D23 Expo 2015 coverage and photos

Last week I spent three days from Friday, August 14th to Sunday, August 16th at D23 Expo in Anaheim, California. It’s a convention celebrating everything and anything Disney, from their beloved animated movies to their other properties like Marvel and Star Wars. It’s a fairly new, bi-annual convention that was first held in 2009, making 2015 the fourth one. Besides spending one day at the relatively small Equestria LA, D23 Expo is the first non-anime convention I’ve been to. Despite having its flaws due to an overabundance of attendees, all in all I had a great time…

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Photos of my Frozen collection

Credit to linked pixiv user

If you’ve seen some of my tweets (or a couple of blog posts) during the past year, you’ll know that I’ve been obsessed with Disney’s hit movie, Frozen. I can always gauge how much I like something by how much money I’m driven to spend on it, and since I first saw Frozen, I’ve amassed quite a collection of merchandise that I’ve been wanting to share…

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Yumeka’s top 20 favorite animated movies (#10-1)

Credit to linked pixiv user

Continuing from last week’s post, I’ve been counting down my top 20 favorite animated movies, ending today with my top 10…

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Yumeka’s top 20 favorite animated movies (#20-11)

Credit to linked pixiv user

This is a favorites list I’ve been wanting to make for a while and now I finally feel like I’m ready! As many of you know, I’m not just a fan of anime but of the animation medium in general, especially animated movies. But despite being a fan of animated movies long before I was a fan of anime, I never actually made a list of my favorites. So for this post and the next, that’s what I’ll be doing…

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Frozen and the evolution of Disney storytelling

Credit to linked pixiv user
Art credited to 天然風 on pixiv

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you probably know that in addition to anime I’m also a Disney fan, as well as a fan of animation in general. I go to the theaters to see most of the big animated movies that come out in the US each year, but I don’t talk about them much here since this is, well, an anime blog. However, once in a while I feel like talking about other animated works, and during the last week of 2013 I saw Frozen, Disney’s latest animated film, which has been nothing short of a huge hit among audiences and critics alike. It already managed to reclaim the #1 spot at the box office over a month after its release on Thanksgiving, and currently it’s Disney’s highest grossing animated film of all time, beating the previous record holder, The Lion King (though Frozen would still be second only if you add the earnings from The Lion King’s 3D re-release in 2011). After seeing Frozen, I can’t say I was anything less than blown away – it not only managed to recapture the music and magic of the Disney I loved when I was a kid, but it also inverted many established Disney cliches, making for a really unpredictable story. That together with an amazing staff, actual Broadway talents included for the music, it’s not hard to see why it’s such a hit – but I wanted to examine it on a deeper level…

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When to take a break from anime


How many Disney characters can you spot?

In past posts I’ve talked about forms of anime “burnout,” from personal anecdotes about people I’ve known who lost interest in anime over time, to discussing exactly how/why someone would burnout on anime. But today’s topic isn’t so much about losing interest in anime as it is simply taking a break from it, which can be a form of preventing loss of interest in the first place…

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Funny pics and videos


Madoka and Fate/Zero characters eating out together…why not?

I’ve been sick this week so unfortunately I’m not up to writing my usual lengthy editorial or review posts. But, not wanting to go over a week without blogging, I’m just going to do a laid back post today and share some funny anime and related pictures and videos that will hopefully brighten your day…

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Yumeka’s SoCal travels: Disneyland

Today I wanted to experiment with a different kind of post – one that involves taking a break from anime and blogging about one of the most popular overall blog topics: places traveled to. I’m not much of a traveler and haven’t been to many interesting places. But there are some I would like to share at some point, besides Japan and anime conventions, which I’ve already shared quite a bit of here on the blog. So what better way to start than with the “happiest place on Earth”…

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Finally moving up to Blu-ray

This past Saturday I purchased my first Blu-ray player. I know Blu-ray has been around for a while now but I was a bit skeptical about getting into it. Firstly, I didn’t have enough money to even get my first HD TV until this past summer, but even then I suppose I was waiting for the price of Blu-rays to go down and for anime to start being released more steadily on BD here in the U.S. But now I feel the time is finally right for me to move up as far as my anime/movie viewing experience…

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Nostalgia: remembering old school video games

Lately I’ve been indulging in the wonders of emulators – programs that allow you to play old video games from various consoles on your computer. Back in the 90s when I was a kid and before I knew about anime, I spent the majority of my free time engrossed in video games. And even to this day, thanks to emulators, I’ve discovered that I still love old school games, sometimes even more so than new games…

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