"The recipe to an unhappy life in Japan is to want to be Japanese if you are not."

(Pico Iyer in WSJ, via Japan Intercultural Twitter feed)

Katana fast-draw competition timers, modeled on the sort of devices used in pistol competition.

I particularly like the fact that the scoring rules in the manual give a half-second penalty for splitting open your scabbard or bending your sword, but a two-second penalty for missing the target. Actually cutting yourself is a disqualification, at least, but This Will Not End Well.

The prologue of the book is a quiet scene of an unnamed male staring out the window of a spaceship as his female companion reflects on what he’s feeling. Spoiler: it’s Aoi’s dad and his alien second wife, Rauva of the lizardlike Gaavuru race. It doesn’t tell their full story, but does reveal that at the end of their epic duel N years ago, he was near death, and she took him away from Earth as much to get him properly healed as to claim him as her mate. She even returned him to Earth five years later to search for his wife and child, and his belief that they were both dead allowed him to move on and accept his role in her society.

Their ship isn’t far from Earth, and he’s not just thinking about the old days; he’s also worried about his second daughter Sawori’s official first hunt. Neither one of them knows that Aoi is alive, or that Sawori has chosen her half-sister as her target.

Aoi needs the full power of her Catian-provided battlesuit to survive the duel, and barely manages to win by outthinking lil’sis just before collapsing from exhaustion. A bit out of sorts, Kio manages to deeply offend the Gaavuru observers, but is rescued by the unexpected arrival of Uncle Yuuichi and a strangely familiar gorgeous blonde catgirl in a red china dress.

Familiar to the Gaavuru, too, since it seems she beat the crap out of a whole team of them 50 years ago. By the way, when the Gaavuru were being explained to Kio and company at the end of the last book, it was casually mentioned that in their last duel against Catians 20 years ago, the targets were Kuune and Chaika, who also wiped the floor with them. Clearly lizardfolk should steer clear of anything with cat ears.

Hot blonde catgirl turns things around, and gets them to explain the whole little sister thing. Sadly, they teleported out with Sawori right after dropping the news about Dad being alive and well.

Hot blonde catgirl is of course Ichika, but all grown up and looking very different. Seems her magic extends to shape-shifting, and this was the body she’d been wearing way back in book 2 when she helped Kio rescue Aoi from Antonia’s ship. He’d been so busy at the time that he’d forgotten about that little mystery. I hadn’t realized there was a mystery, since the description was pretty vague.

In any case, it came as no surprise to the reader in this book, since she’s normal-Ichika when she hitches a ride with Yuuichi, and china-dress-hottie when they reach the scene.

[I don’t know if they’re done with Sawori for this book now, but I do know she comes back soon, having gotten the idea into her head that losing the duel with Aoi means they should marry. This includes the sight of a lizard-girl in a maid costume.]

No, seriously, this is what girl-power comics have come to. Amusingly, the two sidekicks drop into standard gender roles without hesitation.

Not just the same seiyuu, pretty much the same personality as well.

Speaking of hanko, I just reached a scene in AsoIku book 12 where the stress and long hours involved in getting the exchange program started have caused Kio to pass out from exhaustion, with Eris not far behind him. After a scolding by Doctor Dyureru and Melwin, they’re sentenced to a full day of bed rest. The medical assistoroid pulls out a square hanko and stamps them both with the image of a cartoon Dyureru whose speech bubble reads 絶対安静 (“Zettai ansei!” = “absolute rest”).

In typical Catian fashion, the ink actually consists of medical nanomachines that will help restore them, and then fade away when the job’s done.

By the way, Melwin was sleeping over at Kio’s place, wearing one of his white shirts as a nightgown and cuddling her personal assistoroid as a teddy bear. Sadly, they did not choose to illustrate this scene. Fortunately, someone else has illustrated Dyureru in a half-open white shirt, putting even more stress on the fabric than Eris does.

Next chapter, it looks like Aoi’s busty half-alien younger sister finally shows up. (although I don’t think she reveals her identity until the final scene)

[Update: no little sister yet, but just in case there was a shortage of hijinks coming, it was decided that Kio’s replacement on the Catian ship will be Antonia. And she’s bringing Sara along. Chaika will be subbing for Eris, leaving her younger daughters unsupervised… (no, wait, that’s just foreshadowing for book 15; the kids who run off in this book are Aoi’s assistoroids, who end up in Tokyo busing tables at the coffee shop run by Jens and her little sister).

The kidnapping/assassination plot that sets everything in motion doesn’t make much sense, since the perpetrators don’t seem to be working for any of the usual bad guys, but the teenage cyborg goth-loli secret agent (back from the previous book…) somehow knows about it anyway. The book ends on a cliffhanger, with Aoi’s little sister revealing her identity and challenging her to a duel. That should be interesting, since sis is a big, strong, tough, ruthless mercenary lizard-girl, and apparently Aoi’s apporting power runs in the family.]

Interesting that the Golden Ghost Ship makes an appearance in this size comparison (part of announcing the 1/40000-scale model of the ship), right up there with the Enterprise, the Yamato, Laputa, a Star Destroyer, etc.

The way this season’s going, though, I’m surprised it doesn’t include Gargantia. :-)

Short version: information gathered from a variety of hanko shops (particularly Inkan Honpo, Hankoman, Hobundo, Hanko2510, and Shoyu-net calligraphy shop).

I’m quite happy with the quality of the seals I ordered from Inkan Honpo’s site, and their online preview not only gives you a pretty good idea how things will look in the different fonts, but also lets you set your own line breaks to improve the layout a bit. Their Illustrator templates for custom rubber seals are also simple and clear.

Long version:

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