Hello and welcome to my monthly blog!
Let’s get right into it and talk about the first thing I did this month, Anime Expo!
I once again attended Anime Expo for the fourth year in a row and it was just as hectic as all the other Expo’s I’ve been to in years past. The first day is usually the worst for this convention, they have no communication between staff members and volunteers on what to do with the lines. After 3 hours outside, I was finally able to get in and head to the massive vendor hall inside. I love wandering that vendor hall to see all the stuff that’s up for purchase from multiple companies! I bought a lot of stuff I really wanted this time around and was very happy! During the weekend I also got to visit the Sanrio shop and get myself some Aggretsuko merch(I love Aggretsuko!), I walked to and around Little Tokyo as well, it’s always so much fun walking around that portion of L.A. and also visited the historic Amoeba Music in Hollywood and purchased three cds I really wanted! All in All I had a really good time and I was glad I got to see and hang out with people I hadn’t seen in forever!
Once I got back from Anime Expo, I started catching up on everything that I was behind on. I finally finished Mob Psycho Season 2 and Bang Dream S2, both of which where fantastic and definitely better than their first season counter parts. I’m also in the process of finishing a few more shows as well! I also started catching up on the wrestling shows that I missed out on as well, I caught my first ever Pro Wrestling Eve shows(She Brawls in Brighton and She’s Gonna Start A Fight(which was on my birthday!)), both of which were awesome shows! I highly recommend checking them out(https://eveondemand.pivotshare.com/), they’re definitely worth the 9.99 a month! I also started catching up on the G1 Climax tournament that New Japan has currently going on, watched the first night in Texas and was blown away at all the matches(the standouts being Will Ospreay vs. Lance Archer and KENTA vs Kota Ibushi)(Note: I got up to night 6 and holy wow this tournament has been great!). I also took in my first ever Rise Pro Wrestling show as well with Rise Pride and Joy(a wrestling show at the end of Pride Month), fantastic show that really showed what Rise was all about!
Also in this month we had the release of Roselia’s latest single Firebird/Ringing Bloom, which is fantastic and I was so excited to hear the full version of Firebird since it was performed near the end of Bang Dream S2. We also had the pre-orders go up on multiple sites for Saito Shuuka’s debut solo cd(You-chan from Love Live Sunshine), set to come out during the month of August! Along that line as well we also had Aina Suzuki announce that she too would be releasing a solo project sometime this year as well(Mari from Love Live Sunshine), which had me all sorts of excited that my two favorite seiyuu are going to be doing they’re own things!
If you don’t mind, I’m now going to talk about something very serious. Towards the end of the month we had a very very scary incident happen in Japan. On July 18th, Kyoto Animation was viciously attacked and many many lives were tragically lost, during that time I found it very hard to be social media. So much was coming in, the news about how it happened, who had done it, the loss of life climbing and climbing. For a studio that brought many of us together world wide to be hurt in such a way was devastating. Then the outpouring of support came in, The Sentai Filmworks GoFundMe raising well over 2 Million dollars, people buying and downloading images through the KyoAni store itself, seiyuu and musicians donating what they could to Kyoani. Donations world wide flooded in and soon enough what was happening had reached the ears of the head of KyoAni! It was so incredible to see everyone coming together to help Kyoto Animation, so much so that they even opened they’re own personal bank account for those that wish to donate directly! My heart and mind still think back to that day when it started happening, I had tears running down my face every time I keep seeing more and more news on it.
Something that helped me process everything that had happened were a couple of other fellow wordpress users. It’s with these that I had found the words I was looking for to help me understand. https://nanairocosmos.wordpress.com/2019/07/20/kyoto-animation-a-chronology-of-emotion/amp/?__twitter_impression=true and https://mimidoshima.wordpress.com/2019/07/21/on-grieving-for-kyoto-animation/amp/?__twitter_impression=true. Both of these folks helped me better understand grief and emotions that came with this tragedy. As we get towards the end of the month, let’s remember to keep KyoAni in our hearts as they recover from this horrible tragedy.
Though the month of July brought some stress and some very down emotions, I made it through in a better mental state than I had in the last couple of months. As August rolls through, I hope this month continues to treat me just as good if not better than the last. Thank you all so much for Following me and liking my blogs! I’m really enjoying doing them in order to share just a bit of my life with all of you!
Thank you all so much and I’ll see you all at the end of August for another monthly update!
HonoYoRu thoughts 