Posted on July 24, 2025
Yves’ digicam choice is no Soft Error!
forgive the pun, but this morning I was delighted to discover that a musician I follow – Yves (former Loona, now solo) – used a digicam I have in my collection in some of her album art! from the poster for the listening party, we can see more details:
as far as I can tell, this appears to be a Casio Exilim EX-Z50 with the logo photoshopped off! I may well be wrong – many models within a numbered range have similar button layouts – but this one struck me with pleasant familiarity when I first saw it, because it’s one of my own most-used digicams. it’s a decent lil guy – sturdy yet compact, it’s got great battery life and gets the job done. a good choice, if I do say so myself ;^)
Posted on July 11, 2025
the mystery of the calbee cards
while doing research for a future project, I noticed something strange… was it a figment of my imagination? or had a phantom kamen rider appeared?! read on to find out!
Read MorePosted on July 6, 2025
spotted a fun lil shonen tanteidan reference
came across it while reading through Ghost Hunt for a future project :^)
read right to left
Posted on July 3, 2025
Kamen Rider Cafe Culture – rating system
as observant readers will know, I am a huge fan of the tokusatsu franchise kamen rider – having watched the whole thing (watching week-to-week these days, as it airs), one thing that always stuck out to me was that cafes, bars and restaurants crop up in over half the seasons, often serving as some kind of “HQ” for the lead characters to come back to. so, I got to thinking – I should review these joints! both as dining establishments, but also to try and understand a little bit more about what purpose they serve in the plot as a whole. read on to hear more about the rating system I’ve been devising as the first part of this series!
Read MorePosted on July 2, 2025
Detectives These Days Are (driving me) Crazy
I’ve been watching less and less anime as it airs these days – perhaps because I prefer watching things once they’re complete, or maybe it’s because of hype fatigue… whatever the core reason, taste-testing my first show of the summer 2025 season certainly did not fill me with confidence that my viewing habits would change any time soon. if you’ve been round these parts for any amount of time, what piqued my interest about this show should be immediately obvious – a past-his-prime, ex-teen detective, aging out of precociousness while taking on a high school girl as his assistant? sounds like themes I’m interested in as a baseline, certainly, so I was bound to check it out. which, with hindsight, I rather wish I hadn’t! what left me feeling so sour about Detectives These Days Are Crazy? read on to find out!
Read MorePosted on June 26, 2025
edogawa ranpo covers part 6 – curse of the fiend with twenty (five) poplars
while trawling the web for more edogawa ranpo covers (as I am often known to do), I stumbled on a puzzling cache of detective novels shrouded in mystery – was ranpo among the illustrious authors? were the rip-roaring covers eerie… or eerily familiar? and what will I do when confronted with an actual phantom novel?! read on to find out!
Read MorePosted on June 23, 2025
edogawa ranpo covers part 5 – the edge of kodansha-hunting
as I’ve been looking for various versions of the edogawa ranpo boy detective series, there’s one edition that stood out from the rest – read on to learn more about this hair-raising kodansha selection, their unreal cover illustrations, illusive authorship and perhaps… a connection to kamen rider?!
Read MorePosted on June 13, 2025
edogawa ranpo covers part 4 and a half – a poplar interlude
while hunting for the edogawa ranpo covers from my last post (the ones rewritten to include the boy detectives) I found a funny little oddity: an edition of the rewrites that also included… something mysterious!? read on… if you’ve got the nerve!!!
Read MorePosted on June 11, 2025
edogawa ranpo covers part 4 – the fiend with twenty poplars
after finding the original 26 shonen tanteidan book covers from this poplar edition, I had no idea I might find more – let alone 20! a mystery was certainly afoot… and I planned to solve it. read on – if you dare!!
Read MorePosted on June 10, 2025
edogawa ranpo covers part 3 – the case of the missing poplars!
back in my first post on these shonen tanteidan book covers, I didn’t really have much info on them – but then I got stuck into digging up more info while I’ve been recuperating from a cold (cough). and so, here I present – the remaining covers that I was missing from that first batch of Poplar Publishing editions. which should be the end of it… OR IS IT??? read more to find out!!
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