oztaku

The Australian manga Oztaku was a good find. I also got an Oztaku publication called I & I by Avi and an artist whose name I will put in later, a kind of 'odd couple' story about two very different guys sharing a dorm room at uni. It was pretty funny and I hope to get the other chapters when they are published. The story starts during O-week:

As at most Australian universities the theme of O-week is alcohol (our legal drinking age is 18). Accordingly, David proceeds to sample everything and then enter a centurion contest where he's trying to drink 100 beers. At some point he's also tried skateboarding and broken parts of himself. He stops in between beer rounds to check his pockets and see what he's managed to sign himself up for:

This is the funniest bit, but for those of you who are not already laughing out loud, let me fill you in. Yaoi is a genre of manga (comics) and anime (animation) that basically translates as "boy love" - stories about boys falling in love. The "two hot chicks" on the card are two (very pretty) boys.

Somehow David manages to find his way to the hallway outside his dormroom:

If I had posted the bits with his extremely studious and well-behaved roommate, you'd see why this story has a heap of potential to be hilarious.
(These excerpts posted with the permission of the author.)

In other highlights, I finally bought myself a New Nelson - the biggest, scariest kanji character dictionary on the planet. Been waiting a long time for that one. I have it on good authority that they are super-helpful when you're trying to translate songs. I also got a $10 discount - yah anime.au!

And finally, though there was plenty else to enjoy, I've just included a few pics of some of those brave types who cosplayed. No j-rock cosplay sadly...maybe next time.