrict it's attendees (as staff argued with me quite about on the subject), but they did have to give in to some things...

TO PROTECT THE ATTENDEES.

Conventions cannot control everything the attendees do, and the rules that are made, usually, exist because something bad happened from the action that the rule prohibits. The rules do not limit people to an extreme, they're still free to have fun and enjoy themselves, they just need a little more basic understanding and self-control.

I went to a lot of Fanime meetings this year, and friends from other conventions talk to me all the time about the state of their conventions.

Glomp me signs are banned... so what? Doesn't mean you can't do it, just do it responsibly. A bunch of people ruined carrying signs for people, don't be one that ruins something else for others.
#10
Fanime... 2008.

Saturday 7:30-9:30
Sunday 9:30-11:30

That's right kids, I'm back again this year, only short an Alkaline. Due to retarded amounts of stuff (I work upwards to 60 hour weeks), friends graduating, and a lot of other crap, there's no trailer... yet... maybe I'll get one done, but whatever.

Two nights, 2 hours each. Night one will be cosplay night. Yes, to compete with Masquerade we will be having /CGL/ night. The internet the past year, revolving around cons, animu, cosplayers, retardo drama, and overall JP society and color. Lots of crap to talk about especially with my recent trip to Japan where I got to hang out in Akiba and see just how retarded Japan is.

Two special guests will be there. I conned a famous cosplayer friend of mine to be a part of the panel (God help her soul) and if he makes it, Maguma from 4chan's CGL will be making a guest appearance.

Night two will be the usual internet antics and bull shit we always have.

If you don't come, people will be killed. And listen to Shiro



#11
Yup, that's right, signs are banned on the whole. I brought this up at the fanime meeting to some of the con heads, and all of them said the same things "Signs are officially banned from the convention, and don't be suprised if any of the staff ask for you to throw the sign away, or to give it to them for them to dispose of".

So there you have it, let people know. Chances are they won't be assholes, and go up to everyone with a sign and tell them to trash them(because who has that time?) but they are officially banned. It's on the site apparently, when you register or what not(i'm not sure where, but that's what I was told).

\o/ YAY
#12
Gaming / Fate/Unlimited Codes
November 22, 2007, 02:12:33 AM
http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm1585611

Not that I had hopes when the game was announced... but wow, this makes it look even worse than I expected it to be. But Eighting once again shows how crappy they are.
#13
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RxL8DLsEuc&eurl=http://lj-toys.com/?journalid=2454569&moduleid=3&auth_token=sessionless:1193112000:embedcontent:2454569%26

Dead serious, if this girl touched me(thank god I wasn't in a costume she recognized/liked) I would have decked her in the face. This is exactly what I was talking about in the forums previously. People that have absolutely no self-control nor respect. They think it's perfectly okay to run and jump onto people they don't know merely because they have a costume on? You can obviously tell at least one of those people were disgusted when she jumped on them, yet... these people still think it's fun and cute?
#14
General Anime Chat / School Days~
July 11, 2007, 01:54:09 AM
I've been anticipating this for a long time ever since I played the game... nearly... 2 years ago.

Summary: School Days is an eroge that became extremely popular not only because it's 100% animated, but because of the very controversial endings the game had. The story revolves around the main chara Itou Makoto becoming interested with a girl he saw everyday on the train(Kotonoha). In class he sits next to a girl who he knew, but wasn't very closed to named Sekai. Sekai sees his celphone which contains a picture of Kotonoha, and she puts it together and she decides to get them together. A love triangle forms and the story goes from there.

Now, I haven't gotten all of the endings of the game, but I got the three most controversial ones, as well as both "good" endings(they're not really good endings).

To put this into perspective, the game starts off very sweet and innocent looking... but by half way through you realize it's anything but. The game is full of hardcore manipulation, and very psychotic tendencies. IIRC there's 32 endings, a character dies in about 22 or so of them, only 3 endings all the characters end up happy.

The pacing of the first episode was good until the end. The game is split up into "days". A day represents a chapter and at the end of the chapter it ends and a sequence is played. They added an extra scene after where the first day ended in the game by showing the first scene over again, with a little more emphasis on the side characters that will be introduced in the future.

So far the path, based on what I remember of the text, is following first day Kotonoha path. Oh I should explain. In the game you have a meter which displays Sekai and Kotonoha and according to your answers the meter will grow or decrease for each girl. It's rather important in that, some paths won't be opened unless the meter was high enough for certain girls. So even if you hit the neccessary choice flags to reach a scene, certain choices won't be pickable unless the meter points for girls were at a certain limit as well.

The big big big big thing I'm wondering is what ending path they're going to choose for the ending of the cartoon, as well how they're going to do the numerous sex scenes. Implied sex... won't cut it. Because very specific things happen in some of the sex things that I think are rather unavoidable if you don't show. One of the most important is the video scene at the school festival(if you have played the game).

Overall the pacing is good minus the ending sequence. They made some minor cuts but nothing so major as of yet. I REALLY wish they would have shown the last train scene in more detail. It's obvious what happened, but with the game it had more of an impact.

The most important thing to remember if you're going to watch this show, is that it isn't what it seems. It's a lot more than a simple love triangle story, as many factors will play in. Rape, blackmail, manipulation, death as well as a number of other things will play huge roles in the story. It's really not an easy-going show, and has very very complicated points and themes. The main focal points is to understand each time something happens that triggers a character to move towards the edge of insanity, and why each even leads to the other. Episode 1's is obvious, which is the very last train scene. Episode 2, will probably follow Sekai's path. For the cartoon to really be interesting, it has to lead into one of the worst endings, which will lead me to believe that most of the audience(knowing how most anime fans are) to despise Makoto. I ask the audience(if any of you really get interested) to remember that Makoto is realistically a background character that reacts to the world around him. Decisions he makes are led based on how the two girls want him to act(which is a good lesson to most men... to not be retarded pussies and let women chose how you act).

The other thing about the cartoon that I'm sorta interested is how they're up-playing Setsuna's part. Setsuna, although she had a strong presence, didn't have much influence in the original story, it seems like they're going to give her more of a roll int he cartoon.

I'll post more when I find time to watch episode 2, another trip this weekend -_-.