GET OFF THAT SHIP.

This curt message, all of four words (five including the signature), may well have saved a man’s life and preserved a priceless treasure for posterity. But more on that later.

For the moment, let us consider the context. Today is the 15th of April, A.D. 2012 – the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic.

COMITIA 94

New promotional art and other details have just gone up on the COMITIA website for the convention’s 94th iteration, scheduled on 14th November. I’m planning to attend this one.

Check out the second comment on Daniel Lau’s COMITIA 90 write-up for some advice that may help first-time attendees make the most the experience.

Sound financial advice from Matsuoka Miu

Here’s the situation: say a million yen suddenly falls into your lap. What do you do with it?

Spend it? Nah, in these tough times it pays to tighten the purse strings.

Invest it? I wouldn’t trust the stock exchange with a child’s lunch money, let alone a million yen.

Stick it in a bank account? Right . . . and while you’re at it, pray the state’s teetering deposit insurance system will keep you covered when that place goes belly-up.

Now let’s have an expert’s opinion on the matter.

Question: What would you do if you suddenly got a million yen?

Miu: I’d walk around and slap people in the face with wads of cash.

Sign me up for the next COMITIA

Then again, probably not the next one. (I’ll need time to replenish my Japan Excursion Fund after Spring 2009′s bank-busting visit.) But if they’ve got one slated for the second half of November 2010 or thereabouts, I’m game.

Arrivederci, Neo Venezia: Amano Kozue’s Cielo (artbook review alert)

Diego briefly escapes from the drudgery of the white-collar salt mines to bring you another review, served piping hot on the Wolf Hurricane blog.

Today, the spotlight falls on Cielo – the last in a three-volume series of hardbound books featuring the manga art of ARIA author and illustrator Amano Kozue.

Read the full text of my review here.

In Diegospeak, “Kinokuniya” is a verb.

The feeling one gets after spending way, way, way too much

It means “to drive oneself into penury”.

Bakuman licensed for North American release

Anime News Network reports that Viz Media will soon add the manga series Bakuman to its Shonen Jump lineup.

The licensing deal was hardly unexpected, given that the hugely popular names of Ooba Tsugumi and Obata Takeshi are attached to this story about two high school students aspiring to make it big in the dog-eat-dog world of professional mangaka. On the other hand, I’m mildly surprised at the relatively short span of time between Bakuman‘s debut in August 2008 and this announcement, especially considering that only three volumes have been published so far in Japan (with another three volumes’ worth of chapters not yet collected).

I’m not a huge fan of Ooba and Obata’s previous joint project, but I’ve been following this more recent title almost from the moment publication began and it has done quite well up to this point. You can bet on my grabbing a copy as soon as it hits a bookshop in my corner of the world.