Welcome to my own little dark corner of TheOtaku.

Whoa

Yup, I must be a dumb blonde. As I was looking at this site for the first time since at least a year, and I just realised that this 'World' TheOtaku gave me is more like a blog. Talk about stating the obvious. Why didn't anyone ever tell me? xD

Okay, besides that sloooooooow realisation, I'm not the type to keep a blog updated. I don't really feel like sharing everything that goes on in my real world with everyone, especially if those people are ones I met on the internet.
Anyhoo, I decided to start posting some artwork again. Now that I have a week off from my busy school schedule, I managed to scribble some nice things if I do say so myself. I'll throw them on soon enough, I hope the people who enjoyed my artwork in the past will enjoy it in the present as well.

Darn it!

I just realized how long it's been since I last submitted anything! I'm really sorry and I hope I haven't been given up on by too many people, it's just that I'm going through a burnout right now, meaning I haven't felt the need to watch anime as intense as regularly and I've been running completely dry on both motivation and inspiration to draw anything. It's so annoying, probably my biggest hobby is completely blocked ¬¬
Anyway, I've been trying some new stuff lately; drawing realistic things (so far I managed to draw ... a skull and some bones, don't ask me why) and I'm working on something I'm doing with paint! Never in my life did I for a second think I'd be using paint again (me + paint = disasterplan).
Overall both painting and drawing is going with very slow progress, because I'm forcing myself to draw backgrounds in each of them, which I strongly dislike doing and lack both the necessary interest and imagination for needed to make it look like anything.
On the other hand; I've also been working on and off on writing my story out on the pc, to serve as a guideline for when I perhaps one day start on my manga (with which the problem is I have no idea on how to begin, story wise, framing, 'camera' positions etc. It just pisses me off I can't figure out how to start and then end up not having done anything at all).
I'm not sure whether I'll ever be posting my story on TheOtaku, since I'm kinda paranoid on someone stealing it or something (not that it's that good, you just never know and WHEN it happens, you're screwed).
I have to admit that, now having a new laptop that doesn't originate from 1999 doesn't really help in motivating me to draw >.>; (yes, my previous pc was nearly 9 years old and couldn't handle Windows XP, it's nearly embarrassing). If I want to scan anything I have to boot the old one up, since our printer annex scanner isn't compatible with Vista, and that takes up about 10 minutes. I've been addicted to multiple games lately and I have to do my best to not spend days sitting on my butt playing Fable and old skool Jazz Jackrabbit 2 - no matter what you say, that game kicks arse.
Having said that, I've soothed my concience a bit, and I hope people will read this and not discard me from their subscription list.
Thanks for the patience, anyway!

~Zetsuta

Overseas

I've been wondering about something.
I live in Holland, which is a small country and lacks anime on tv; really the only series we ever had were the ole ones like Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Digmon, DBZ and Beyblade. Oh, and Yu-Gi-Oh. But I'm not going to bitch on about how little anime we have on tv, even if it's true. The fact that manga and anime are only recently becoming well-known throughout the country (to people besides us anime fans) shows how late we are in nearly everything. If you look at our neighbouring countries like Germany and France, who have had a good amount of anime/manga and j-pop madness going on for a long time now, the Dutch really know squat.
If someone catches you doodling on a random bit of paper, they will ask; "Oh, I've seen that before! What do you call that style?" To which you will most probably reply, "It's called anime, a Japanese art style." And then, the fun begins when the other one answers with, "Ah right, like Pokémon!"
At first I took the effort of trying to explain to people what the difference was between Pokémon and others, and how everything is not automatically the same, but try doing that about 10 times a week. So now I just nod with a smile and accept the fact that another one thinks I'm childish and probably crazy in the head.
Then again, I started to think about what would happen if anime and manga became really popular here. Since most of the people who like anime, like it because it's not that mainstream, would it becoming popular take all the fun out of it? I personally believe it would. I have to admit, whenever I go downtown to visit the only manga-selling comic store (heck, we've only got one comic store in the entire city) I go crazy whenever they happen to have something new from the series I'm into. But that's because I rarely see it. I get my kicks from having to put effort into finding something related to what I most enjoy. If I were to see it everywhere I went, I wouldn't have to even try and look for it. Has anyone ever gone international and discovered that they have more anime/manga related stuff than in your own country? I remember being dumbstruck when I was at school, busy on my art project (of course doodling a bit in between) and this girl came up to me and asked if the girl I was drawing was from Elfen Lied. The world stopped spinning that day. The same was with when I was in Paris some years ago and discovered Japan Vibes(a French J-pop magazine) for sale at a gas station. Though the cover had spicy Tenjho Tenge on it, I didn't have to think twice on asking my mom to buy it for me.

Now my point is, would anime/manga and J-rock/J-Pop becoming more popular take the fun out of it, just because it's popular? Or because you would get used to the fact of seeing it everywhere you'd go?

How it started, in short.

Though this might not really be of any interrest, I'd still like to tell you how it kinda started.
I met one of my best friends when I first started middle school. We had this assignment to write a letter to a so-called foreign pen-pal. When I asked the teacher, "Is it supposed to have a stamp?", she said, "If you want it to, just make one up.", which is what I did. I designed a stamp with a Neopet on it (I assume you've all heard of neopets, of course), an Aisha. Then, a girl sitting next to me noticed this, and she said, "Oh wow! You like Neopets?". Over the next hour I found myself buried in her rambling about Neopets, and she was sort of my introduction to anime.
Naturally, I watched Pokémon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh! and the like, but I wasn't aware of the fact that that was anime. I loved the art style, the large eyes, the flashy hair in any imaginable color, and from that day, my friend kind of dragged me into it. I still like it a lot, and we both still are big fans.
I also started drawing around that time. I remember watching Pokémon, thinking I wanted to draw like that too, and I just grabbed a pencil and paper, watched the way the faces and eyes were drawn in Pokémon, and just copied what I saw. It took me six years of copying, designing, fantasizing, editing and adjusting to get where I am. Not that I'm that good, but compared to the way I started, I think I can safely say I've improved a lot.

well, that's kind of it. Hope I didn't bore you to death ^^.