Tag: Uniqlo

Otaku NYC: Uniqlo

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Uniqlo is a staple clothing store in Japan, where you pick up your basics for everyday. Their branding is clean and graphic which their store reflects as well. The bonus is they make some awesome limited t-shirts featuring all kinds of popular culture; the most important to this article being anime, manga, and video games.

So lucky for us they opened up one on Broadway. With another location having opened up at Herald Square (thanks Sophy for the info!). UPDATE: And there is also one uptown at 1114 Ave of the Americas and 666 5th Ave.

Just as their clothes and themes change, so does their store interior. They even have a tendency to paper their second floor loft walls with blown up manga pages or add in an arcade machine for a time. Changing it up every couple of months keeps the store a continuously fun place to check out.

Back to the t-shirts, they’re well-made and reasonably priced. And what really sets apart their style is the creative way they work in the different series. They are unique designs, not just an image or a logo put in the middle of a t-shirt. Everything from Detective Conan to Gundam, from Mega-Man to Parappa the Rapper has graced the clothing line.

Be sure to get one of the bags with your purchase, too.

Ongoing Investigations: Case #044

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On free comic book day I picked up the Viz sample of Ultimo along with a few other things. Even with just half a chapter I can honestly say don’t bother with this series. The writing is really lame and also exceedingly annoying as it likes to tell you what is happening. Dear Hiroyuki Takei, this is a manga. That means there are pictures to tell me what is going on! You do not need to also write what is happening in little boxes all over the place. Also Ultimo is a boy? I swear I see boobs on this character design. This sample made me say “Who cares!” Which is a shame because I only read a bit of Shaman King, but I found it enjoyable enough.

I finally got my hands on Emma volume 8. The story proper of Emma has ended in book 7. The next three books are all side stories of various characters. Since Emma is one of those stories with delightful secondary characters this is a more than welcome prospect. The side stories jump around in time so we will get a little story about Kelly Stowner and her husband years before the original story and then jump ahead to look at how life has been treating characters like Eleanor and Tasha. The stories are just as charming as the main story so I was generally very pleased. I really liked The Times which we get a peek at various characters as we see how they are all connected by something as random and ubiquitous as the newspaper.  I will admit that they don’t really add anything to the main story but that is largely unimportant. One of the strengths of Emma was its wonderful depiction of Victorian England. As long as the stories remain as well written and heartwarming I look froward to the next two books as well.

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